From The Land in Winter by Andrew Miller:

At the edge of the field, by the shadow-line of the hedge, a dog, or something like a dog, raised its head into the light, studied them a moment, the two women upright in the bareness of the field, then dropped out of sight again, soundlessly.

This sentence ends a chapter. The dog, or something like a dog, doesn’t reappear. It adds menace and tension to the novel, partly because of the situation (two pregnant women in a cold, snow-covered field), but also because of the word choices Miller has made: “Edge,” “shadow,” “into the light,” “studied,” “bareness,” “out of sight,” and “soundlessly,” for example. Most of all, the point of view allows readers to know something scary that the characters do not.

Two exercises, then. First, can we use the same words Miller does to create the opposite feeling for readers? We might allow ourselves to add words or see if we can change only their order. How are things different if the women watch the dog, for example? Second, how might we use the technique Miller uses? In other words, what can we let readers know that characters do not? How might this alarm readers, or how might it please them?

Consider these sentences from Hemlock and Silver by T. Kingfisher: “I thought long and hard about Isobel telling me to be tactful. But Isobel was what she was, and I was what I was, and if thirty-odd years and a lot of poison hadn’t changed that, I might as well embrace it. Tact is overrated anyway. And if I started being tactful now, he’d probably die of shock.” The italics are in the original.

I think decisions characterize, but in addition to their actions, what a character refuses to do can characterize them. Melville’s Bartleby is one example of this. In the paragraph above, the main character makes a decision and refuses to change. On one level, they reject their arc. On another, they remain true to themselves against social and familial pressure and perhaps at odds with gender norms.

So, what will your character decide not to do? How might that put them at odds with larger social forces around them? In what ways might it encourage conformity? (See Frank Lentricchia’s Criticism and Social Change, pages 102-107 espeically, for more.)

Consider this sentence from Headshot by Rita Bullwinkel:

Artemis Victor has no idea what it takes to own a house, but she knows what it takes to beat other people, which is what owning property seems like, beating other people at owning a piece of the earth and making that piece of earth yours, not to be shared with other people, because the owning of the property is a product of your victory over other humans, as in, you won more dollars than them so now this slice of land is yours for keeps.

Artemis is one of the young women boxers in Bullwinkel’s novel. This one-sentence summary of her appears early in one of the sections of the book in which she boxes. The novel is organized like a March Madness bracket, with each pairing of characters having a winner that moves on to the next pairing until finally the two characters most likely to win box each other. One thing to learn from Bullwinkel is the value of a clear organizational structure for a novel, especially one with many characters.

The sentence above is its own paragraph. It stands out on the page. It also reveals key elements of one character, specifically. It suggests what she does not know and how she thinks about the world. This is stated directly and succinctly. As readers learn more about the character, such as her feelings about her sisters, for example, Artemis becomes more rounded. So, one technique for writing a round character is a concise, memorable sentence juxtaposed with contrasting scenes. The sharper the contrast between the scenes and summary, the more sides the character will seem to have and the better readers will get to know them.

Lorna Crozier’s prose poem “Vituperative” is an excellent example of several techniques. It also effectively models a structure. The title tells readers the name of the poem, and the body shows the title. This showing includes images driven by sensory language, synonyms, and examples. Poetic strategies include alliteration. Rather than the happy ending readers might be trained to expect, consistent with its title, the prose poem doubles down on its bitterness.

Simple and powerful.

Consider this quotation from Saunders’s story “Victory Lap” in Tenth of Dec, “Three days shy of her fifteenth birthday, Alison Pope paused at the top of the stairs. Say the staircase was marble. Say she descended and all heads turned.” These are the first sentences of the story.

They are good first sentences for several reasons. They suggest an ongoing process (“Three days shy . . .”) or two (Alison has paused) and readers are likely to read on to see how the process(es) resolves. In other words, the sentences presents portents of a possible future. Will the portents be fulfilled?

Another reason these are good first sentences is that they also characterize. Beginning with a character is likely to interest readers, especially if a connection to that character is likely or at least possible. I’ve had a fifteenth birthday, and I’ve even paused at the top of stairs and imagined that my surroundings might be different.

These two strategies are good ways to start stories.

Notice also this moment from the title story, “Tenth of December.” In it a boy is crossing a frozen lake. The ice under his feet has been making odd sounds as he imagines a conversation with a girl he knows. Readers are deep within his point of view or consciousness and have been for several paragraphs.

Maybe you should turn back, Suzanne said.

But wasn’t this feeling of fear the exact feeling all heroes had to confront early in life? Wasn’t overcoming this feeling of fear what truly distinguished the brave?

There could be no turning back.

Or could there? Maybe there could. Actually there should.

The ice gave way and the boy fell through.

The last sentence is a surprise (or it was for me) partly because of its suddenness. It isn’t telegraphed by a word like “suddenly,” for example. It is its own paragraph in a series of short paragraphs, one with dramatically different contents. But another part of what makes the last sentence a surprise is the quick movement from the character’s inner life to an external, objective, cinematic point of view. Readers flash from within the character’s decision making, his deliberations about his own safety, to a flat description of consequences. As much as those consequences may have been anticipated, seeing them on the page is surprising.

We might try similar strategies when we seek to surprise readers.

These prompts are inspired by Ted Gioia’s “My 8 Best Techniques for Evaluating Character.” I’ve revised his techniques to create fictional characters.

1. What childhood experiences formed your character? List three and write a paragraph about each.
2. How do they handle their time and material resources? What do they do with their free time? What sorts of things do they surround themselves with?
3. Identify what irritates your character the most about others. (This may be the trait or flaw they dislike most in themselves.)
4. Describe your character’s long-term relationship(s) so that it reveals what the character longs for and what they think they deserve or will settle for.
5. How does your character treat people assigned to serve them, especially people who have no power or influence over them?
6. Does your character cheat at small things? (Why would or wouldn’t that guarantee they will cheat at big things?)
7. How do they handle unexpected problems? Do they exacerbate the issue (intentionally or not), try to ignore it, negotiate, or attempt a solution alone or with others?
8. Describe the character’s inner conflict. What do they want? What will they not do to get it?

I’m enjoying At the Mouth of the River of Bees, one of Kij Johnson’s short story collections. I plan to go looking for more of her work. Consider this sentence from her story “26 monkeys, also the abyss”:

These are some ways Aimee’s life might’ve come apart:

After this sentence is a short list of three or four events which, it is clear, did not happen to Aimee. This list of things that did not happen is a kind of narrative negative space but not on the level of the page. It’s not an empty or unoccupied area around paragraphs, at the ends or beginnings of them, or a gap between sets of them. It’s an empty narrative space because it is an explicit list of things that did not occur in the character’s life. But telling readers what is not there kind of implies what is. It’s characterization by what has not happened to a character. What hasn’t happened also suggests the kind of person Aimee is. I’ll probably try this technique by suggesting what could have happened to a character, but didn’t.

In the meantime, I highly recommend Johnson’s novel The Dream-Quest of Vellitt Boe.