Dynamic Characters (16 page)

In the second example, we know from the second sentence onward that, instead of being told about Amy's state of mind, we're being
shown
her thoughts directly. This is made clear by the italicizing of
other,
reproducing the way teenage girls emphasize certain words; by the use of
stuck-up;
by the question Amy asks herself; and by the whining ''It wasn't fair.'' In this version, we don't need the label ''she thought'' because we're so close inside Amy's head that it's clear these are her thoughts, not the author's observations. And if you don't need the tag, drop it. It's just excess baggage.

Often, of course, this is a judgment call. And nobody is going to reject your story if a few extra ''she thoughts'' creep into otherwise lean prose. Still, you can cut many tags once you become aware that they're unnecessary to a close third-person POV (although they may be necessary to a more distant one). The list includes, but is not limited to:

• His thoughts drifted to . . .

• He wondered .. .

• He realized that. . .

• He remembered the time when . . .

• He contemplated the . . .

• He mused . . .

It's sharper and more economical to just let your character get on with the content of his thinking, wondering, realizing, remembering, contemplating or musing, rather than to announce that he's about to do these things. And, of course, I don't have to tell you not to write, ''He thought to himself.'' Except for telepaths, there is no other possibility.

DICTION AND PERSONALITY: GETTING TO KNOW YOU

As we discussed in the last chapter, the content of characters' thoughts is tremendously important.
What
your character thinks about helps to create his personality for the reader. So does
how
he thinks: in what words, with what sentence structure, with what level of grammatical correctness.

Consider two characters, both in close third-person POV, both imagining themselves shooting a hated enemy:

Guts. That's what he wanted to see. Grayson's guts, sprayed red and purple all over the wall. And Grayson writhing underneath. Still alive. A long time alive. Yeah.

He would watch the entire brief performance, the one-act passion play, from over the barrel of the rifle. The gun would feel cool and smooth in his hands. He could feel it there now, could see the staging: the setup as Grayson turned toward him with a shocked face, the climax as the bullet slammed into Grayson's chest, the denouement as his old rival lay dying. Oh, yes, he would watch closely, and no other performance would ever have felt so rich, so nuanced, so completely satisfying.

These are very different men. Their thoughts are equally violent, but the first character comes across as more visceral, more direct, less sophisticated. That's due to the Anglo-Saxon diction, the short and choppy sentences (only one is grammatically complete), and the lack of outside references. This guy thinks in concrete, brutal images. By extension, we see him as concrete and brutal.

The second character's thoughts, in contrast, use more Latinate words, longer and grammatically complete sentences, and an entire metaphor lifted from theater. Both writers have adjusted their narrative style while in their characters' thoughts—and both have succeeded in strongly characterizing their fictional killers.

The result of this matching of diction, sentence structure and level of sophistication to a character's personality is twofold. First, a given character's dialogue and thoughts will end up sounding consistent with each other. And why not? The same person is having thoughts inside his head and speaking thoughts out loud.

Second, the closer the distance between author and character, the more alike thoughts and dialogue should sound. At the very closest third-person POV, the author's language disappears and the entire story is told in the character's language. Any distinction between the style of thoughts and the style of, say, description, disappears. In essence, the entire story is the character's thoughts (just as in first person), and the language subtly reflects that.

Here, for example, is a passage from Mary McCarthy's
The Group.
The POV character is Libby MacAusland. And even though this brief passage is a description of Libby's boss, the content and language are Libby's own:

She often found him reading a magazine:
The New Masses,
she noticed, or another called
Anvil,
or still another with the peculiar name of
Partisan Review,
which she had tried to read in the Washington Square Bookshop. That's what gave her the idea of slipping words like ''laborer'' into her conversation, to remind him that she too was one of the downtrodden. Rumor had it that there were quite a few pinks in the publishing biz.

Who thinks that
Partisan Review
is a peculiar name? Not the author.
Pinks, biz, Rumor had it
—this is all Libby's language, a reflection of her desire to be hip and snappy without having a clue as to what her boss (or anyone else) is really all about. These words would not work in a more formal novel with a greater distance between author and characters: E.M. Forster's
A Passage to India,
for instance. McCarthy's language reflects and subtly reinforces the intimacy with which we've invaded Libby's mind.

THINKIN' REAL SMOOTH AND EASY: DIALECT IN THOUGHTS

You can even extend this technique to include reproducing regional or ethnic dialect in a character's thoughts, not just in her dialogue. This is from Susan Glaspell's story ''A Jury of Her Peers,'' which was made into the often-produced play
Trifles:

Harry was Mrs. Hale's oldest boy. He wasn't with them now, for the very good reason that those potatoes never got to town yesterday and he was taking them this morning, so he hadn't been home when the sheriff stopped to say he wanted Mr. Hale to come over to the Wright place and tell the county attorney his story there, where he could point it all out. With all Mrs. Hale's other emotions came the fear now that maybe Harry wasn't dressed warm enough—they hadn't any of them realized how that north wind did bite.

In that last sentence you can hear the distinctive phrasing of the rural Midwest. But, as with spoken dialogue, a little dialect goes a long way. Author Glaspell has used a light hand with her regional phrases (''hadn't any of them realized how that north wind did bite''). To use dialect in thought without being hackneyed or distracting, follow the guidelines for dialect in dialogue (see chapter five).

Your character thinks about certain things, in a certain way, because of who he is. Through thoughts whose diction and sentence structure reflect that identity, and through keeping the mechanics and POV distance consistent, you help us to understand this character's individual personality. How could we not? We're inside his head, where identity resides. He thinks, therefore he is . . . alive.

SUMMARY: CLARITY IN CHARACTER THOUGHTS

^•
 Be consistent in whatever format you choose for presenting thoughts.

^•
 Make your choice partly on the basis of how much distance you're keeping between author and character.

• Do write thoughts in the diction, sentence structure and level of sophistication that match the character's personality (which means that dialogue and thoughts will sound similar). The closer the distance, the more alike thoughts and dialogue should sound.

• Keep italicizing to a minimum, to avoid looking as if you think every character thought is worthy of great emphasis.

^•
 Keep ''he thought'' tags only when you need them to avoid confusion.

• Use dialect with a light hand.

Recently I saw a story from a young writing student. The story had three characters: a young man, his fairly young stepmother and his retired father. The first two characters were interesting and individual. The father, on whom the point of the story depended, did nothing but sit around and say little. We not only didn't see much of his externals (appearance, gestures, dialogue—all the good stuff we discussed in part one), we also didn't get much sense that anything was going on internally.

''The father isn't strong enough a character for his part in the story,'' I said. ''What's he really like as a person?''

The student shrugged. ''Oh, you know—he's retired. Nothing to do all day. So naturally he's depressed and bored. I just assumed you'd get that.''

Well, no, I didn't. My student was making an assumption about his

character—that all retired men are depressed and bored—and then a further assumption that I would share the first assumption. I didn't share it. I know too many retired men who are not depressed and bored (including my own father). As a result, I came to the story with a different set of assumptions, and what was on the page didn't communicate.

The young writer assumed way too much—about both his character
and
his reader.

This is not as simple a subject as it might at first seem. Assume that we need every single detail explained, and you will show us so much detail that we become bored and impatient.

Assume that we completely share your view of the character and you will leave out necessary details: the thoughts, gestures, attitudes that illuminate your character and bring him to life on the page.

Make the wrong assumptions about our reaction to the character, and you will supply the wrong details, leaving us thinking, ''Huh? Why on earth did the character do
that?"

Any of these can kill a story. On the other hand, the
right
assumptions let you include the right thoughts, attitudes and reactions to really bring your character alive for your readers. This is probably easiest to see through examples.

WHEN READER AND AUTHOR SHARE ASSUMPTIONS—OR DON'T

Suppose, for instance, you are writing a story in which the first scene is a mother wheeling her shopping cart out of the supermarket with a full load of groceries and her two-year-old in the child seat. A car pulls alongside and a man leaps out, knocks the mother to the ground, grabs the baby and screeches away. The mother's reaction is screaming hysteria. You stop the scene there.

You are assuming that we will understand why the mother is upset. And if the next scene is two cops discussing the fact that the mother can't supply the license plate number, we will assume the intervening action: someone called 911, the distraught mother was interviewed, she was too hysterical and terrified to think clearly enough to catch the plate number, etc. Your assumptions are:

• Mothers get very upset when their children are kidnapped.

• They turn to authority for help.

• Hysteria and terror can interfere with clear thinking.

• The reader will share the above three assumptions without your explaining them.

The last point is the most crucial. If you
don't
think readers will share the first three assumptions, you will put in scenes that dramatize her failure to note the license number, her phone call to the police, their arrival, their interrogation of her and any witnesses. If these scenes are doing something more than supplying us with characterization of the mother (supplying clues, for instance, or setting up the attitude of the police), they may work fine. But if the scenes' only point is to characterize the mother's distraught worry, you will be putting in far too many scenes
that slow the story down.
And the reason you will be putting them in is that you've made a false assumption about how much the reader assumes about character. You should realize that we will assume that a kidnapped child can lead to both hysteria and an appeal to the authorities. Knowing that gives you the option of showing the interrogation scene—or not.

Now consider an alternate scenario. Suppose the mother is not hysterical. Suppose she coolly notes the license plate number of the abductor's car, calmly calls the cops (no quaver in the voice, no pleas to hurry) and goes through their interrogation without so much as moving a facial muscle. This is not what most readers assume about the mothers of kidnapped children. As a result, you no longer have a choice about showing that scene. You must show it, and in enough detail for the readers to decide if the mother's calm is the result of shock, cold-bloodedness, complicity in the kidnapping, or pathology. We will need a lot more detail to create a believable character, because her behavior runs contrary to our assumptions about motherhood.