Getting Into Character: Seven Secrets a Novelist Can Learn From Actors (6 page)

I did end up creating that character, beginning with his posture. He became Derek in
Capture The Wind For Me
. This is an example of starting with a peculiar mannerism and working backward through the Personalizing process. (An excerpt about Derek is in this chapter’s Exploration Points.)

We all need a way of recording these kinds of observations, no matter how good our memories. Some authors carry small notepads or index cards for jotting things down on the spot. Others file observations away in their memories during the day, then write them in a journal at night. In addition to watching people for mannerisms, don’t forget other sources of ideas such as magazine pictures, voices over the phone or radio, characters in movies or plays, and descriptions in books. You can even glean ideas from animals and cartoon figures, adapting them to fit human nature.

You don’t need to copy directly from these sources, and in some cases you shouldn’t. But any one of them can springboard to that unique mannerism that is true to your character’s inner values. Take a little here, a little there, blend, and create something new.

The result? A character who is vibrantly alive, whose facial expressions and movements reflect his or her core truths. A character that would please Stanislavsky himself.

Becoming More Familiar With The Process

When it comes right down to it, Personalizing isn’t all that difficult. It just takes time. You’ll need to go through the steps carefully: questioning your characters to find an inner value, discovering the trait to which it leads, then discovering any specific mannerisms that may result. As you become more familiar with the process, you’ll find it goes more quickly and intuitively. (Again, like becoming more familiar with driving a car.)

One of the best ways to familiarize yourself with the Personalizing process is to personalize yourself. You might be amazed at what you find. You can start at the beginning of the process and work your way down to your inner values, or you can start with a trait or mannerism and work your way backward. As you learn about yourself and how closely your own traits, mannerisms, and inner values are tied together, you’ll better understand how effective this process can be in creating your characters.

Another interesting exercise in learning this process is to choose main characters from two different novels you have read—one character whom you felt was fully formed and believable, and another whom you found to be shallow, stereotyped. Then use the working backward technique to see how well their mannerisms and traits are tied to inner values that are clearly displayed through their actions. You may find that the trail of a believable character’s mannerisms goes all the way back to the beginning of the Personalizing process, while the trail of the shallow character’s mannerisms leads nowhere.

The beauty of this Personalizing Secret is that the process creates the entire character, both inside and out. Still, this is only the beginning. In the following chapters, I’ll show you how the inner values and traits you’ve found through Personalizing lay the foundation for further discoveries about your character and your plot as a whole.

Study Samples

FROM:
David Copperfield
(classic), by Charles Dickens.

SETTING: England, mid-1800s. A down-and-out David Copperfield enters a small shop, hoping to make a sale.

Into this shop, which was low and small, and which was darkened rather than lighted by a little window, overhung with clothes, and was descended into by some steps, I went with a palpitating heart; which was not relieved when an ugly man, with the lower part of his face all covered with a stubbly grey beard, rushed out of a dirty den behind it, and seized me by the hair of my head. He was a dreadful old man to look at, in a filthy flannel waistcoat, and smelling terribly of rum. His bedstead, covered with a tumbled and ragged piece of patchwork, was in the den he had come from, where another little window showed a prospect of more stinging- nettles, and a lame donkey.

“Oh, what do you want?” grinned this old man, in a fierce, monotonous whine. “Oh, my eyes and limbs, what do you want? Oh, my lungs and liver, what do you want? Oh, goroo, goroo!”

I was so much dismayed by these words, and particularly by the repetition of the last unknown one, which was a kind of rattle in his throat, that I could make no answer; hereupon the old man, still holding me by the hair, repeated:

“Oh, what do you want? Oh, my eyes and limbs, what do you want? Oh, my lungs and liver, what do you want? Oh, goroo!”—which he screwed out of himself, with an energy that made his eyes start in his head.

“I wanted to know,” I said, trembling, “if you would buy a jacket.”

“Oh, let’s see the jacket!” cried the old man. “Oh, my heart on fire, show the jacket to us! Oh, my eyes and limbs, bring the jacket out!”

With that he took his trembling hands, which were like the claws of a great bird, out of my hair; and put on a pair of spectacles, not at all ornamental to his inflamed eyes.

“Oh, how much for the jacket?” cried the old man, after examining it. “Oh—goroo! How much for the jacket?”

“Half-a-crown,” I answered, recovering myself.

“Oh, my lungs and liver,” cried the old man, “no! Oh, my eyes, no! Oh, my limbs, no! Eighteenpence. Goroo!”

Every time he uttered this ejaculation, his eyes seemed to be in danger of starting out; and every sentence he spoke, he delivered in a sort of tune, always exactly the same, and more like a gust of wind, which begins low, mounts up high, and falls again, than any other comparison I can find for it.

“Well,” said I, glad to have closed the bargain, “I’ll take eighteenpence.”

“Oh, my liver!” cried the old man, throwing the jacket on a shelf. “Get out of the shop! Oh, my lungs, get out of the shop! Oh, my eyes and limbs—goroo! Don’t ask for money; make it an exchange.”

I never was so frightened in my life, before or since; but I told him humbly that I wanted money, and that nothing else was of any use to me, but that I would wait for it, as he desired, outside, and had no wish to hurry him. So I went outside, and sat down in the shade in a corner. And I sat there so many hours, that the shade became sunlight, and the sunlight became shade again, and still I sat there waiting for my money.. . .

He made many attempts to induce me to submit to an exchange: at one time coming out with a fishing-rod, at another with a fiddle, at another with a cocked hat, at another with a flute. But I resisted all these overtures, and sat there in desperation; each time asking him with tears in my eyes for my money or my jacket. At last he began to pay me in halfpence at a time; and was full two hours getting by easy stages to a shilling.

“Oh, my eyes and limbs!” he then cried, peeping hideously out of the shop, after a long pause, “will you go for twopence more?”

“I can’t,” I said; “I shall be starved.”

“Oh, my lungs and liver, will you go for threepence?”

“I would go for nothing, if I could,” I said, “but I want the money badly.”

“Oh, goroo!” (It is really impossible to express how he twisted this ejaculation out of himself, as he peeped around the doorpost at me, showing nothing but his crafty old head.) “Will you go for fourpence?”

I was so faint and weary that I closed with this offer; and taking the money out of his claw, not without trembling, went away more hungry and thirsty than I had ever been, a little before sunset.

Exploration Points

1.
How many unique mannerisms does this shopkeeper have?

A lot. Definitely over the top. But this is Dickens’ style, and he makes it work.

Every movement of this shopkeeper is extreme. He doesn’t walk, he rushes. He doesn’t greet, he seizes by the hair of the head. He grins rather than smiles and whines in a strange tune rather than talks. His speech is far too excited for the circumstance, and what’s more, he repeats the crazy things he says as if to outdo his manic self. He rattles a strange sound in his throat—”Goroo!” Sometimes his eyes bug out of his head as he does so. Nervous energy flows into his hands, making them tremble.

Dickens has done a great job of making me feel David Copperfield’s intimidation. I certainly wouldn’t want to find myself at the mercy of this strange man.

2.
How has Dickens’ description added to these wild mannerisms?

A writer less facile than Dickens may not be able to create a believable character with this many eccentricities. To achieve believability, Dickens has used description of the shop’s surroundings in some unique ways.

The entire shop appears haphazard and chaotic, a reflection of the keeper’s appearance and actions. The room is cramped, and the space is stuffed with hanging clothes. In the first sentence, instead of saying a window is dirty, Dickens describes it as darkening rather than lighting the room. His choice of words sets up the unpredictability that David Copperfield will face in meeting the owner of this place. Dickens carries the window description further by noting that a second one displays not a pretty garden, but weeds that badly prick and a crippled donkey. As a result, we’re not surprised to see that the shopkeeper is ugly, unshaven, dirty, and smelling of alcohol. And we’re poised to more easily believe the man’s crazed mannerisms of speech, bugging eyes, rattling throat, and trembling hands.

3.
From what inner value(s) do you think these mannerisms spring?

According to E. M. Forster’s definition of flat and round characters, this shopkeeper is flat. He may have many mannerisms, but he’s constructed around a single idea or inner value, and he doesn’t change. In fact, he doesn’t have time to change. He is only a minor character in the story. Even so, Dickens has worked to make him interesting. (Keep that in mind for your minor characters.)

Every mannerism Dickens has attributed to him leads back to this man’s inner value: “Money is the most important thing in my life.” This leads to his personality trait regarding how he conducts his business: making the most money on a deal is all that matters. At first it appears that this man is stupid. He allows himself and his shop to appear so frightful that customers immediately want to leave. But toward the end of the scene, we see the man’s cunning. I get the feeling that his appearance and wild actions are quite purposeful. They’re all designed to give him the upper hand in transactions. If he’d immediately and quietly declared to his young customer that he would only make an exchange for the jacket or pay hardly anything, David Copperfield would have left in a hurry. Instead, the shopkeeper leads David on, all the while displaying his wildness, until the frightened, worn-down boy practically gives the jacket away.

FROM:
Capture The Wind For Me
(contemporary, Bradleyville Series book 3), by Brandilyn Collins.

SETTING: Small Kentucky town, 1998. Sixteen-year-old Jackie Delham and her best friend, Allison, are at school. Jackie is not at all happy about her widowed father’s new attraction for Katherine King, much older sister to Derek King, the school nerd. Katherine has been gone for years but has recently returned to town.

That school year, Derek King attended one of my morning classes. The following day, drawn like some crazed moth to flame, I found myself staring at the back of his angular head. Derek sat like no person I’d ever seen, with one shoulder way lower than the other and his head crooked, kind of like a hunchbacked bird listening for a worm. But his odd posture barely registered in my mind at the time. I was wondering if he’d heard his sister say anything about Daddy.

“So you gonna tell me what’s up?” Alison plopped her tray down across from me at lunch.

“Yeah.” I sighed. “But you have to promise not to tell another soul.”

[Allison and Jackie eat quickly, then move to a bench outside to continue talking about Katherine King.]

“Shh,” Alison whispered. “Derek’s comin’ this way.”

“Oh, great. He’d better not say anything about all this.”

I could picture Derek behind me, with his long-legged amble, large black shoes kicking through the grass. His hands would be hanging limp at his side, thumbs rubbing across his fingers. Derek walked with his ash blond head slightly atilt, though not as badly as when he sat. Probably because he needed to see where he was headed. In my most charitable of thoughts, I’d have allowed that his face wasn’t all that bad. He had a strong nose, a wide forehead, and close-set gray eyes behind silver-rimmed glasses. His mouth would slip in and out of a smile so quickly you’d doubt that you’d seen it at all. Most of the time, you had no idea what he was smiling about. Probably some brilliant new computer software concept.