Enough Torn Hair for a Barbershop

I hate them. They're malevolent and insidious. They steal from me. I hate them.

Leech words. I want to grab them and squeeze 'em until they pop. I can almost feel the little buggers in my hand... slimy little leech words, full of my blood, full of my precious story energy. Stolen! I'm gonna squish 'em to pulp. I'm gonna dissect them with my metaphorical red pen and drop 'em in my metaphorical dustbin.

(Because, you know, I use a computer. No red pens. At least not very often. It's hard to read the screen after awhile)

Leech words. Yes, if I could do sound effects there would be growling here. Possibly hissing. Maybe biting. I have no dental plan, so biting might be 50-50. Verbal violence, surely.

Leech words. They are my enemy, and they seep surreptitiously into all my first drafts. They're there, they're always there. Words that undercut my own lines and meanings, undercut my story. Leech words, draining necessary blood from my own writing. Lifeblood, bright and vivid.

I can't seem to avoid them. Every time I think I have... I'm wrong. They're there. Always there. "Almost" is there, and "maybe." And "sort" brought a friend in "of" so that together they can form the ghastly "sort of". Oh, and "slight" and his cousin "slightly"... how do they always sneak in? And then there's "kind of" and "seems", and "might be" and "mostly" (who masquerades as a grand and valuable world as if to belie his smallness). Oh yes, I hate them.

I hate how they almost turn a sentence into something that mostly prevaricates, sort of deadening the impact of the line in a way that maybe harms the intent despite the fact that the words might seem slightly invisible to the eye, as if they might be okay in the end, a kind of language that's almost as natural as breathing.

(Oh, it itched to write that... like I could feel their little pucker-mouths clamping down and beginning to suck)

Oh yes, I hate them. I'm on the twelfth draft of a book and still I find them... lingering, hiding in the crevices, blinking up at me with false innocence. I pull my hair. Pull it right out until tangled tufts form little drifts on the floor around my computer.

I tell myself it's a good fight. A just fight. Truth, Justice and the Novelist's way. I keep fighting, and honorably. But if the Geneva Convention looks away for just a moment...

The History of Objects

Objects have a life of their own, and this holds true in fiction as well as life. As a writer, I think it helps me to take advantage of this, to use this to enrich a story and enrich a character.

I've been thinking about this a bit since Wanu brought up characterization in the last thread. And characterization is one of the biggies, ain't it? A lot of what you do in a story will live and die with how well you develop a character (and a character arc). So I thought I'd put out a couple of ideas on characterization that I have floating around in my head (before I forget them). And, too, I find a sort of clarity by writing something down, a certain cohesion. Write it down and you have something to build on later...

So, the oldie but goodie aspect first: the five senses. The first thing I (almost) always try to do is to filter the story through the senses of a character. This provides immediacy, but it also provides, I think, the beginnings of individuality. My goal is to try and filter it through a particular character's senses. That is, not just generic sights, sounds, and smells, but details specific to an individual character. Are they visually oriented? I know I am, so as a writer I have to make sure to add other sensory details as well. I like touch... nothing is more immediate than touch. What are the sensory details that character would notice? Are they visual observers, or are they highly keyed towards audio? So, show the world through a character, and show what's meaningful to them.

Now we get to particular things, the actual objects of the world these characters experience. Again, my goal is to find particularity rather than generality. Objects have their own personalities. It's not just a refrigerator, it's a new fridge or an old one. Expensive or cheap? Shiny or dull? So this way I have a particular character experiencing a particular object.

What's the history of the object? What does it mean to the character? In one of my stories I have a woman with a new fridge. A new home, and a shiny high-tech new fridge. It's unmarked, gleaming, the brushed steel offering a distorted image... it's something she doesn't like, something her husband purchased as a sort of status symbol to show how he was rising in the world, to show what he had achieved. And yet his wife sits in her big new home isolated and alone, with only a gleaming fridge for company.

The history of the object has allowed an inanimate thing to take on a certain life, becoming almost a character, something for the MC to play off and reveal something of herself. After this you can then broaden the history. We now have a connection between a character and an object, in this case a fridge... but what about other fridges? Does her memory connect this fridge with any other? The character then makes a connection in her memory, a connection to her mother's fridge, a very different one than her own. White, a little dull, a little old and battered, and yet also loved, strewn as it is with grocery lists, photographs and the wobbly art of children. Now we have a disparity between two objects, two different histories, and these differences become relevant. The woman is childless, and the disparity highlights her sense of loss and isolation.

The simple object now works in the story almost as metahpor and symbol. It's active rather than passive, and this activity is really an embodiment of the character, of the tensions and conflicts inside them. A simple fridge has allowed the story to reflect two different histories, two different aspects of the character, as well as reflect the tension/conflict that forms one of the key dynamics of the story.

For me, this is a very useful technique, largely because it mirrors consciousness, and the revelation of a particular consciousness is the revelation of character. It allows the creation of a three dimensional character operating within their own unique world. It's a reflection of memory, really, a recognition of the subjective value of things rather than the merely objective. It's not a fridge, it's her fridge. It's not just an object, it's a part of a particular world, one piece of an interconnected tapestry of fictionalized memories.

So, objects and characterization... what's important to you when developing characters? Are there any craft tricks you like? Do you start with an image or a voice? Or something else entirely? Lay it on me...