I\u2019m reading a book at the moment that came recommended, a psychological thriller about a small, close group of friends.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I\u2019ve started the book. I\u2019m seventy pages in. I already know I won\u2019t finish it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The problem, a terribly common one, is that I haven\u2019t bonded with the characters. They don\u2019t feel like real people. If I\u2019m honest, I can\u2019t tell one from another, or not really.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Now, quite likely, part of the problem is me. I\u2019m TERRIBLE with names and faces. Always have been, always will be. I forget character names in my own books. I fail to recognise people I know and have chatted with extensively. My uselessness in real life probably carries over into books too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But good characterisation should still overcome reader idiocy. Perhaps I might be slow to assemble the characters in my head, but I should still get there in the end, no? I shouldn\u2019t be fifty pages in and still have no meaningful idea of who these people are.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Also \u2013 alarmingly \u2013 this book has avoided all the common pitfalls. So, the author has:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It looks like the author has done all the things she\u2019s meant to have done \u2013 all the things that the writing books suggest. All the things that, erm, helpful weekly emails on writing advice are likely to suggest.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So what\u2019s the problem? Why do some books never quite ground themselves? Why do some characters end the book still feeling two-dimensional and unreal?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The short answer \u2013 I\u2019m not sure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The longer answer is threefold.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
First, I\u2019m confident that you can\u2019t just introduce your characters in a rush. When you\u2019re at a party, that \u201cHarry, meet Amy, Baz, Charlie, Dino and Esmerelda\u201d thing doesn\u2019t really give you a chance to remember who everyone is. But if you get five or ten minutes chatting with Amy before you get to meet Baz, and so on, you\u2019re likely to win this game. Amy is no longer just a face and a name. She\u2019s now someone who comes stored with her own little fact-file. When you meet Baz, you have enough data on Amy that she can safely be put into storage as you meet Baz.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I think the same rule applies in books. Slower introductions are better. And if, for example, your book just does have a group of characters turning up in a cluster \u2013 a group of friends meeting up for a long weekend \u2013 you can still split them apart. Amy and Baz can hike to the house from the rural train station. Dino and Charlie can score a cheeky snog in the kitchen. Esmerelda can just be late (she\u2019s always late) and arrive in a flurry at the end of chapter two.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And then too, I think you need to look away from, not directly at, the issue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What I mean here is that you don\u2019t solve the problem of character identification by aiming to provide a torrent of quick data. \u201cHey, reader, you haven\u2019t met Charlie before, so here\u2019s a quick summary of what you need to know. She\u2019s the tall, blonde, pretty one, OK? Gifted at university (studied English), but wasted in a sort of glam-but-dead-endy PR job. Blah blah blah.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That kind of introduction, especially if it comes amongst a spatter of other such introductions, is likely to wash over and through the reader. I think they just don\u2019t work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Instead, just show your characters in action. Then it\u2019s simple: just tell the reader what the reader needs to know to make sense of the action. So let\u2019s say that two or three friends have gone out to dinner. Leaving the restaurant, Charlie breaks a heel. You now have a perfectly sensible opportunity to describe her clothes. You might well use the chance to describe her appearance more generally. (\u201cI could see passers-by looking over at us. A woman, blonde and pretty, in a silver sequinned dress, lying on the pavement. You can tell they thought she was drunk, and perhaps she was a bit \u2026\u201d)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
You\u2019re still conveying data to the reader, but you\u2019re not doing so by presenting an index-card of facts. You\u2019re doing so by telling a story. The reader doesn\u2019t feel engaged by the index-card approach (it feels like work), but they do feel engaged by story (it\u2019s why they\u2019re reading.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The third trick, I think, is that you can do much less than you think. It\u2019s easy to think that you need to do it all: How tall is our pretty Charlie? What\u2019s her eye colour? What do her mum and dad do for a living? Can she ride? (I bet she can ride.) Was she academically strong? Is she lazy? Does she love kids?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The more facts you shove at the reader, the more the reader is likely to resist.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And \u2013 it doesn\u2019t matter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Your mantra can be simply this: tell the reader what\u2019s necessary for the story. Not more, not less.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That way, you\u2019re not asking the reader to keep track of data that they don\u2019t need. You\u2019re giving them only what they do need, when they need it, in a way that slots logically into your story. Right at the end of the PSes, I\u2019ve put a chunk of text from early in a novel \u2013 a group of five people going out to dinner.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What\u2019s interesting to me, reading that chunk back in the light of this email, is how brusque I am. Two of my five characters aren\u2019t relevant longer term, so I essentially discard them. I tell the reader next to nothing about them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The other three do have longer term relevance, but even here I present virtually no character-data unless and until it becomes relevant to the moment in question. So one of the characters \u2013 David \u2018Buzz\u2019 Brydon \u2013 is a fit, intelligent, capable, courageous police officer. He\u2019s not introduced like that, until it becomes relevant. Then, when the story needs him to run, Fiona says simply, \u201cBuzz, who\u2019s superfit \u2026\u201d That data slots so naturally into the story, that the reader just absorbs it with the story. There\u2019s no sense anywhere of an index-card being presented.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
With Buzz\u2019s colleague, Jon Breakell, it\u2019s the same thing to start with: appearances don\u2019t matter. Then Fiona asks him to stay with the two women and he \u201cpuffs out his not-very-mighty chest and indicates his willingness to protect the women from all perils and dangers of this night.\u201d That\u2019s still hardly a complete physical description, but you already have something about him that\u2019s memorable and presented in a way wholly congruent with the story-task at hand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Buzz and Jon Breakell start to take shape as the story takes shape. The reader\u2019s expected knowledge of those two keeps exact pace with the story itself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
You can do the same. Go slow. Stick with story. Do less than you think you ought to.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That\u2019s it from me. I\u2019m off to buy a coffee and have a swim.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Til soon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Harry<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n PS<\/strong>: Here\u2019s a chunk from a (not yet published) Fiona Griffiths novel. The chunk presents exactly the conundrum we\u2019ve been talking about: five characters to introduce early on. My comments below [In square brackets and italics<\/em>] show how I\u2019ve been thinking about things \u2026<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n I know this that a crime has taken place because a group of us have been out to dinner.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Buzz \u2013 Sergeant David Brydon \u2013 my first proper-proper boyfriend and the man to whom I was once engaged. [Boom. One piece of data here and it\u2019s a big one \u2013 hard to forget. But nothing about appearance or anything else. Just a single fact.<\/em>]<\/p>\n\n\n\n Penny Haskett, the blushing damsel who will, next summer, step into the ivory satin shoes that I vacated and trip fetchingly up the aisle to become the first Mrs Buzz. [Penny Haskett doesn\u2019t really feature in the novel, so I just offer the key bit of data \u2013 Buzz\u2019s fianc\u00e9e \u2013 and move on. I don\u2019t care if the reader forgets her name. I haven\u2019t bothered to do hair colour and all that, because it doesn\u2019t matter.]<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Also two fig-leaves: Jon Breakell, a colleague of mine in Major Crime, and Jade Harding, a friend of Penny\u2019s whom Jon is courting. Jon and Jade will make a good couple, I think, but they\u2019re here mostly because the whole me \/ Buzz \/ Penny triangle can still feel a bit weird at times, so we try to dilute the experience wherever possible. [Jade also has no longer-term story relevance, hence no real pretence at an introduction. Jon Breakell is a character who emerges again, but he isn\u2019t relevant in the story NOW, so there\u2019s no need to deliver data now.<\/em>]<\/p>\n\n\n\n Anyway. That\u2019s our fivesome. We\u2019ve been to a bar, then on to a pizza place.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Pizza. Puddings. The works. A nice enough evening, except that it\u2019s got to the point where everyone wants to go home.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So we troop up the Hayes, beneath a soft night sky and the first hints of oncoming rain. We\u2019re talking of nothing much, when Buzz\u2019s phone bleeps a text. He looks at the phone and says \u2018Crime report. Up here.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n His finger points us up the Hayes, where it forks off into Victoria Place. He starts walking faster. I can see he wants to run, except he doesn\u2019t want to abandon his Intended.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I say, \u2018Jon, can you stay with Penny and Jade? We\u2019ll meet you up by the castle.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n Jon nods. Puffs out his not-very-mighty chest and indicates his willingness to protect the women from all perils and dangers of this night. [As soon as Jon becomes relevant to the story, he starts to take shape. Fiona is characteristically colourful in the way she speaks about him, and we still don\u2019t know hair colour or family background or that kind of thing, but we start to feel Jon because we see and feel him in the setting of a story.<\/em>] Buzz and I jog, then outright run, up Victoria Place, then down Church Street.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Buzz, who\u2019s superfit, says, \u2018Double assault. Ambulance on the way. Uniforms present. Sounds nasty.\u2019 [Now we start to get more data about Buzz \u2013 he\u2019s fit, he\u2019s efficient in a police-y sort of way \u2013 but again, we only get data relevant to the situation.<\/em>]<\/p>\n\n\n\n I don\u2019t comment, just run. The truth is, if the scene is already being attended by police and ambulance services, our services aren\u2019t really required. Buzz isn\u2019t even a detective these days. He now runs a Data Intelligence Team which helps the force direct its resources to where they\u2019re most needed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But still. Buzz is the kind of man whose boots run towards disasters, not away from them. My own, more elegant, boots share that same basic mentality. [More data in these two paras. Again, directly relevant to the matter at hand.<\/em>]<\/p>\n\n\n\n Victoria Place.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Church Street.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The NCP car park on Quay Street looms into view.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Two ambulances there, lights lazily flashing. Patrol cars too. Uniforms taping off the street. [That\u2019s it. Only a few hundred words, but we already have a loose sense of the emerging protagonists and \u2013 because the two spare women have already been discarded \u2013 we\u2019ve also been effectively told who it\u2019s safe to forget about. Very simple. And I bet you remember who\u2019s who.<\/em>]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I\u2019m reading a book at the moment that came recommended, a psychological thriller about a small, close group of friends. I\u2019ve started the book. I\u2019m seventy pages in. I already know I won\u2019t finish it. The problem, a terribly common one, is that I haven\u2019t bonded with the characters. They don\u2019t feel like real people.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":32,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[29292],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-27618","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-harrys-friday-email"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n