Car windscreens and fallen magnolia petals

One of the bits of feedback I give most – and really, I’d want to give it almost all the time, on auto-repeat – is: stay close to character.

Sometimes that means simply reporting what a character thinks of something.

The coffee shop was white, vaguely seaside-y in its timber and flaking paint, over-priced and, Niamh thought, pretentious.

 That ‘Niamh thought’ simply plops the character’s view right into the description without feeling a tad out of place.

But character can and should sneak in anywhere.

The bickering couple moved away from their seat in the window, and the rain had left, and there was sunlight on the wet street, shining off car windscreens and fallen magnolia petals.

And, yes, in a way that’s just description: a matter of stating simple facts. Except why is Niamh observing these facts? There are other observations she could have made. In the same place at the same time, she might have chosen to observe:

The door to the toilets wasn’t properly closed and the sound and smells of plumbing eased through. Coffee here was four pounds a cup, and the most prominent aroma was pine-scented disinfectant.

One of these snippets suggests one mood. The second delivers quite another. And we all know that if we’re depressed, we see the world differently from if we’re not. Our views of people and situations are coloured by our own mental state.

It’s the same in books. If I’m describing sunlight on a wet street, I’m offering you something (however hard to put into words) about the character’s mental state. If I’m passing on facts about the price of coffee and toilet smells, then I’m suggesting something quite different.

But character can invade even more directly than this. Take this:

The coffee arrived. Each cup came on its own copper-trimmed wooden tray, with a small glass bottle of milk and an oat-biscuit about the size of a large button. The waitress, inevitably, paused to tell them about the Colombian estate from which the coffee had come.

That whole chunk is factual narrative, but always filtered through the observation of a particular character. The ‘size of a large button’, for example, tells us about the character’s range of reference. ‘Button’ is quite homely, quite domestic in nature. A ‘good-sized poker chip’ would tell us something different. A ‘heavy-duty washer, the sort you’d use in roofing’ would give us something else.

But look a little deeper. The little snippets I’ve created for this email are all voiced in the third person. We have an unnamed, impersonal narrator whose job is mostly just to describe facts: what happened, what Niamh said and did, what she thought and felt, and so on. The narrator knows as much as we choose for them to know. For all I know, in the next chapter, the narrator will be talking, not about Niamh, but a burly Polish roofer called Lech. But no matter who the narrator is talking about, he or she is basically impersonal. A being of no interest.

Look back at that oat-biscuit snippet. It says, “The waitress, inevitably, paused…” That word, ‘’inevitably’, belongs to Niamh, not the narrator. It’s her sarcastic comment about the café’s pretentiousness: the narrator doesn’t really have a view.

In effect, you can write third person, but your character should still infuse the entire text, with every observation, with every choice of word.

Now all that sounds as wholesome and good as an artisanal oat-biscuit. So why make a big deal of it?

Well, the reason is that plenty of text just feels like … words.

Here for example:

Before Sarah has time to find an excuse, they’re standing inside the dark entrance hall. She shudders. It’s as cold as the grave.

The man [an estate agent] fumbles on the wall beside the door and clicks the light on. A single bulb spreads a sickly glow around the room. Sarah takes in the parquet floor and wooden panelling and the smell: mould and cat pee. She can see the man properly now. Close up, he looks older than she’d first thought. Fine lines score his face and she wonders if his luxuriant dark hair is quite natural.

‘Do you have a place to sell yourself?’ he asks, his voice casual. ‘I take it you’re on the move?’

She focuses on his face, concentrating on keeping her eyes steady and her mouth from contorting. She tells herself she must try to appear normal, even if she feels far from it.

‘Yes, probably, quite soon,’ she says, her voice unnaturally bright.

He smiles, a professional smile, still probing. ‘Is it in the area?’ He shakes his umbrella and slips it into an oak stand beside the door.

Her fists clench involuntarily. She’s not going to tell this man that her life has imploded. That only a few hours ago she walked out on her husband with just three suitcases and a couple of tea chests to show for fifteen years of marriage. How can she talk about it to this stranger before Alex himself knows – even though she owes him nothing? Panic washes over her …

Now, look, that chunk is lifted from a book called The Orphan House by Ann Bennett, and it’s got lots of lovely reader reviews, and I haven’t read it, so maybe the book has depths that I can’t assess from this passage. Sorry, Ms Bennett.

But:

I do not love this writing. I do not love prose that works like this.

In this short passage, Sarah shudders. She concentrates on keeping her eyes steady and has to work to prevent her mouth from contorting. Her voice is unnaturally bright. Her fists clench, though she doesn’t ask them to. Panic washes over her. That’s a truly vast amount of shuddering, panicking and clenching, while at the same time keeping the voice bright and the eyes steady. It’s such a barrage of information, it’s not quite clear we can meaningfully assemble it, except in a very basic “oh, she’s feeling emotional and upset” way. I don’t even think the author has any more precise conception of her own. If she had, she’d have given it to us.

The factual observations give us nothing either.

The house is as cold as the grave, which might mean that the character has her mind filled with death and the end of everything … but is much more likely to reflect the unconsidered use of a tired old cliché.

An old, unheated house smells of mould (normal) and cat pee (not so much, unless the place is so derelict that there are ways for cats to enter the property.)

The light is sickly. But what does that mean? Normally, that would suggest a greenish light, but why would a house have bulbs any different from anyone else’s bulbs? The observation isn’t followed by anything, which makes me think that the word ‘sickly’ is used simply in order to convey a very general “this property doesn’t look all that great” message.

In short, we have a passage that is NOT invaded by character. The author doesn’t use the tools she has to deliver character via back-door routes, and she compensates with a whole barrage of shuddering and panicking.

The result feels both flat (because of the deadness in the observation) and over-coloured (because of the babbling, quaking character on the page.) That’s a bad combination.

My advice? Don’t write like that.

My further advice: Stay close to character. Always and everywhere.

You’ll like it if you do.

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FEEDBACK FRIDAY

Well, it’s clear what we need this week: 250 words from your text that is infused by character. We’re going to be looking especially for factual observation that conveys something about the character present. Extra bonuses if there are places where the character sneaks control from the narrator.

If you’re writing first person, then all of this is easier and more natural, but that also means the demands rise. Every word of your passage needs to belong to your character. We need to be smelling him or her in every line.

Please also give us the title of your book, and a line or two of introduction, so we can make sense of the scene.

When you’re ready, post your work here.

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That’s it from me. I am going to clench, shudder and panic my way over to a coffee pot and see if caffeine will help. It surely will.

Til soon.

Harry