Pears, walnuts, blue cheese

We used to have a cookbook, the theme of which was that if you found three harmonising ingredients, you essentially had a meal.

So, if you just wanted a posh starter, you could put some pears, Roquefort and walnuts on a plate with a bit of dressing and, boom, a starter that you’d want to gobble up. Or you could add salad leaves and one or two other ingredients to bulk things out, and you’d have a substantial lunch.

The same idea just goes on working. Scallops, peas, spring onions. Yum. Pork, apples, potatoes. Or (and this one has to be made with home made Oxfordshire elderflower cordial) gooseberries, elderflower and absolutely anything creamy.

Now all this sounds like a distraction, except that I’ve wanted for a while to write something on tiny characters. Or micro scene descriptions. You know the kind of thing: you introduce a character who plays a part for a page or so, then vanishes from your book. You want that person to be lifelike and compelling for their brief appearance, but you have no great arc to play with, and you just don’t have much time or page-space either.

So:

Choose three or four simple ingredients. Lay them on the plate. Exit.

That – or something like it – is the formula. I realised this last night as I happened to pick up one of my Fiona Griffiths books. (And, by the way, re-reading your old stuff is always a good idea. You always learn something.) In that book – This Thing of Darkness – I came across this passage, which runs to about 200 words, or about two-thirds of a paperback page:

The boy – Lockwood’s son, I assume – takes us through to a big, light-filled room. Cream carpet, soft suede sofas. A painting, which might be the [$2 million] Rauschenberg, hangs over a stone fireplace.

A slim woman – cropped trousers, leopard-print shoes, loose green jumper – is talking on the phone. Holds a hand up to us, meaning wait. The boy vanishes. Jon and I hang around, looking at the Rauschenberg and try to see if we can see two million quid in it.

[…]

The woman finishes her call and approaches. ‘Hi. I’m Marianna. Thank you for coming out.’

There’s something disconnected between her words and the rest of her. As it happens, I had to push to get an appointment, so if anyone should be thanking anyone it should be us to her. But her handshake is limp, absents itself too early, and her gaze gropes in the space behind my shoulder for someone who isn’t there. I think she’d forgotten we were coming.

I introduce Jon and myself, and conclude, ‘Would you prefer us to call you Mrs Lockwood? Or Marianna?’

Again, that absent dart of the eyes, then, ‘Oh Marianna’s fine. Look, someone should have told you. You didn’t need to come out again about the pictures. They’re here. We got them back.’

 There’s a bit more yadda yadda before the scene ends, but nothing that especially adds to the characterisation of Marianna Lockwood. Yet she seems alive, no? This doesn’t seem a character without life or personality – but there’s almost nothing there. The actual level of authorial input there is about as low as you can get.

So, if you agree that this little micro-scene basically works, let’s try to figure out what’s going on.

First ingredient, the room.

This is Lockwood’s home, so the room is a reflection of her. It’s large. It’s full of light. It’s got suede sofas. (Q: who the hell has suede sofas? A: anyone without young kids and who values the aesthetic over the practical.) It’s got a stone fireplace with, yes, an incredibly expensive picture hanging above it.

Second ingredient, Lockwood’s appearance.

Not much here, but we need something. She’s slim. She’s casually dressed (trousers and a jumper), but also with some style – the shoes are a bit fancy, the trousers are cropped. Some thought has gone into this ensemble.

Third ingredient, her politeness.

Two junior cops have just turned up at this woman’s home. She doesn’t normally deal with those kind of intrusions, but she thanks them for coming. She says it’s OK for them to call her Marianna. She’s reasonably polite in the way she says the cops aren’t actually needed here.

Fourth ingredient, the master / servant relationship.

The element that gives this little scene its crackle is something else, however. Pears and walnuts go nicely together, but it’s the blue cheese that turns a nice pairing into a killer combination.

So far, we have a woman who’s rich, polite, and aesthetically aware. But she’s not exactly polite, is she? In fact, she has a surface politeness which conceals a rich woman’s total lack of interest in ordinary folk.

So when Fiona and Jon enter the room, Marianna’s on the phone. She doesn’t cover the mouthpiece and whisper ‘Sorry, two minutes.’ She doesn’t make a wrinkly, smiley apology face. She just raises a hand to mean, ‘Wait.’ That’s an order, not a request.

Then when she does say ‘Thank you for coming’ she gets her words wrong. As Fiona observes, it’s not really a situation that calls for thank you. The politeness is the politeness of an internet chatbot – on autopilot, not actually reading the situation

And then: there’s that disconnection between the words and the rest of her. Her handshake isn’t real and vanishes too fast. Her eyes are elsewhere. Her thoughts clearly are too.

In short: she doesn’t actually give a damn about these people or their concerns at all. She doesn’t want a conflict, hence the politeness, but she doesn’t actually engage even once. She doesn’t ask them to wait, she commands them. She says thank you, but doesn’t mean it. She shakes hands, but is thinking of other things.

***

I think that basic strategy works again and again for these minor characters, these minor pieces of scene description and the like. If you find the right ingredients, you have all you need.

In terms of finding those ingredients, I think you almost always need the basics.

If we’re in a new location (Marianna’s living room), you need some basic description of what that’s like. Big, light-filled, fancy sofas – done.

If we meet a new person (Marianna), we need some basic description of what she looks like. Slim, casual, stylish – done.

And then I think you need to find the point of piquancy – the blue cheese in your salad. Here, the piquancy comes from that polite / not-polite clash.

You don’t have to throw your piquant elements in the reader’s face. You’ll notice that our little micro-scene has nothing along the lines of “Wait there!” She commanded, an icy contempt carved into her classical features. That kind of writing never ever helps anything – except agents looking to add to their daily rejections count.

Just do the basics. Add your point of piquancy. And you’re done. You have something clean, memorable – and short. Biff, baff, boff.