Characterization, Part 3

February 18, 2009

As both Erica and Lurker commented yesterday, you can have too many "tells" or use them too often. My reaction to their comments is that "quirks" or "character traits" do not make a character.

But why should I say it, when I can quote Lawrence Block? This is from his book, "Telling Lies For Fun & Profit: A Manual for Fiction Writers."

"It's not uncommon for writers to do a lot of labeling and mistake it for originality of characterization: 'I'm starting a detective series,' a hopeful writer said to me not long ago, 'and I think I've got something really original. My character never gets out of bed before noon, and he makes it a rule always to wear one piece of red clothing, and the only thing he ever drinks is white creme de menthe on the rocks. He has a pet rhesus monkey named Bitsy and a parrot named Sam. What do you think?'

"What I think is that the speaker has not a character but a collection of character tags. It might work to have a character with any or all of these labels in his garments.... It is not the quirks that make an enduring character but the essential personality which the quirks highlight."

Thanks, Larry!

When I was thinking about this post I kept coming back to the Lincoln Rhyme novels by Jeffery Deaver. If you're not familiar with this character, he's a brilliant forensic expert who is paralyzed from the neck down. (He was played by Denzel Washington in the film, "The Bone Collector.") 

The Lincoln Rhyme novels, to my mind, always runs the risk of being a novel about the injury instead of about Rhyme. Now don't get me wrong. I think Jeffery Deaver is a terrific writer. His strengths are plots and plot twists and I accept that the idea of putting Sherlock Holmes in a wheelchair unable to move anything but his head and little finger was a brilliant hook. It's all the other things that make Rhyme memorable, though, I think. His impatience, his sarcastic wit, how he responds to his own limitations with a combination of depression and anger. How, when necessary, he can have a lot of insights into other people--but most of the time he just doesn't give a damn.

So I would say Lincoln Rhyme is a great character... but I have reservations about him for reasons I can't quite put my finger on. Maybe you can help me with that.

Part of the reason, I suspect, is the hook is so strong. For a while there I used to say, "I've got an idea for a detective: she's a black, lesbian, quadriplegic attorney," thereby getting all sorts of "hooks" into the picture (This was sarcasm, okay?).

For those of you the right age, you might remember a series of TV detective shows from the 1970s. Excuse me if I get them wrong, but: "Mannix," I believe, was a blind detective. "McCloud" was the cowboy detective in New York City. Buddy Epsen played an aging detective, whose name I don't remember. McMillan and Wife, obviously, were a husband and wife team of detectives. Hart to Hart was also a husband and wife team of detectives, but they also had the advantage of being multi-millionaires.

Some of these worked, some of these didn't, but the "hooks" were obvious. Sometimes those hooks seemed to be, frankly, character tags. They never quite came to life for one reason or another. TV's still doing this, of course. "Monk" is a prime example, and if it weren't for the brilliance of Tony Shalhoub this character would be a bunch of tics and quirks, rather than a human being. (And sometimes he isn't, but I suspect that's the writers' fault). My response to "Monk" oddly enough, is to feel sorry for the character. He's trapped by his disease and he knows it. For a show that's ostensibly a comedy, it sure seems sad to me. (But funny).

Anyway, listen to what Lawrence Block said and make sure that your quirks and labels are more than that, that it's how or why they have these quirks and labels how they respond to them that makes a character interesting.

Oh, and one last thing. In the same chapter, Block says three things are necessary for memorable characters. 

They must be plausible.

They must be sympathetic.

They must be original.

Cheers,

Mark Terry