Free Stein on Writing by Sol Stein

Suppose we add just one word, a second name of someone you may remember, a popular singer and film star. With the addition of a second name, does your reaction to the sentence change?
     
    Harry Belafonte jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge.
     
    Suddenly the sentence means something. If you remember the singer Harry Belafonte, you can visualize the character. Why did he jump? With no characterization beyond a name, because it’s someone we know about, we begin to care. Of course this example has nothing to do with the real Harry Belafonte, whose name we have borrowed for this demonstration.
    One of the devices used by successful thriller writers is to give a small role to a real person, usually a high officeholder. That’s what Jack Higgins did in his breakthrough novel, The Eagle Has Landed, in which Winston Churchill makes a cameo appearance. Writers who use this technique do not attempt to characterize famous individuals in depth. A trace to jog memory is enough. Watch what happens in the following:
     
    Harry Truman was not a man to be governed by rules. When he was President, he used to take long walks each morning to destinations of his own choosing, trailed by Secret Service agents who sometimes had trouble keeping up with him. What few people know is that once, when visiting New York, Harry Truman decided to stroll across the Brooklyn Bridge against the advice of his Secret Service escort—he never listened to them. Halfway across Truman saw another early-morning walker, an old man wearing a fedora pulled down almost to his eyes, trying to hoist himself up onto the railing. Truman, the most universally admired President of the last half century, realized instantly that the old man could have no other purpose than to jump.
     
    We get interested in the action of a man about to jump off a bridge because we know the observer. What will Harry Truman do? The engine of the story has turned on. Our curiosity is involved. We want to know more.
    When neighbors report gossip to us about people we know, we can be titillated or sometimes even moved. A writer cannot depend on “sometimes.” His characterization must elicit emotion from a wide variety of readers without fail. How does he do it? He learns the art of characterization, adding details and depth until he has created a character whom we may know better than all but our closest friends.
    Let’s take it one step at a time. How does a writer characterize in simple ways?
    What we do in life is lazy. We say the first thing that comes into our heads. Think of a ticket taker at a movie house. He sees people passing in a stream. He can only make quick generalizations. That man is tall, that woman is skinny. How does a writer deal with similar facts?
     
    Frank is so tall, he entered the room as if he expected the lintel to hit him, conveying the image of a man with a perpetually stiff neck.
     
    The man is not just tall, he is being characterized through an action.
    What about the woman who was described as skinny? How does a writer deal with that fact?
     
    She always stood sideways so people could see how thin she was.
     
    Again, the writer is not just describing; he is characterizing by an action. We individualize by seeing characters doing things and saying things, not by the author telling us about them. Don’t ever stop your story to characterize. Avoid telling the reader what your character is like. Let the reader see your characters talking and doing things.
    Let’s look at some examples of characterization by novelist Nanci Kincaid, in her talented first novel Crossing Blood:
     
    Once we looked in Patricia’s window and saw her in her half-slip. ... First she curled her eyelashes, holding a mirror in her hand. Then, out of the blue, she picked up a lipstick, smeared it on, and kissed the mirror. Kissed it. She made little kiss marks and looked them over real close, studying them. She was dead serious about it. Jimmy got mad and made us get down off the trash cans