CHARACTER
For broadest popularity possibly the prime single requisite in
fiction is action plot, but, if so, character drawing is at least a
close second. Human nature's interest in human nature is undying and
intense. By the tests of the somewhat indefinite thing we call
literature, character probably ranks first. Action, on the other
hand, seems the more primitive and the more fundamental; early man
undoubtedly acted first and thought later; when he learned to analyze
his fellows it was for purposes of action.
_An Experiment_.--It is interesting to look back over the centuries
and consider the stories that have had sufficient hold to endure.
Which do you remember first and the most distinctly, "Sherlock
Holmes," "Mulvaney," "Richard Feveril," "Amyas Leigh," "John Silver,"
"Becky Sharpe," "Old {171} Scrooge," "Quasimodo," "Don Quixote,"
"Falstaff," "Hamlet," "Lady Macbeth," "Faust," etc., or the plots and
action in which they were concerned? "Arthur," "Tristan," "Roland,"
"Siegfried," "Finn McCool," etc., or their adventures? "Aeneas,"
"Hector," "Ulysses," etc., or what they did?
I have made no laboratory tests on other people, so can risk no
conclusions from this test beyond venturing that, as the race grew
older and its literature developed, character interest tended to take
first place over the more primitive action appeal. Make your own
tests, allowing for the differences between stories of the last few
centuries and those of long ago. After trying out yourself, try out
as many other people as you can. If you do, you'll get valuable
knowledge--and understanding--not likely to be found in books.
You'll get not only some useful fundamental ideas on the values and
relative values of plot and character, but possibly, by contrast with
others, a sound idea as to whether your real bent is for plot or for
character, and, best of all, you will have done something toward
forming or strengthening {172} the laboratory habit of examining
facts instead of swallowing at theories, and the habit of thinking
for yourself instead of using the weakening crutch of accepting other
people's theories that they in turn probably accepted from other
people _ad infinitum_.
In any case character drawing--human nature--is one of the two most
important elements in fiction. Yet the lack of it marks the majority
of submitted manuscripts. In many of these cases it is an utter,
total, complete, absolute lack, unless you count the crude class
distinction between hero and villain. Characters are merely proper
names, lucky if there is even an individualized or slightly
individualized physical body to cling to, and twice lucky if said
body has clothes or habits of its own. You can lift them out of one
story and substitute them in another with no damage to them or to
either story and with decided profit in the case of the first. It is
pitiful--and maddening.
The tragedy of it is that it can easily be remedied by any writer of
average human intelligence. All he needs for comparatively decent
characterization is a certain very simple recipe.
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_A Recipe_.--I don't know whose recipe it is, having heard it years
ago and forgotten his name, though I think its accredited father
dates back a century or so, but he should be crowned in honor and the
use of his recipe made compulsory by law. Apparently not one writer
in ten thousand ever even heard of it.
You can dig out that recipe for yourself by the laboratory method
advocated above, if you will trace English literature back toward its
beginnings. And if I give you a broad hint by suggesting a bit of
thoughtful, practical consideration of the morality plays, you should
have no trouble at all.
There it is, simple, elemental, effective--_assign to each person in
your story one single trait of character and make him show it by
actions, words, thoughts._
Carry it into as much detail as possible. If I remember aright, the
recipe's reputed father took as example a character whose one trait
was cruelty and said that if he were made to walk in a garden he must
be made to knock off the heads of flowers with his cane as he passed.
That's as far as the recipe goes, so far as {174} I remember, but try
a second elementary step--show the reaction of this single
predominant trait upon the other persons in the story, in what they
say to him, do to him, think of him, always, of course, in the light
of their own single traits.
Third step: Assign one or more persons a second trait, a minor trait,
and proceed as before.
Try it, if you are not beyond the need of fundamental suggestions as
to characterization. You will not only reap a rich harvest of
concrete results but will also be getting a most excellent training.
Only a few days ago I was told of a case in which it has had a
thorough test. I've never read anything by the author in question,
but know that he turns out a consistent and steady flow of books
whose sales are enormous though treated with condescension by critics
of literature. The report is that in the actual writing of his
stories he does not even give names to his characters but uses the
name of the predominant traits he assigns to them--Cruelty, Honesty,
Vanity, and so on. When the story is finished he, or perhaps his
secretary, goes through the {175} manuscript, strikes out these names
of traits and gives each character whatever name meets general
requirements. _Voilà_! Personally, I'd give a good deal to know
what would happen to his sales if he abandoned this method and the
kind of characterization it produces--to know, rather, whether he
would ever have had enormous sales if he had not used this recipe.
Just using the morality plays--and _Pilgrim's Progress_--as a sound
foundation. Maybe it's funny, but maybe you could profit by it
yourself. Heaven knows that plenty of writers could!
_Tags_.--If I could, I'd hang over almost every writer's desk a large
card bearing in very black letters these words:
"Remember that yours is not the only story in the world and that it
has to compete for the reader's attention with countless other
stories. Your interest in it is particularized and personal; his is
not. Also, you already know everything in the story; he does not.
You may have failed to put on paper part of what you know; in that
case he will never know it.
"Remember that your reader has met many {176} people in real life,
forgotten all about most of them, including their names, and that in
the great number of stories he has read he has met a far greater
number of fictitious people who, along with their names, fail in even
greater proportion than have the real people to register upon his
attention, interest and memory. You are merely adding a few more to
his hundreds of thousands. The competition is heavy. You can make
no headway against it if your story-persons are only names, almost
none if they are only mildly individualized and characterized, little
enough even, if they are drawn fairly strongly.
"Remember, too, that when you introduce him to more than two or three
new people they have to compete, also, among themselves--that he is
likely to have difficulty even in straightening them out in his mind
and connecting the right name with each character. If you wish your
people to get and hold his attention and to have any place in his
memory, you must strive with all your might to _mark_ each character,
to individualize each character, by every means within your reach.
If you have not a natural gift {177} for character drawing, use
elementary methods."
The particular elementary, and very effective, method I have in mind
is to hang on to each character one or more of what in the writing of
plays are called, I believe, tags. It can be called, if you like,
advertising your characters. Most of them need it. Or might be
likened to the use of motifs in opera. Or you might find in it even
an approximation to the conditions of real life.
Put a strongly individualized label on each of your characters and
make the readers keep looking at it. This character continually
introduces his speeches with "Well now"; that one is always nervously
hitching up his trousers at the knees; John Jones is so interested in
golf that he is perpetually dragging it into conversation; Myrtle is
always tittering; Brown is conspicuously careful of his personal
appearance, while his brother George wears anything that comes handy
and Sister Isabel has almost a monomania for red; Judson habitually
looks into the eyes of people with an intent gaze that is hard to
meet; Henry in appearance and manner suggests a sheep; the peculiar
blackness of {178} Maude's eyes is her most marked and impressive
feature.
Never let a character remain long on the stage without presenting his
tag. It individualizes more strongly than a name. It is a most
useful guide-post to the reader. It strongly reinforces
character-drawing and may even serve as a cheap substitute, a
substitute at any price being preferable to nothing. Also, it
becomes an _asset in itself_, an element of appeal that runs the
range from farce to tragedy and you can mix or alternate these or
other appeals with strong results. Its effect is cumulative. There
is for its intrinsic value a sound grounding in fundamental human
nature--a reader's unconscious pride and vanity in "detecting" it as
characteristic, in being able to forecast its coming, his interest
and consequent like or dislike for tags in real life, his comfort in
having mental tasks made easy.
Of course, if you've drawn real character for the persons in your
story, make their tags consistent with character--or, rarely, in
deliberate and evident contrast. Equally, of course, a tag, like any
other good thing, must be handled with judgment and not allowed to
run riot.
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_Results from Tags and High-Point Characterization_.--Study the
following fiction characters that have made a big and lasting "hit,"
so much so that they have been carried through a series of books:
"Sherlock Holmes," "Captain Kettle," "Don Q.," "Brigadier Gerard,"
"Tartarin," "D'Artagnan," "Athos," "Porthos," "Aramis," "Mulvaney,"
"Ortheris," "Learoyd," "Allen Quatermain," "Wallingford"; consider
also some characters of Dickens. Some of these are well-drawn and
well rounded out, but others reduce to the bare bones of the
"one-trait recipe" and the use of tags, really very elementary
creations. Yet all are made vivid and individualized by means of
tags and strongly emphasized traits of character. While the tags,
for the most part, are handled with at least a fair degree of skill,
the characterization in some cases, though of course not limited to a
single trait, is incomplete, very elementary and not very well done.
Yet all have gained a strong popular success, not just from the
stories in which they appear, but as characters.
It is clear from the above that while the "one-trait recipe" and the
use of tags do not necessarily spell literature they are by no {180}
means incompatible with it. They are merely first steps toward
really good character depiction. Their importance in any teaching of
fiction is due chiefly to the lamentable fact that most writers do
not take or even see them.
Even advanced writers can often profit from consideration of their
values. For example, in a certain successful series of novelettes
and novels told in the first person but centering on another
character, the narrator was almost entirely lacking in tags and
salient character traits and didn't even have a name, or a past, or a
body, or, often, clothes until well along in the series. He was
consistently drawn, so far as he went, but almost colorless and with
little grip on interest and memory, though having a prominent place
in the plot and not thus subordinated for the sake of relative values
and unity around the central character. The central character was
strongly drawn, tags and all, and the series as a whole had so many
other merits that the colorlessness of the fictitious narrator could
not wreck it, but its improvement was very marked when he was
developed and brought to his proper place in the lime-light by the
tags and salient traits needed in addition to the general filling in.
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_Characterization in General_.--I attempt no covering of the subject,
desiring only to bring out the points that the general in-flow of
manuscripts shows are, in practise, most in need of attention. There
are already hosts of books giving detailed instructions, theories,
examples, analyses and exercises. Some of them are useful and
valuable in many cases. In general they seem to me likely to be
dangerous, unless the student uses exceptional care, in that they are
likely to encourage a tendency toward mechanics instead of art,
artificiality instead of naturalness, strain and limitation instead
of freedom, and copying instead of art. I am aware that tags and the
"one-trait recipe" seem open to the same charge, but their saving
clause is that they can teach the writer how to develop himself
rather than how to turn out finished work by rule. Also the present
need of them in practise is appalling, and perhaps that need would
not be so great if writers had been trained by more naturalistic
methods.
The only sound and comprehensive rule for characterization is:
Study people, first as subjects, second as recipients of the
knowledge you have gained.
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