Listening to Your Characters

 

Listening to Your Characters

 

When I’m stuck and have no idea where my work in progress isgoing, I take my character and decide on someone else they should talk to, andI lock them in a room and tell them to have at it. And, at least on good days,they do.

 

Dialogue is something I’ve always enjoyed writing. I wouldlove to be a poetic writer, someone whose descriptions are beautiful, who makesyou see the river or the mountain or the crumbling façade of the building. Ican struggle with it, and occasionally something comes through. But I feel muchmore comfortable with dialogue.

 

In my most recent book, a novel for adults called Off to Jointhe Circus, my characters range in age from almost 13 to 80, and I had to besure that the dialogue was age-appropriate. I needed to listen to the variouscharacters to hear what it was that they wanted to say—and how they wanted tosay it. Would a teenager really say that? Would an 80-year-old use thatparticular word?

 

Another manuscript I’m working on is set in 1952, so I hadto listen to my characters—and read various novels set in that time period—to figureout exactly how these characters would express themselves. When did thisparticular slang become popular? Was that word in use by the early ‘50s?

 

So as I continued to contemplate writing and listening, Idecided to look up the thoughts of some famous writers.

 

Ernest Hemingway had this to say: “When people talk listencompletely. Don’t be thinking what you’re going to say. Most people neverlisten. Nor do they observe. You should be able to go into a room and when youcome out know everything that you saw there and not only that. If that roomgave you any feeling you should know exactly what it was that gave you thatfeeling.”

 

James Baldwin had a different take: “Children have neverbeen very good at listening to their elders, but they have never failed toimitate them.”

 

Moving further afield, the actress and writer Emma Thompsonsaid this: “Any problem, big or small, within a family, always seems tostart with bad communication. Someone isn't listening.”

Which of course gets back to the heart of it. Someone isn’tlistening. Family problems result. And that’s what makes for good fiction.

 

--Deborah Kalb

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