Character Shopping

Kate Flora: From time to time, I nudge myself away from my keyboard and go out character shopping. Sometimes I character shop on vacation. Sometimes at the mile 25 rest stop on the Maine turnpike. Last summer, Maureen Milliken and I set up our table of books at the Brunswick, Maine Art Walk, and it was a wonderful place to do some shopping. Yes, we were there to sell our books. But with the flow of people coming past, and the many who stopped to chat and sometimes buy books, we were offered a rich bounty of diverse characters to file away for use in a future book. The tattoos alone were worth the price of admission.

Being observant is part of a writer’s job. Back when I used to teach writing, I used to make my students carry notebooks or index cards, and each week they were required to come into class and share something they’d observed. One student came into class the second week empty handed and reported that she’d seen noting of note. A few follow up questions revealed that she had traveled on the subway day after day and not seen anything interesting. Further questioning revealed that she had always been plugged into a device. I told her to take out the earbuds and look around. The next week, she had something to share.

There is so much to observe if we’re willing. The way people dress. How they carry themselves. Hairstyles. Gait. Unusual accessories. What is written on a sweatshirt or tee shirt? Footwear–Sneakers, boots, flipflops or something else? If I step back and watch, I can gather many useful traits simply from observing how people share (or don’t share) the space in the Trader Joe’s produce section. There’s the man who parks his cart and himself blocking a five or six foot span of produce and then makes a phone call to someone checking on what he ought to buy. There’s the sour-faced woman who systematically picks up and examines every bag of carrots. There’s the mom and small child who consider which cheese will be the perfect snack. One of my writing prompts for students was for them to notice an unusual accessory or item of clothing and use it as the jumping off point for creating a character. Another was the girl in the pink skirt (which I will paste in below) using how different people reacted to that pink skirt.

Voice is also something to observe. Tone. Phrasing. Word choice. Accents. Subject matter.

The Maine Mulch Murder by A. Carman Clark

I always think back to my mother’s comment. She’d given the draft of The Maine Mulch Murder to readers, and one of them had gotten back to her with this: Mrs. Clark, I don’t believe everyone in your imagined small Maine town sounds like a seventh grade English teacher. I try to keep that in mind when I’m introducing new characters. Although I used to give my students a “License to be Nosy,” not everyone is comfortable with that. Our mothers were clear about minding our own business. One tip that I discovered for students interested in listening in on conversations without seeming nosy was to linger in a dressing room at Marshalls or T.J. Max. It’s a fabulous place for collecting dialogue. If you’re looking for how differing groups of men speak, Dunkin’ Donuts around 10:30 or 11 when they come in for a coffee break can be great. Just get your own coffee, sit at a table, and snoop.

One of my students years ago spoke of liking to go around her neighborhood observing lights coming on as people returned from work and settled into their homes. She called it “Life Shopping.”

Do you character shop? Life shop? How do you go about it?

Here’s the pink skirt exercise:

For the next class, you will write three separate paragraphs viewing the same event from the point of view of three very different characters, seeing the action through their eyes.  The purpose of this assignment is to make you focus on “voice” in your writing, on how to convey the attitude, vocabulary, world view, etc. of the character who is describing the scene, using your point of view work and your observational vocabulary.

Here is the event:  A woman in a pink skirt, carrying several shopping bags, walks through a mall parking lot to her car.  She puts the packages into the car, gets in, and then, although another driver is waiting for the space, she sits there, not starting the car and driving away.

Think about who else might be in the mall parking lot. In another car.  Walking behind her. Waiting for the space. Then think about how who they are stimulates and colors their reactions to this woman.