Here, from the Description section of my book, Flogging the Quill, Crafting a Novel that Sells. is the second chapter, “Inhabit characters to deliver their experience”
When an author story-tells well, a reader comes to inhabit a character, seeing and feeling as the character does—identifying with him. This is a good thing because if a reader cares about what happens to a character, she is compelled to read more (as long as interesting things happen, of course).
I’m a “pantser”—a writer who creates by the seat of his pants with no outline, as opposed to “architects” who plan ahead with an outline. I’m not one for creating character profiles that list everything from religion to shoe size. For me to generate narrative that draws a reader into a character, I shoehorn myself into a character’s head to play the scene from there, to truly “see” so actions and reactions correspond to that reality. I recently applied this technique to introduce a new character and setting.
Going into that scene, all I knew was plot material: the character’s name and his role as an antagonist. I knew that he was inside a vehicle in which he traveled and lived. I knew the outside of the vehicle was wooden, and that he was in a forest preserve outside of Chicago in wintertime. I didn’t even know what kind of vehicle he was in. That was about it.
When I inserted myself into my character’s head and looked around, the first thing I discovered was that the room he was in was paneled with oak, and that Oriental rugs covered the floor. Why? Because that’s the way this character would want his living space—rich and opulent. As I looked more closely, I saw that the oak paneling bore carved scenes from the history of his people. And that led me to how to discover and describe the setting and character in ways that helped the reader feel something.
You’ve seen part of the following scene before in the discussion of caring about characters. Look at it this time for the environment he’s in—it’s the result of stepping inside that character’s head and letting my subconscious deliver the details of his experience.
The percussive whup-whup-whup of a helicopter drew Drago to a porthole in his galleon’s quarterdeck cabin. In the forest clearing where his ship and two others of his clan rested, a half-dozen clan children, teens to toddlers, built a snowman. The tall curved hulls of the sixteenth-century Spanish vessels, all grace when they sailed through the air, now seemed awkward, supports angling out like spider legs to hold them upright. The daylight was dim under the gray January sky, but that didn’t seem to matter to the children.
The helicopter grew closer and smothered their giggles. The galleons vanished behind glaméres of snow-clad forest, the illusions broadcast by alert sentries.
All save one of the children disappeared as well, disguised as young trees. Little Alexandra, her skills not yet awakened, burst into tears. Drago swung the porthole open to help her with a concealing glamére, but then a sapling scooped up the child. In the flicker of a thought, a fat squirrel appeared in her place. Satisfied, he closed the port against the chill.
The helicopter sound faded, the ships and children blinked back into view, and a snowball fight developed. Intrusions by lessi—and the danger they brought—were normal to clan children, but for Drago they were a long-endured infestation that he would soon eliminate.
He’d rather be basking in Louisiana sunshine with the rest of his clan, not skulking in a forest preserve on the outskirts of Chicago. But his research into recombinant DNA demanded top university libraries close to a good hiding place, and it had been worth it. He was near to ending the murder and destruction ordinary humankind visited upon the world, to a final solution for the lessi blight. He felt it. Perhaps that day, yes!
And then he would be revenged for the death of Graeme, his son gone forever, cut down in the prime of manhood by a lessi.
Drago shivered and gathered enough lledri, the living energy radiated by all things alive, to create a blanket of energy that hugged his skin and repelled the cold. Warm light from kerosene lamps gave the impression of comfort, but the cabin was unpleasantly chilly despite oaken wall panels and woolen Oriental rugs insulating the hardwood floor. The pot-bellied woodstove in the corner tempted him, but a column of smoke couldn’t be hidden, and the danger of discovery was too great that close to a lessi city acrawl with people like maggots in a carcass.
He tested the cold coming off a wall panel with a fingertip, and then lingered to trace the carving there, a scene of his ancestor Merlin deep in conversation with King Arthur. The artist had portrayed Merlin as tall and lean, with a handsome beard that reached his chest. Drago wished he looked like the carving instead of the balding, plump appearance he associated with a ruddy-cheeked butcher in a small-town grocery store. He suspected that the real Merlin looked much like he did, and the majesty portrayed on the panel was no more than imagination at work.
None of this detail existed before I started to write the scene from within the character’s head. This character became very human to me, with strong desires and a wistful wish that he still had his hair. (I hadn’t really understood that he was bald.) This is another example of experiential description that characterizes as well as depicts.
I believe that, from this point on, the reader will want to know more about what happens to Drago even though he comes to do nasty things. A tough task, but I think it’s possible if I can get the reader to inhabit Drago and view the world as he does.
In contrast, when reading The DaVinci Code I never felt a thing for any of the characters. I recall a lot of telling rather than dramatization, and they never became less than distant to me. For me, his characters were wooden pawns in a plot, not movers and shakers of their own lives. I never inhabited them, and I never cared. But I loved the background ideas and information.
Inhabit your characters so I can too.
For what it’s worth
Ray