Defining Characters

Over at Anti-Wife's blog, she discussed her characters the other day and got me thinking. Really thinking. Which is dangerous.

And my thought is . . . that especially when you are making a pitch or writing a synopsis, the quirks and traits you choose to reveal are very important. In a larger work, you have more room to explore your characters--but to me, that doesn't give you any more leeway on how precise you must be. You just have to sustain that preciseness for more pages.

Think about it. Just because you have 350 pages to tell your story doesn't mean you can get sloppy. Every word counts. Every trait. Every quirk. Every action.

And what I decided, thinking about it, is that I boil my characters down to these words, "The kind of person who . . . "

I'll explain.

I could say that a grandmother is cruel. One word. One adjective. Tells me nothing.

Or I could say, "The kind of woman who would slap her 2-year-old grandson for sticking his finger in the icing of a birthday cake."

Which is clearer?

I could say, "She volunteers in the community."

Or . . . "The kind of woman who runs the PTA and Junior League."

Or . . . "The kind of woman who, pregnant, piles her three kids in the car and drives to the 'hood to deliver food to a family in need, occasionally wondering if she will accidentally stumble on a drive-by shooting."

Two different picture emerge from those "types." I have nothing but admiration for the Junior League. Those women raise a LOT of money that helps a LOT of people. Someone who RUNS one of those organizations has to be organized. Maybe even anal-retentive. I am neither. But then my desk has not one clear speck of bare desk once again. It's pathetic. I volunteer in the community, but I don't do fundraising work. I leave that for the people who do that well. I hate asking people for money. My volunteering is the second. It's personal and often dirty and dangerous. And that's both insane . . . and who I am.

I could say, "He was loved."

Or I could say, "My godfather was so loved, and so remembered for taking his nieces and nephews to the bakery for jelly donuts, that one of them had a flower arrangement made to look like a jelly donut sent to the funeral home."

Two different pictures.

And when I say "type," it's not that I mean a stereotype. I just mean that there are ways to embody a character in a sentence. Something vivid.

I decided to pull a paragraph from a synopsis for something being considered right now:

Gina Palermo, forty, elegantly beautiful and perfectly clothed in Chanel suits, is the proverbial fish-out-of-water. Make thatYankees fan out of the Bronx. A brutal opponent in the courtroom, she was a high-priced New York divorce attorney—the kind who handled cases with settlements in the tens of millions of dollars for the uber-rich who shed wives and husbands like last season’s fashions.

Rather than "well-dressed" . . . Chanel tells you a certain look. Yet she owns a signed game ball from the 1964 Yankees . . . so she's diehard . . . if you are a New Yorker, then you know the love we have for our teams borders on obsession--and a woman in Chanel who loves the Yanks tells you something. "Divorce attorney" tells you one thing. But "the kind who handled . . ." is a whole 'nother league.

So . . . when every word counts, we have to choose our examples wisely. Even more so in the tricky synopsis.

Thoughts? Can you say ONE thing, one snapshot about your main character . . . "the type of person who . . . "

Peace,
E