Writer Unboxed

One of the best sources of fresh, original, authentic character development comes from the seas of real life.

As a young journalism student, one of my favorite tasks was to be assigned a feature on a professor or a student with an intriguing history or pursuit. I loved interviewing them, taking notes on whatever details seemed most intriguing. What did they have on their desks? What did that little repetitive circle of the arm have to say about them? What details set this person apart from all others, what made her unique? I wasn’t particularly interested in making anyone uncomfortable or uncovering some awful thing. I wanted to know who they were and what story they would tell me.

I learned that nearly everyone has a story they want to tell, some story that defines who they are, some moment they carry around day after day, year after year. Even the worst criminals have some soft moment, a time before they became hardened to the pain of others. Even the most saintly of church ladies have some moment of shame they cannot shake.

It’s fascinating.

I didn’t spend long in the world of journalism, but my habit of collecting stories, gestures, clothing, histories, has continued apace. My partner learned early that if I am exhausted, one way to perk me up is to take me into a new environment where there might be stories for me to harvest. The old man at the drugstore in Albuquerque, the Frenchman with thickly furred, burly arms who drove us (much too fast!) around Normandy and took me to task for drinking coffee with my meal. My partner calls my methods interrogation, but I prefer to think of myself as a student of human behavior.

The point is, all of the material goes into a giant closet in my imagination, a heady cache of fresh, unique details harvested right out of everyday life, ready for the telling later. Not all at once, of course. Characters are assembled like weavings, voice from here, a habit from there, gestures from somewhere else. I might use the Frenchman’s arms and smoking and bluster to fashion a father in a small Colorado town. I have sometimes lifted a person nearly whole cloth from life because it’s irresistible–the dashingly handsome Iranian who ran the local quick shop in my old neighborhood in Pueblo showed up in the Goddesses of Kitchen Avenue (a fact that pleased him mightily!).

More often, it’s a weaving of various things plucked out of that closet full of details. I remember one afternoon listening to my late mother-in-law, who was grieving her mother, telling the story of her childhood and how she met her husband. She was the daughter of a rich farmer in Jackson, Mississippi in the thirties. Her husband was an ambitious and charming day worker seeking work in the fields. He came to the door for water, and she was smitten from that day forward. That nugget of story made its way into the Goddesses of Kitchen Avenue, as the backstory of an older African American woman, Roberta, who is grieving her husband. Roberta was the name of my friend Sharon’s mother, who could pray the world blue, and I used some of her gestures and kindnesses for the character of Roberta. There was also a hefty helping of my grandmother in the character, a woman of the same generation, and then my own embroidery from who-knows-where. Voila! A character was born.

Begin by observing. Everything. Everyone. Fresh details are thick all around you. Get into the habit of carrying a notebook or a little camera, and become a devoted observer of human beings every where you go. At church, the grocery store, airport concourses, school functions. Notice the way people use their hands. The way they talk and flirt. Pay attention to the body language of the people in line ahead of you and notice what people wear and how. Strike up conversations, let them talk. At parties, find the odd duck and sit down with a glass of wine to find out what she might have to tell you. Did he grow up in Kansas? Rhode Island? What was that like? What did you do in the summertime evenings in that place?

It all lends authenticity. 

Notice, too, the people who are around you all the time. Family, friends, co-workers. My grandmother had a tooth she didn’t like when she was young, and for the rest of her life, when she laughed, she covered that part of her mouth. It lent coyness to her robust laughter, and in a character, adds vulnerability.

An exercise I offer my voice students is to write a character sketch about a family member. Do a timed writing of ten minutes or so about whoever you want to write about. Write about their habits and laughter and the way they ate and the ideas they expounded and the things they wore.

One of mine might be about my uncle, who was named Tex because the family was living in Santa Fe at the time and my grandmother offered the other two children the chance to name him. They were homesick for Texas before they finally migrated to Colorado, thus Tex. He was only seven years my senior, and as girls adore older brothers, I adored him, even though he teased me unmercifully in everyway he could think of. His toy soldiers, gray and blue, had nail polish blood painted on them, and he adored his dog, and he grew up to be beautiful and troubled and I had painful crushes all his long-haired hippie friends, a fact that influences my work to this day. He’s now a respectable husband and father of four, but he still has chopped motorcycles he loves.

Carolyn See says we should make a list of the ten most influential people in our lives and write about them. It’s often surprising who shows up on those lists. My uncle Tex, absolutely, but also a friendship I formed with a woman when we were both young mothers. Her family came to Southern Colorado from New Mexico and she was one of the middle children in a family of eighteen, and they all still lived close by, and gathered for parties and birthdays. My friendship with her and her mother and family has influenced my work tremendously. Who knows why? The girls in the basement just like what they like.

Give it a try. Start carrying notebooks and cameras. Don’t read in waiting rooms or airports, but pay attention instead. Write character sketches about people you know well and see if you can figure out who your ten most influential people are. Collect your own fresh harvest of human details and your work will be much enriched, I promise.

Have you ever used real people in your work? Can you see in the influence of certain people on your work? Do you have tricks of observation to share with us?

Barbara O'Neal has written a number of highly acclaimed novels, including 2010 RITA winner, The Lost Recipe for Happiness and The Secret of Everything. Her latest novel, How to Bake a Perfect Life, released in December 2010, and has been named a Target Club Pick. A complete backlist is available at http://www.barbarasamuel.com/bookshelf

Barbara O'Neal

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