Congratulations to all you NaNoWriMo writers! Whether you made your word count or not, you worked hard, and I\u2019m guessing you have lots of new material to fuel your writing for the year. Kudos to you!<\/p>\n
If you\u2019re going to be in the vicinity of Tarrytown, New York, this Saturday, I\u2019m signing. Check out the details on my website. If you come, I\u2019ll just be signing, not reading or speaking, but I expect to have plenty of time to chat. If you come, please let me know you read about the event on the blog.<\/p>\n
On July 29th, 2011, Emma wrote, This comment is really just food for thought, but I wondered what you and the bloggers would think. You see, my brothers were watching a Myth Busters episode called “Mission Impossible Mask” where Jamie and the other guy were trying to use a mask to fool people into believing that they were each other. However, their mannerisms gave them away so they had to have an actor teach them how to behave like one another. More recently I watched an episode of “Gilligan’s Island” where everyone got mind-swapped, and it was hilarious because they were all acting like each other and you could clearly tell who had been swapped with whom. All of that got me thinking: is there any way to make our characters and their mannerisms that recognizable? I tried a writing exercise just for fun where my MCs got mind swapped, and it’s really hard because you can’t actually see them. Do you think that’s a bad thing?<\/i><\/p>\n
That\u2019s a wonderful prompt, which I\u2019ll hold for the end.<\/p>\n
Everyone has mannerisms, some people more than others, some mannerisms more pronounced than others; everyone can be impersonated. Each way of speaking, each physical presentation, is unique. The bits that we do, our personal shtick, are myriad, so many and so slight that they\u2019re hard to write and catch them all but obvious to see and hear. Whenever I see myself in a taped interview I\u2019m amazed. I move around so much, like a puppet. I tilt and bob my head; my voice is breathy, which I never hear as I\u2019m speaking. Aaa!<\/p>\n
Here\u2019s a prompt early in the post. List every element of physical description you can think of. Just a list. Don\u2019t do anything with it. Here are a few items to start you off:<\/p>\n
round shouldered
bow-legged
soft voice
baby talk
a lot of hand gestures
small eyes<\/p>\n
See if you can get a page or two in your list, a few words to a line. Add to the list whenever you think of something or observe something unusual. Watch people over the next few days with your list in mind. Notice that I included in my starter list both characteristics that have nothing to do with the personality inside the body, like small eyes, and characteristics that are mutable, that would change in a mind swap, like the hand gestures. Include both kinds of characteristics in your list, which can become a resource for you whenever you write physical description.<\/p>\n
I was on the New York City subway yesterday. Sitting across the train car from me was a woman who managed to look up at me beseechingly even though our eyes were at a level. How did she do that? She said nothing; she wasn\u2019t crying. But I got a sense of sadness and need. Was it the blue eye shadow, the bags under her eyes? I don\u2019t know. I do know that she sat pigeon-toed, and the turned-in toes added to the woe somehow. The eyes and the toes would go on my list.<\/p>\n
Here\u2019s another prompt: Take a look at a story you\u2019re working on. Find the spot where you introduced a character. If the physical description is solid, terrific. But if it\u2019s a little vague, drop in something from your list.<\/p>\n
Mannerisms are particularly useful because they reveal character as well as help the reader see the physical person. But we have to watch out and not succumb to stereotype. A slouch, for example, can mean a bunch of things. May mean Nathan feels too tall. Or his father always told him to stand straight, so, rebellious by nature, he trained himself to slouch. Or he admires an actor who slouches. You try it (another prompt): List three possible psychological explanations for Nadine\u2019s almost inaudible speech.<\/p>\n
Sometimes it can feel awkward to introduce physical qualities and we have to plan how to bring in the information. We can make Norman, the gesturer, do something, as in, He gestured so wildly he knocked over a Ming dynasty vase valued at $300,000. Or Nancy can say to him, \u201cAre you swatting a fly?\u201d Or Ned can think, Norman uses his hands a lot as if his words need extra help. These are the three ways I can come up with for inserting physical information: action, dialogue, and thoughts.<\/p>\n
The POV character is a special case. Nellie, the narrator, can easily show other characters\u2019 looks in her thoughts. She can also think about her own appearance and mannerisms, but she has to have a reason or she may seem vain or self-involved or self-critical – which, of course, she can certainly be. But if not, she needs an excuse. Maybe she\u2019s about to meet new people, and she\u2019s preparing herself by imagining how they\u2019re going to view her. A little self-involved, but it\u2019s a special occasion. And you still have action and dialogue. Nancy can make the fly-swatting crack to her. Nellie can knock over the Ming vase.<\/p>\n
But we may not want to give Nellie a lot of odd characteristics or the reader may have trouble identifying. We may want her to be a blankish slate, so the reader can slip inside. If she keeps licking her lips, if she shrugs every few minutes, if she starts almost every sentence with, \u201cSorry, but,\u201d the reader may find her unappealing. I keep saying \u201cmay\u201d because you may<\/i> want such a character, and some of the most endearing main characters in literature are odd. So if you want to, go for it.<\/p>\n
Once we introduce a mannerism we don\u2019t want to keep bringing it up. An occasional, very occasional, reminder is plenty or the reader will get irritated. And that\u2019s what makes the mind swap harder for a writer than for an actor. When we\u2019re watching a movie, the character\u2019s presentation is always before us. He\u2019s always slouching, always gesticulating, always speaking softly. Those lucky actors!<\/p>\n
So now for the mind swap.<\/p>\n
\u2219 Pick two characters in the story you\u2019re working on and write a mind swap scene. Or pick three and make it a round-robin swap.<\/p>\n
\u2219 Swap the villain from one of your stories with the villain from another and rewrite the climax. Swap the villain in one story with the hero in another.<\/p>\n
\u2219 Invent new characters for your mind swap. Think of characters who wouldn\u2019t be happy to be inside each other\u2019s selves. For example, someone who\u2019s terrified of heights wouldn\u2019t do well in the body of a sky diver. You can make the switch happen right before a jump. The sky diver might be bored to death in the body of a writer.<\/p>\n
\u2219 Swap the minds of two characters from books you love. For me, I\u2019d switch Jane Eyre and Elizabeth Bennett from Pride and Prejudice<\/i>. Then, in a separate effort, with Jane and Elizabeth back in their proper bodies, I might try exchanging Rochester and Darcy. The possibilities are endless: put Hamlet in Macbeth\u2019s place; trade Sherlock Holmes and Peter Pan; Anne of Anne of Green Gables<\/i> with Jo of Little Women<\/i>. Or whatever you like.<\/p>\n
Have fun, and save what you write!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Congratulations to all you NaNoWriMo writers! Whether you made your word count or not, you worked hard, and I\u2019m guessing you have lots of new material to fuel your writing for the year. Kudos to you! If you\u2019re going to be in the vicinity of Tarrytown, New York, this Saturday, I\u2019m signing. Check out the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[150,151,124],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=141"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":419,"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141\/revisions\/419"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=141"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=141"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=141"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}