By Dinty W. Moore
Any novelist with a modicum of craft knowledge or experience on the page understands the importance of bringing fictional characters to life, a necessary step so readers can imagine the invented person and see them moving through fictional space. Even non-writers, if they’ve read Dickens for instance, or Jhumpa Lahiri, have a passing understanding of the importance of vivid characterization.
But in my years of teaching, coaching, and working on developmental edits with hundreds of memoirists, it remains surprising to me how often nonfiction writers forget the crucial importance of character detail.
Despite my surprise, I do understand. To be honest, I often make the same mistake in my own early drafts. Writing about people in our lives who are real , who are alive or were alive (and are still living in our memory) can be tricky because these people—mothers, siblings, partners, old friends—the moment we think about them, spring fully into focus, breathing, walking, narrowing their eyes. These people we are drawn to write about are already full of nuance and intimate detail, in the memoirist’s mind.
But, of course, our readers have never met the people in our memoir. They haven’t a clue that our mother hid $20 bills under the dining room carpet, that our little brother ate peanut butter slathered on celery sticks, that this same brother, now a grown man with a family, still eats peanut butter that way. The fact that these details are so clear to us is the Achilles heel that makes it all too easy to forget.
As memoir writers, we know our characters so well that we too easily overlook the need to introduce them in all their complexity.
Compare the differences here:
My older sister lived in a dream world sometimes.
At fifteen, Susan would sit on the edge of her mattress, by her back bedroom window, staring out toward the maple tree full of birds. I could see her head bob from side to side as she spotted a particular robin or jay darting in the leaves. She could stare for hours, so absorbed she wouldn’t even hear me in the doorway. I didn’t know why, or couldn’t articulate it back then, but I suppose we all needed some way to escape what was happening to our family.
Which example creates pictures in your mind, and a particular human being?
Obviously, the second.
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But why is characterization so important? Does it really matter if Susan watched birds? Does it change anything knowing that Aunt Calista wore a greyish-blue jacket and skirt, had oddly large earlobes, a salty vocabulary, and smoked non-stop?
Yes, it does matter, for two important reasons:
The first is that characters will feel more “real” to the reader if they have a name, facial expressions that change based on how they are feeling, and small, human quirks. This is the lovely conundrum of it all—these folks actually ARE real , but we still need to make them seem that way on the page.
The second reason characterization is so crucial is that readers believe what they see and hear (and taste and small and touch.) You can tell them “my older sister lived in a dream world sometimes” and they recognize the statement, they understand what those words mean, but they don’t feel anything, they don’t experience it in their gut, until it plays out for them “right before their eyes.”
This is how it works in real life—we don’t accept what people tell us about other people—“Oh, Joanie is a wreck when it comes to raising those kids”—we wait to see for ourselves.
And this is how it works in writing, what we need to do carefully and deliberately if our readers are going to be absorbed, convinced, motivated to keep reading and find out what happens next.
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Want to learn more about characterization (and dialogue)?I will be offering a 75-minute webinar, They Walk! They Talk! : Secrets to Writing Engaging Characters & Vivid Dialogue , on Wednesday, October 4th, starting at 2 pm EDT —early bird registration only $15. We will examine the many ways in which people come to know other people in real life, and how that translates directly to the page. We will also explore the importance of compassion when writing about others, especially family members who may not always have acted well. Finally, we’ll examine dialogue as a tool for creating lively and believable characters, and consider the challenges of capturing how “real people” talk. Prompts and brief writing exercises will be included. I would love if you joined me. Register or find out more.
Dinty W. Moore is author of the memoirs Between Panic & Desire and To Hell With It, and the writing guides Crafting the Personal Essay and The Mindful Writer, among numerous other books . He has published essays and stories in Harper’s, The New York Times Magazine, Georgia Review, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Kenyon Review, and elsewhere.
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