Irvine Valley College

Online Creative Writing Workshop

Writing 10 - Introduction to Creative Writing

Spring 2012 - Ticket # 64580

Marjorie Coverley Luesebrink, Instructor

 

Week 2:  

Creating Images and Characters

Online Lecture for Week 2:  

Just as Similes, Metaphors, and Symbols are part of the poetic use of Figurative Language, the creation of Images and Characters can be a part of the skillset that a writer is always improving upon.  It's a little ambitious to conflate "images" and "characters" together in one lesson - but we are, in any case, covering a great deal for one semester.  Just to keep on track, then, let's imagine that we are working on just the kind of imagery that supports the creation of character!

The strongest thing about the characterization in our assigned reading is the dramatic voice.  Alice Walker has given us "Celie" - a black woman from the deep South of the US - identifiable immediately by the diction and dialect of her voice.  The reason why I start with this example of characterization is because writers (both poetry and fiction) often utilize diction (word choice) and dialect (language variations) to nail down a character to place, time, gender, economic class, or emotional state.  Much of the validity of this relies upon the "ear" of the author - how well the author can reproduce the distinctive patterns of real language variations.  I would love to see each of you try your hand at a version of some unique diction or dialect with which you are familiar.

But writers may overlook the importance of the accompanying imagery (sometimes they depend too heavily on dialect, for example, and then the character may seem shallow).  The physical detail ("concrete detail") that we use in introducing a character can function in many ways, most notably as both character definition and as plot device.  Consider this line from the Walker piece:


If she mine, her name Olivia. I
embroder Olivia in the seat of all her daidies. I embrody lot of little stars and flowers too.

This is just one small detail, but it carries a wealth of information for the character and for the story going forward.  For example, we are going to see Celie as the kind of person who would, in fact, focus on the small, beautiful embroidery on the seat of the diapers.  She is also the kind of person who would find sustainable joy in such a detail.  Moreover, the embroidering of flowers on the seat of a diaper in the context of the scenes we will see of Celie's life early on - the unremitting poverty and violence - suggest that Celie is a character who can cling to small beauty in the face of misery that would defeat most of us.  And, as a character detail, this is right on the mark.  

The detail is also a plot-mover.  We are going to find out, a bit later on, about Celie's "mothering" of her sister, Olivia, and the loss of this sister, so the diaper detail sets up that expectation.  Moreover, much later in the story, Celie is going to experience a kind of epiphany surrounding her needlework - the making of the new slacks.  In this late scene, the ability to materialize a hope for the future is manifested in the ability to "construct" (sew) something that is a concrete symbol (from last week).  

When we choose the imagery that surrounds a character, we can use Alice Walker's example as a kind of template.  Nothing exists in this opening that is not going to have a purpose as BOTH character definition and plot potentiality.

As a final enhancement to your skill kit of character detail, you might want to consult the On-line Non Verbal Dictionary [non-verbal dictionary] - a great source of non-verbal tics and actions that you can assign to your characters!

I have posted some other examples of Characterization and Imagery that sets up characterization on the Reading page.  We can talk more about this as your exercises come in!

 

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Marjorie Coverley Luesebrink, your Instructor, is a Professor of English in the School of Humanities and Languages

Irvine Valley College, Irvine, California