More on Building Character

I know I was going to talk about details and subtext, but this is my Blog and I don’t have to if I don’t want to. Like every writer, he or she is the god of their world.

Job #1 for me as a writer is to build character. Slowly, carefully. Alpheus, in a play I just wrote, Alpheus, King of Somerset County, NJ, is the main character. He gets Covid, goes through some hard times, recovers, has an epiphany. So my task is to start with hm as a compelling though unknown character, and then flesh him out so by late in the play he is doing something remarkable.

Don’t spill everything all at the beginning. In Lorraine Hansberry’s Raisin in the Sun,” a title taken from a Langston Hughes poem about a dream deferred, Sidney Poitier’s character comes to maturity before our very eyes. Hansberry died at the age of 34, a brilliant light snuffed out far too soon. In the Great Gatsby, Gatsby’s nature is only teased out during the first 50 pages or so, then comes into focus through the interactions of the characters and the interplay with events. By the way, I like the Robert Redford version way better than the more recent one. The supporting cast is terrific, too.

Lesser characters need less long-term attention. The waiter can be 6’ 6” tall, blond-haired, blue-eyed guy with a crazy look. Just tell the reader about him, unless the waiter is going to continue as a sinister presence in the story, in which you should reveal his character more gradually. Like Iago in Othello. That could be really cool.

One advantage of writing a play or TV show or movie i-- you have actors and a director to bring your characters to life. Writing a novel, you have to do it all yourself. An disadvantage – they may alter what you had in mind.