NEW PARIS BOOK IN PROGRESS IN 2024: SPYING – Blog # 24.
Why is spying an effective inspirational method when writing a book? It provides the fine detail to character development.
In a café, on the street, at a concert … people do stuff, people have habits, people have mannerisms, people have idiosyncrasies. Idiosyncrasies make a character interesting. Besides, it tells the reader more about a character in fewer words. It paints a picture, an image, often – we hope – an indelible impression. A good impression, an annoying impression – but an impression, nonetheless.
An idiosyncrasy is a character trait unique – or almost so – to one individual, or even a group of like-minded individuals. Some would say it is a flaw, others would say it is a weird quirk, and others would say it is an obsession. Yet others say it is the unforgettable.
But, when spying on the public, at first glance, it is not the obsessive, compulsive thought that jumps out at the observer, nor what they do behind closed door – for example, that they are averse to comic books or that they rinse their hair in vinegar every Sunday. That comes later, in the embellishment phase. It is the physical idiosyncrasy that is initially noticed. And, generally, it is a repetitive physical movement, or action, or way of doing or wearing or saying something.
British writer Beryl Bainbridge’s 1973 book, The Dressmaker, is an excellent example of character development to the finest detail. Nellie, a dressmaker, living in Liverpool, England, during the Second World War “played” the sewing machine “like the great organ at the Palladium cinema.” Fictional detectives – almost all of them – have an idiosyncrasy or ten. The great Sherlock Holmes kept “his unanswered correspondence transfixed by a jack-knife into the very centre of his wooden mantelpiece.”
American children’s author Robert Lawrence Stine says,
“It’s my job to keep up with pop culture and what the kids are into because you don’t want to sound like an old man trying to write books for kids. I spend a lot of my time spying on them.”
British author Graham Greene said,
“The great advantage of being a writer is that you can spy on people. You’re there, listening to every word, but part of you is observing. Everything is useful to a writer, you see – every scrap, even the longest and most boring of luncheon parties.”
Here are some of my spying observations in the past week. I noticed a woman cutting her toenails with a meat axe on a bench in the park. I noticed a man tug his ear lobe whenever he said the word silent. I saw a child tuck her stuffed toy into her waist belt before she, and her mother, left the café. I saw a woman button and unbutton her coat twenty times in the time it took her to drink one cup of coffee. I saw an elderly man with an elastic band around one shoe.
Author of the Gordian Plot, a writer’s website, advises to “Let the habits of your hero be whimsical, mysterious, or erratic, if you choose; but let them be agreeable and not too frequently reiterated.” I’m not so tied to the “agreeable” but I do agree that the frequency of the idiosyncrasy should be kept to a minimum in the novel, so as not to frustrate the reader. But, like real people in real life, characters wouldn’t be characters if they didn’t have an idiosyncrasy. And the writer’s job is to spy on people to inspire them to adorn a character with the very stuff that makes them a character.
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