The Technique of Fiction Writing

by Robert Saunders Dowst

CHARACTERIZATION BY SPEECH

As indicated, characterization is a double process. The writer endeavors to reveal the natures of his people and to individualize them in a more superficial but equally important sense. Their speech may be made to reveal their spiritual natures, and it may be made to individualize them.

The process of making speech reveal character strictly is not difficult in itself, though it may be difficult to do so unobtrusively. A sentimental man will reveal his sentimentality when he says sentimental things, just as a hypocrite will reveal his hypocrisy in hypocritical words. Cruel words will reveal cruelty in the person who utters them, and generous words will indicate that their speaker is generous. So far as possible, the speech of any character should have relation to that phase of his character which is significant in the story. The cruel man may be avaricious also, but, if his cruelty and not his avarice is the trait which has influence upon the events of the story, his words should reveal his cruelty rather than his avarice. The content of his speeches should indicate his possession of that trait of his character which is influential as to the events of the story.[M]

The difficulty will be to find a natural place for these indicative speeches. The primary necessity in fiction writing is to be unforced and natural, and a character cannot be made to say words indicative of his inner nature unless he would naturally utter them under the influence of the circumstances of the moment. Here, again, the way to write is to get into the skin of the person involved, to live the story vicariously in his person, and, when events would naturally call from him words revealing his pertinent trait, to transcribe them. Primarily, a story is a story, and its writer must meet all its necessities within its limitations.

Lack of space forbids giving examples of the revelation of character by speech. Dickens will prove a profitable study in this connection. The words of Pecksniff, for instance, reveal as much of the soul of Pecksniff as we need to know. All good stories, in greater or lesser degree, display the method in use.

The second use of his characters' words to the writer of fiction is to individualize them. It is not a matter of content, but one of manner. Irrespective of what the person says, the way he says it, if unique, will serve to increase the definition of a reader's conception of him. If a character is made to stutter, he will gain in actuality and concreteness for a reader. The instance is coarse, but will serve to indicate what is meant. Dickens is unrivalled in his capacity to employ this device, although the writer of a short story or relatively compact novel will meet difficulties in following Dickens' technique of characterization. The "demmit" of Mantalini, the "dispoged" of Sairey Gamp, the greasiness of Chadband's words, the rounded periods of the immortal Micawber give a reader the greater part of his idea of each person.

This sort of characterization may well be called description. The aim is not to reveal the person's inner nature—though the content of a mannered speech may do that, of course—but to add to the definition and reality of any attempted picture of the person by calling in the sense of hearing. Unlike the effect of descriptive words on a reader, the effect of written speech is nearly primary, though it lacks something of the freshness and impressiveness of the spoken word. Writing descriptive of a character and his mannered words function together to individualize the person for a reader. The people of a story must be made to appear to be real men and women, if the fiction is to have its necessary verisimilitude and consequent effect, and mannered speech will do much to invest the speakers with reality.

The process must not be carried beyond the bounds of naturalness. A mannerism of speech may be too pronounced, in that it tends to arrest a reader's attention and distract it from the flow of the story. Unnecessarily distorted spelling, for instance, employed in an attempt to be too strictly phonetic, will call attention to itself rather than individualize the speaker, that is, it will destroy the illusion of the story. "Yuh" for "you" is an instance. We all "yuh" more or less, I think, and for the writer of a story to insist thus pedantically on strict phonetic accuracy tends to make the whole fiction labored and unnatural. The whole trick is to suggest any particular distortion, and yet to have the words as intelligible for a reader as if the spelling were normal.

Mispronunciation, of course, is not the only mannerism of speech that may be availed of. In fact, the tendency is to abuse it. An open ear toward the casual talk he hears will give the writer many useful hints, and so will reading the work of others.

The speech of class and class varies, as does the speech of man and man. A lawyer in a story should be distinguishable from a sailor by the very content of his vocabulary. So should a doctor from an engineer or a brakeman, or a musician from an artist. But it must all be done naturally. The writer cannot drag in by the ears technical terms of any profession solely that a reader may be informed indirectly of the speaker's profession. But a doctor or lawyer, for instance, will generally be in a story because it requires the presence of a lawyer or doctor, and therefore the story will offer opportunity for him to reveal his place in society by his speech. Incidentally it may be noted that this matter emphasizes the necessity that the writer of fiction be observant in life and omnivorous in reading. He should know the manner of speech of any considerable class of men. It is true, of course, that no two lawyers talk precisely alike, but it is also true that it is possible to suggest a lawyer speaking by a proper choice of words, and that is the thing to do, naturally and unobtrusively. If the speech of a character is individualized in some manner, and if, in addition, a reader can gather his business or profession from his words, he will gain much in reality and definition.

The content of the talk of the characters of a story, then, should reveal their inner natures, and their idiosyncrasies of utterance and word-choice should be devised and set down to intensify the impression of their individuality initiated by the writer's strictly descriptive touches. Characterization is a double process, and neither aspect of it should be neglected, whether the writer is narrating, describing, or transcribing speech.