Audrey Coldron’s Top Tips — Characterisation
Audrey Coldron’s short story A Gentleman Adventurer was shortlisted for the Short Story Category of the King Lear Prize 2020.
1. Finding the Character
There’s a story in all of us, so a character can be anyone who takes your fancy: someone you’ve seen or someone created in your imagination, a character already in a situation or in a kind of limbo waiting for you to supply a plot and take them through a significant experience.
For an example, I wrote a story about a weary, distracted-looking, middle-aged waitress I saw in a supermarket café. Wondering what was on her mind, I began writing about her. I found that she had recently pushed her husband off the top of a quarry.
The imagination can be sparked off by asking questions about them. – Who are they? Their name/s? Their relationships? Why are they there? What have they done? Allow your imagination to discover what might be going on.
2. The Journey
In a short story, true or imagined, you are taking the reader along with the characters through a significant experience.
‘The Hook’ begins with an arresting sentence that immediately catches the reader’s interest and lures her to find out what is going on. You can begin your story at any point, at the beginning or perhaps at a dramatic point in the middle and then, in flashbacks or thoughts and memories or narration, supply what has gone before.
Example:
She stood there wondering what to do next. It was getting late. The harassed Christmas shoppers hurried past, ignoring the small, grey-haired woman in the long brown coat and old-fashioned felt hat.
So we know where she is, the time of day and what a cursory glance tells us about her. Let the reader know who she is. That’s a first stage in engaging with her. Give her a name:
She is blaming herself. Harold had told her to wait. “Alice,’’ he’d said, ”you are not to go out.” And he’d locked the door as he left. But she’d found the spare key.
What happens next? I don’t know. I’ll follow her thoughts and actions and find out and begin to get to know Alice and Harold.
3. Introducing the characters
The ‘hook’ is likely to be a character as in the example above. No need to begin with full and detailed descriptions of characters unless that is essential for your purpose.
Give enough indications of the person to set the reader’s imagination going and raise their curiosity.
4. Developing Your Character
Lead the reader to discover the characters as they reveal themselves - their needs and expectations, their feelings or lack of them, their personality - through their actions, interactions, their manner of speaking and their inner life. If your character is devious or secretive the reader may find she’s been deliberately misled into misjudging which could be an effective device for giving your story a twist - unless the revealed inner life has already clued her in.
The sooner the reader joins the character’s emotional journey on the ‘where is all this is leading?’ adventure, and begins to care what happens to them, the more engaged she will be and the more meaningful the story.
5. Finally…
Write your first draft just as it flows from your imagination onto the page. Leave improving to the re-drafting.
Then as necessary check grammar and accuracy etc., improve the structure (the ordering of the events), tighten sentences, check vocabulary – not too many adjectives, and those you use choose carefully. Remember too, the sounds of the words can add colour to your prose. I find it helpful to read my story aloud.
Audrey Coldron lives in Horbury, a village near Wakefield in West Yorkshire, near the Yorkshire Sculpture Park (formerly Bretton Hall Grounds). She was born in Liverpool and completed school and university there during the Second World War and the Blitz. She also worked in theatre, though teaching was her career (in Bretton Hall College’s Theatre Department, and latterly in the US) and directed amateur productions, including summer Shakespeare plays at Bradford Cathedral. She has a son and two lovely granddaughters.
What next?
If you’re ready to enter your real story into the King Lear Prizes you can do so here.
If you want to read more posts about the real stories category, check out our Hints & Tips blog here!
If you want to know more about the King Lear Prizes generally, please go here.
If you have any feedback on this post, or any other ideas of what hints & tips could be useful to you in your short stories, please email me (Matilda!) on matilda@kinglearprizes.org. I’d be delighted to hear from you.
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