a window on character development

 in the course of my experience, i have read a variety of dialogue and description of some of the most beloved or infamous characters in novels written in the last 200 years...from Holden Caulfield to Frodo Baggins. as a writer, i not only read the story, but digest the story...chew on it, like a dinner, digesting the essence of what is written and allowing imagination to create those characters in my head. it is that image that becomes part of the narrative as it moves along. 

however, a vast army of notable authors of the twentieth century had a skeletal description of the characters, clothed with a blanket of dialogue. Although Gollum is described in short but excellent detail, it is his dialogue that sharpens our understanding of what Gollum looks like, and, even smells like. ask anyone to describe Gollum and a hundred readers would give you remarkably close descriptions, adjusted for the reader's own interaction with cultural influences and the reader's command of the language and nuances associated with it.

that is all good and fine, but when i take my readers into the mind of a character, i want more succinct descriptive words. in a world with millions of imaginations, i attempt to narrow those choices by paying attention not just to words and phrases but to word combinations. 

In the first scene of a new book i am writing, a character wanders through/ encounters a "shrub-boulder maze." this can be interpreted in many ways, however, there is, in every reader's mind, images of a shrub, boulder, and a maze. His or her imagination, images, may contain vast or small numbers of shrubs and boulders, but it must be a "maze." this maze would have an effect on the character encountering the "maze." the character's personality is reflected by a reaction when encountering that "maze." and you, the reader, choose this from your treasure chest of experience and imagination.

sure, even my dialogue adds fiber to the personality of any created character. but, unlike many of my predecessors in the twentieth century, even dream sequences, and thoughts - placed within the narrative- i hope fashion a robust figure that my readers will picture in their minds as they read beyond the initial appearance of that character. i want to fully clothe these characters so my readers can formulate more specific images in their minds, even if the word combinations i use may seem unorthodox. 

i have paused in the writing of the aforementioned piece now to pen these thoughts because i want to give you, the reader, insight into one hallway of the creative process in the Post-Pandemic world. hopefully, in the future, when i am able to publish such longer works, you will have a better understanding of the thoughts that go into the creative writing process to compose a piece of poetic fiction.