How to write a character sketch

UNIT 6

FORMS OF PRESENTATION: CHARACTERIZATION, DIALOGUE

Characterization is used to present a character’s personality. We come to know the characters in the short story through the indirect method of 1) physical description, 2) the character’s thoughts, feelings and words, 3) the comments and reactions of others, and 4) the actions of the character — indirect characterization; and the direct method of the author’s stated opinion about the character — direct characterization.

A person in a short story is called a character. The person around whom the conflict revolves is called the main character. Most stories contain one or more main characters and several minorcharacters. The hero of the story who is faced with a conflict is the protagonist while the villain of the story, the person who causes the conflict is the antagonist.

Character Development is the change in the person from the beginning to the ending of a story. We say the character who changes in personality or attitude is a dynamic character, those that remain the same are referred to as static characters. A round character is a character with a fully developed, complex, even contradictory personality. A flat character is a character with little depth or complexity, who may be described in one or two phrases. A foil character is a minor character highlighting certain features of a major character usually through contrast. The author’s mouthpiece is a character, expressing the author’s view point as to the problems raised in the story and sharing his ideas and set of values.

Dialogue is the speech of two or more characters who address each other. Verbal behaviour (the way a character speaks, or what a character says in a certain situation) is a powerful means of characterization, revealing the social and intellectual standing, age, education and occupation, individual experiences and psychology of a character. It also expresses his state of mind and feelings, the attitude to his interlocutors. When analyzing speech characteristics, one should be alert for:

· Markers of official style (I presume, I beg your pardon, etc.), or markers of informal conversational style: contracted forms, colloquialisms, elliptical sentences, tag constructions (as you know), initiating signals (Well, Oh), hesitation pauses, false start — pall of which normally occur in spontaneous colloquial speech and often remain unnoticed, but in “fictional conversation” they may acquire a certain function, as they create verisimilitude and may indicate some features of the speaker’s character;

· Markers of the emotional state of the character: emphatic inversion, the use of emotionally coloured words, the use of breaks-in-the-narrative that stand for silence, the use of italics, interjections, hesitation pauses;

· Attitudinal markers: words denoting attitudes (hate, adore, despise), intensifiers (very, absolutely, etc.);

· Markers of the character’s educational level: bookish words, rough words, slang, vulgarisms, deviations from the standard;

· Markers of regional and dialectal speech, which define the speaker as to his origin, nationality and social standing: foreign words, etc.;

· Markers of the character’s occupation: terms, jargonisms;

· Markers of the speaker’s idiolect, i.e. his individual speech peculiarities which serve as a means of individualization and verisimilitude.

There are two effective ways of arranging your character sketch. One of them is naming the qualities of a character first and then supporting your opinion with the evidence from the text. The other one is analyzing a character’s behaviour in certain circumstances and deducing his/her traits of character. While making a character sketch you should try to find answers to the following questions:

· Who are the main characters? Are they like real people?

· Do they remind you of certain types of people? Which are the most interesting? Why?

· Does the character seem to develop and change as the story progresses, or does he/she remain about the same from beginning to end?

· What are the strengths and weaknesses of the character under study? What incidents from the text can you cite to support your conclusions?

· To what extent does the personality of the character determine his/her success or failure?

· What character did you like most and which did you dislike?

· With which ones did it make a difference to you whether they were happy or not? Why?

· Which ones helped you to understand people a little better than before?

· How well does the author seem to know people and what “makes them tick”?

A helping hand

the central/main/major character

the protagonist/the antagonist

the hero/heroine

the villain

a foil — to serve/act as a foil to…

the author’s mouthpiece

a simple/flat character

a complex/well-rounded character

moral/mental/physical/spiritual characteristics

direct/indirect characterization

to reinforce characterization

to contribute to characterization/individualization

to depict/portray/describe/reveal/disclose/a character

to evaluate/assess/rate/judge a character’s actions/words/decisions/set of values

to share a character’s emotions

to arouse warmth/affection/compassion/admiration/resentment/antipathy, etc.

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