Creating Character Through Action and Description 2

1. Stimulus Exercise 7:Creating Character Through Action and Description 2

2. Read the following extracts, which describe various characters. For each, try to determine what is and what is not described. You may wish to think about clothes, thoughts, face, speech, setting, etc. Then, try to establish what you think about these characters: what can we tell about them? 2

3. Kasia�s Mother�s Mother�s Story by Ali Smith The woman is making the sign of the cross. Forehead, chest, left shoulder, right shoulder. She does it again, faster, several times. Her right hand flaps in front of her face like a small wing or the head of a snake. Anyone watching will think she is making the sign of the cross. She is standing in the doorway in the early morning dark. Someone passes and she looks down. A bicycle rattles past without slowing. The noise of it dies away. Her shoes are still covered in mud. She will never be able to clean it off them. At some point she will need a new pair. Thou Shalt Not Suffer A Witch by Dorothy K. Haynes The child sat alone in her bedroom, weaving the fringe of the counterpane in and out of her fingers. It was a horrible room, the most neglected one of the house. The grate was narrow and rusty, cluttered up with dust and hair combings, and the floorboards creaked at every step. When the wind blew, the door rattled and banged, but the window was sealed tight, webbed, fly-spotted, a haven for everything black and creeping. In and out went her fingers, the fringe pulled tight between nail and knuckle. Outside, the larches tossed and flurried, brilliant green under a blue sky. Sometimes the sun would go in, and rain would hit the windows like a handful of nails thrown at the glass; then the world would lighten suddenly, the clouds would drift past in silver and white, and the larches would once more toss in sunshine. 3

4. More on description This is a brief exercise to develop your descriptive skills. Imagine a middle-aged woman standing at a bus stop. Working in pairs, write a description of her waiting in four sentences only. You must not describe her face, although you can describe her clothes. You cannot describe her thoughts � only the physical description as if you are watching her from the other side of the road. She is: going to see her son in prison or starting a course at college for the first time or going to buy a new dress for her son�s wedding or looking for her husband in a local pub or going to see her sister in hospital. In your description, try to indicate how she feels, through her posture, what she does as she waits, what she�s wearing and how she�s wearing it, etc.  4

5. More on description Now, on your own, try a different waiting description from the list for the same woman. This time, try to picture who is watching her and bring out the watcher�s personality. Here, you will create two characters: the woman and the narrator. You are not limited to three sentences this time! 5

6. The Collector by John Fowles The next slide contains the opening of The Collector by John Fowles. It is a book told in two parts, from very different perspectives. The first part is told through the eyes of Frederick Clegg, a collector of butterflies who becomes obsessed with Miranda, a beautiful art student he dreams of adding to his collection. The second part is told from Miranda�s perspective, as she struggles to understand and survive what is happening to her. In these opening paragraphs, Miranda is described through the eyes of Frederick. What can we tell about her? What can we tell about him? What hints are there about what is to come? 6

7. When she was home from her boarding-school I used to see her almost every day sometimes, because their house was right opposite the Town Hall Annexe. She and her younger sister used to go in and out a lot, often with young men, which of course I didn't like. When I had a free moment from the files and ledgers I stood by the window and used to look down over the road over the frosting and sometimes I'd see her. In the evening I marked it in my observations diary, at first with X, and then when I knew her name with M. I saw her several times outside too. I stood right behind her once in a queue at the public library down Crossfield Street. She didn't look once at me, but I watched the back of her head and her hair in a long pigtail. It was very pale, silky, like Burnet cocoons. All in one pigtail coming down almost to her waist, sometimes in front, sometimes at the back. Sometimes she wore it up. Only once, before she came to be my guest here, did I have the privilege to see her with it loose, and it took my breath away it was so beautiful, like a mermaid. Another time one Saturday off when I went up to the Natural History Museum I came back on the same train. She sat three seats down and sideways to me, and read a book, so I could watch her for thirty-five minutes. Seeing her always made me feel like I was catching a rarity, going up to it very careful, heart-in-mouth as they say. A Pale Clouded Yellow, for instance. I always thought of her like that, I mean words like elusive and sporadic, and very refined � not like the other ones, even the pretty ones. More for the real connoisseur. 7