Same in a book.
As we read, we get to know and understand the characters largely by witnessing them in action in particular contexts, and by listening to them in dialogue. But you are unlikely to be able to show the reader everything you need to about a character through action and dialogue alone. Description plays an important role as well.
We all know how common it is in a film adaptation of a book to be thrown by the way a key character looks and feels on the screen. That’s because readers create a mental image of the characters. This helps them to engage with the story. You need a certain amount of physical description (which can be directly stated or revealed through dialogue and action) and also those subtle things that make a character multi-dimensional.
While you, the writer, need to know your characters in intricate detail (see my blog Knowing your characters) you must carefully choose what information the reader needs to know, when they need to know it, and how to convey it.
Irish writer Colum McCann says, ‘Writing a character into being is like meeting someone you want to fall in love with. You don’t care (yet) about the facts of his/her life. Don’t overload us with too much information. Allow that to seep out later. We are attracted by a moment in time – a singular moment of flux or change or collapse – not by grand curricula vitae. So don’t generalise. Be specific. Go granular….’
Telling details
The trick is to write what Chekhov refers to as ‘telling detail’, that is detail that tells the essence of what it’s describing. This can make the difference between a cardboard character and a real, live person. You don’t need to throw an abundance of details at the reader, but can select those few that capture the essence of that person. The perfect one may be a quirk of speech, the way they fold their shirts, a habit like nail biting.
A telling detail about something specific can reveal a whole personality, not only of the character being described, but sometimes also of the point of view character doing the describing. For example:
He was a city kid, very smooth, and knew how to smoke cigarettes in an extremely sophisticated manner, by which I mean he could do it without coughing. (Tim Cahill, ‘Buford’s Revenge’ in Pass the Butterworms, Black Swan 1997)
…Madeleine turned and threw the Eggy Stone, hard and far, with a confidence that made it clear she would one day be captain of the netball team. (Tessa Hadley, ‘The Eggy Stone’ in Sunstroke and Other Stories, Jonathan Cape 2007)
‘Taxi,’ Ursula called in the voice she used for the final verse of ‘Oh come all ye faithful.’ (Emma Ashmere, ‘Polar Bears in Sydney Harbour’ in Dreams They Forgot, Wakefield Press 2020)
She hugged me in that light, detached way of hers, the way that made it seem like she was a supermodel who’d hugged a line of a hundred fans and now no longer knew how to put real emphasis into this action, hugging. (Rebecca F Kuang, Yellowface, The Borough Press 2023)
You can see from those examples how honing in on one simple action and using metaphor or simile to weight the action with meaning, can give the reader a deeper understanding of the character.
Telling details about objects
Objects can also be a concise and powerful way to reveal character, including something about their backstory, their values, their family life, their personality. Even without using metaphor or simile, a list of items can help paint a picture for the reader of who the character is. For example:
For example, Jacki Lyden, whose mother suffered from mental illness, writes the following early in the first chapter of her memoir Daughter of the Queen of Sheba (Sceptre 1997):
Nervous breakdown. I wrote the words in my diary on October 1, 1966. I was a diarist from the time I could write, and I wrote on anything I could find: drug company calendars discarded by my stepfather, church envelopes, manila folders and shirt cardboards, autograph books, and my white plastic Girl Scout Diary with its gold trefoil and lock.
This list tells us important details about the narrator, her family, and the era. Note that the item given the most detail is the diary; this indicates to the reader how important it was.
Here’s an example from Kate de Goldi’s Young Adult novel The 10pm Question (Allen & Unwin 2008). The central character is Frankie.
Take his desk: it was ridiculously symmetrical. The South Park Club Cricket Cup sat in the top left corner holding all his sharpened pencils; top right was the soapstone box with his collection of birds’ feathers; his one and two and five cent coin towers were lined up along the top centre.
Ma’s old music box with the one-armed ballerina was positioned just near his left hand so he could lift the lid and play it when he was drawing. Louie had fiddled with the mechanism so the box played ‘Lara’s Theme’ backwards; the new tune was very peculiar, yet familiar, and it always made Frankie smile.
His old bear, Kidder, grubby with age, the stuffing sprouting from his neck, sat on the right of the desk leaning against the window sill, and between Kidder’s stumpy legs stood Maxwell Smart and Agent 99, the Fimo figures Gigs had made him for Christmas; the trio was a static audience regarding him blankly as he did his homework.
From this detailed description of things, the reader learns a lot about Frankie and his world. And again, there is one item with more detail than the others – the music box – indicating its significance to Frankie.
Going granular
When writing your characters into the story, think about how you can drip-feed telling details to amplify the meaning of a scene and to build the reader’s understanding of the character over the course of the entire plot. What do you want the reader to know about your character at that point of the story? What information could be withheld until later in the story for greater dramatic impact?
You can refer back to your character sheets (see Knowing Your Characters) for inspiration. If you’ve got a character who isn’t quite gelling, or you don’t feel like you fully understand them, or you’re not confident you’ve been able to capture the essence of who they are, play around with telling details to find out more about them. Try writing a list, as detailed and specific as possible, of items they have in a container of some kind – it could be handbag, back pack, kitchen or desk draw, wardrobe, car glovebox, or bedside table, for example.
What does your character keep there? What do those items tell you about the character? For example, if there is a shopping list, what is on it? What’s crossed off? If there’s a diary, describe it in detail to show the reader something about the personality of the diary owner. Is it dog-eared and full of colourful writing and drawings? Is it worn on the edges and scuffed, but empty?
As Colum McCann said, ‘Go granular.’
See also Knowing Your Characters and Character Arcs