A book on character

When I was young, I encountered a book that has forever affected my life.

The book was a very matter-of-fact book on the craft of writing, particularly on character development.

It struck me as an inroad to my dreams, and I loved it so much that I stole it from a public library.

That’s correct. I am a book thief.

Later, I returned to the library and paid for the book, first with back fees, then with cash value for the book itself. When I returned it, the book was already 40 years old, and that was in 1982.

What book would mean so very much to me? Maren Elwood’s Characters Make Your Story.

The book breaks down elements of character in ways future how-to books had to have borrowed from. The central premise is that a character is only as vivid as you know him or her to be, and a story is only as good as its characters. Like many books on character, it asks writers to draw from exhaustive lists of traits, descriptions, mannerisms, etc. to get to know the character. It presses writers to put that character into dynamic motion, to play characters off one another and their environment.

It came into my life at a very important time, just as I was needing books on craft. My small library did not have many of those at the time, and no one else in my town was engaged in much creative writing. There was no Internet, of course, so I did not have the exhaustive resources and character generating tools that are a keystroke away these days.

It was powerfully and personally written in a style that’s long lost to us today. Here’s a passage from the preface:

“People are lonely souls. They herd and mingle and fraternize—desperately searching. They hurl themselves into the surging gabbling mob of humanity, hoping to find their own counterparts. And failing, once again fall back into their familiar armchairs, giving up the search. Here at last, in the story-people they meet in the pages of their books and magazines, they find themselves as they were and are and hope to be. They never fail them—these story-people. They live, and we, the readers, live in completeness with them.”

The book gave me a scaffold. It provided something to hang elements of character upon. Elwood bolstered my confidence and made it a great deal of fun to generate someone from nothing but my imagination. Paging through that book, I discovered many secrets of what makes a character come alive. For me, even though there are now many more sophisticated and current books on the market, just having that ol’ book at my side gives me everything I need whenever I doubt myself.

Like a witness taking the stand, I can put my palm on the bible of Characters Make Your Story and swear to tell the best tale I can muster up.

You be the judge.