| Definition | Purpose | Subject |
| Considerations | Warnings | Stance |
| Methods | "Miss Murdstone" | "George" |
| Assignment |
Definition: As the title suggests, this work is a sketch, not a portrait, not a biography. It is limited in scope and intent. It does not presume to say that this is all that can be or should be said. It does say that this outline, this skeleton, this abbreviation is of a person worth knowing or knowing about.
Purpose: The writer attempts to share the experience of another person with others, sometimes to praise, sometimes to damn, frequently to understand better. The sketch can be for the writer, as for the visual artist, a voyage of discovery, noticing new features and traits and acknowledging known ones. The result may be as two dimensional and striking as the caricature or the cartoon or as revealing as the anatomical drawings of DaVinci. Wherever it may lead, the impulse to share our notions and perceptions of another human must be at least as strong or stronger than our urge to present other kinds of information. Consider how much talk in our day is about people: from the breathless junior high girl describing her latest infatuation to the irate senior describing the unpleasant driver on the freeway.
Subject: Choose someone you really know as the subject. You do not have to know them long or extremely well, just know them.
Considerations: Does the subject have an outstanding trait? Can you build up the detail, reveal the complexity of the person?
Warnings: People in the writer's household are often not the best subjects. They interfere, they want to see what you are writing, and they might be offended at the writer's frankness. People who died recently (within the past six months or more) are not easy subjects either. The experience of loss by the writer may result in a sentimental or otherwise subjective sketch that tells more about how the writer felt about the loss than about the subject. Younger persons are more difficult to write about than older persons. It is hard to take pictures of kittens and puppies that are not just too too cute.
Stance: The person is the subject, not the writer. But the writer needs to be there--in the background, not the foreground. Try not to upstage your own subject. This is a character sketch, not a personal experience assignment.
Direct statement of a trait
"[Robert] Oppenheimer was an intellectual of broad interests
and surprisingly disparate eruditions, who read the classics of
Greek and Sanskrit and Spanish literature, loved poetry, carefully
studied the work of Karl Marx to see for himself what was there. He
was an epicure. * * * Leslie Groves was an engineer and a soldier,
period."
Reports from others
--David Quammen
Effect on others
--Student writer
Description
Use all the senses, not just sight. Do not be limited. Each sense
has associations. For example, taste may be associated with certain
foods a person enjoys or habitually eats; smell with a cologne the
person wears.
"Groves was a large man, well upholstered in flesh. Robert
Oppenheimer was gangly and emaciated."
--David Quammen
Dialog
"Democracy is not about being a damn spectator against the
backdrop of tap-dancing politicians swinging in the winds of
expediency."
--Congressman Ron Dellums.
"Call me Ishmael."
--Herman Melville, Moby Dick
More about dialog
Talk. Have others talk. Record the conversation of this person (carefully edited for tightness, of course) in your paper. Show in this assignment that you know how to present and punctuate dialog. Don't confuse good dialog with an actual record of the conversation (like a court reporter might do). You are not a court reporter, but an author. You recreate the feel of the person's speech, not the record of it. You do this by listening carefully and being selective. You look for speech characteristics: length of sentences, vocabulary, grammar, tone of voice, to mention a few.
A good way to begin writing dialog is to start a new paragraph
with the speech. Open quotation marks, insert the utterance, insert
the needed punctuation, close the quotation marks, finish with the
speaker tag. Don't get fancy with speaker tags. Good ones are
"said" and "asked." Not so good ones might
include "inquired breathlessly" and "muttered
murkily." By starting a new paragraph with the utterance, you
avoid "burying" the dialog in the paragraph. Writers, even
great writers, will bury dialog in the middle of paragraphs, but until you've worked with it for
a while, it is usually more effective to handle dialog in separate
paragraphs.
Some examples follow:
"Take your hand away from that gun and step
into the light," Sam said.
"You don't have anything on me. I want my
lawyer," Bennett said. "and I'll have you brought up on
charges."
"I don't think so, especially after the chief sees
these photos," Sam said.
Notice the punctuation: The new paragraph signals a new speaker. The continuation of the paragraph continues the same speaker. Notice also that the comma goes inside the closing quotation mark, as do periods.
Habitual environment
His room was a pig sty, mildew growing in the corners, the floor
covered with fast food garbage, the exercise bicycle draped with
dirty laundry.
Action
Of all methods of characterization, this is best, foremost.
Actions do speak louder than words. Using a few separate incidents
rather than one large, sustained story seems to be more effective.
Several incidents provide more variety, more balance, and more depth
of character revelation.
Beginnings
Plunge right in. Do not take time with an expository
introduction. The pieces fill in later. This is informal
narration/description.
Endings
Stop when it is right to do so. Just stop. Do not
conclude or talk about it. Try to come full circle, back to
something at the beginning. That works sometimes.
Charles Dickens' "Miss Murdstone"
Few writers have created such remarkable characters as did English author Charles Dickens, whose eye for idiosyncrasies produced an unforgettable gallery of fictional people. This description of the metallic Miss Murdstone appears in Dickens' David Copperfield (1849-1850).
It was Miss Murdstone who was arrived, and a gloomy-looking lady she was; dark, like her brother, whom she greatly resembled in face and voice; and with very heavy eyebrows, nearly meeting over her large nose, as if, being disabled by the wrongs of her sex from wearing whiskers, she had carried them to that account. She brought with her two uncompromising hard black boxes, with her initials on the lids in hard brass nails. When she paid the coachman she took her money out of a hard steel purse, and she kept the purse in a very jail of a bag which hung upon her arm by a heavy chain, and shut up like a bite. I had never, at that time, seen such a metallic lady altogether as Miss Murdstone.
She was brought into the parlour with many tokens of welcome, and there formally recognised my mother as a new and near relation. Then she looked at me, and said:
"Is that your boy, sister-in-law?"
My mother acknowledged me.
"Generally speaking," said Miss Murdstone, "I don't like boys. How d'ye do, boy?"
Under these encouraging circumstances, I replied that I was very well, and that I hoped she was the same; with such an indifferent grace, that Miss Murdstone disposed of me in two words:
"Wants manner!"
Having uttered which with great distinctness, she begged the favour of being shown to her room, which became to me from that time forth a place of awe and dread, wherein the two black boxes were never seen open or known to be left unlocked, and where (for I peeped in once or twice when she was out) numerous little steel fetters and rivets, with which Miss Murdstone embellished herself when she was dressed, generally hung upon the looking-glass in formidable array.
As well as I could make out, she had come for good, and had no intention of ever going again. She began to "help" my mother next morning, and was in and out of the store-closet all day, putting things to rights, and making havoc in the old arrangements. Almost the first remarkable thing I observed in Miss Murdstone was, her being constantly haunted by a suspicion that the servants had a man secreted somewhere on the premises. Under the influence of this delusion, she dived into the coal-cellar at the most untimely hours, and scarcely ever opened the door of a dark cupboard without clapping it to again, in the belief that she had got him.
Though there was nothing very airy about Miss Murdstone, she was a perfect Lark in point of getting up. She was up (and, as I believe to this hour, looking for that man) before anybody in the house was stirring. Peggotty gave it as her opinion that she even slept with one eye open; but I could not concur in this idea; for I tried it myself after hearing the suggestion thrown out, and found it couldn't be done.
On the very first morning after her arrival she was up and ringing her bell at cock-crow. When my mother came down to breakfast and was going to make the tea, Miss Murdstone gave her a kind of peck on the cheek, which was her nearest approach to a kiss, and said:
"Now, Clara, my dear, I am come here, you know, to relieve you of all the trouble I can. You're much too pretty and thoughtless"--my mother blushed but laughed, and seemed not to dislike this character--"but have any duties imposed upon you that can be undertaken by me. If you'll be so good as to give me your keys, my dear, I'll attend to all this sort of thing in future."
From that time, Miss Murdstone kept the keys in her own little jail all day, and under her pillow all night, and my mother had no more to do with them than I had.
**
Here is a student example of a person who obviously irritated the writer, but the description of George comes through quite clearly.
Most workers found George annoying, but I found him disgusting. His short, corpulent body appeared to be in the terminal stages of pregnancy. His work shirts were always unbuttoned, and the exposed white undershirt amplified his belly. He looked like a penguin as he waddled with his arms extended from his sides.
He had an oval-shaped face with chubby cheeks. His eyebrows and mustache were bushy and black. A receding hairline made his face over-sized, which drew attention to his moronic grin.
Each morning, George sat in his pale yellow Mazda with his stomach wedged against the steering column, the radio tuned to an all-news station. His companions were a warm half-case of Rainier and a can of Borkum Riff, resting in the passenger's seat. In the back seat lay a two-week supply of empty beer cans and a clean change of underwear. These things provided George with a sense of self-containment.
He let out a grunt when unwedging himself from the car and then tugged on his faded, straight-legged Levis, but no matter how hard he tugged, his ass would always hang out.
Then George waddled toward another day's wages. He would start to work, just like everyone else. But he'd soon wander off to find a seat and break out his worn tobacco pouch and papers to roll a cigarette.
"What are you doing now?" a co-worker would probe.
"I answer to only one boss out here, and you ain't him. I work at my pace, and you work at yours," George replied.
"Oh, what's the use," the worker said in disgust.
George then went about the business of finishing his cigarette and would leisurely return to his proper place. He would work for a short time and then start coughing. This caused him to take a break for several minutes--to catch his breath. When the fit had passed, he would roll another cigarette, and drift towards the boss's truck.
"Got a light?" George inquired.
"Sure thing," replied the boss.
"You know, we could do this job a lot easier, if we had a new grader," George said.
"I'm well aware of that, George!" the boss replied sharply.
"I'm not trying to tell you how to do your job, or anything, you know. I just thought you might want to think about it. You know what I mean?" George added.
When the boss drove away, George would head to his car for a couple beers. His morning beer break lasted as long as the boss stayed away. When the boss returned, George would ramble back to where he belonged, but he had another interruption on the way.
"I really got to go. Beer has a way of going through a guy. You know what I mean?" George said as he started for the Sanikan.
By this time, it was nearly lunch, and George had worked hard at avoiding work all morning long. He would soon head to the Wishbone Tavern for a bowl of chili, a submarine sandwich, and a couple of schooners. This would provide sustenance through the afternoon for George to continue his strategic diversions at avoiding work.
**
Assignment: Write a narrative/descriptive essay about a person you know or have known. Approximate length is approximately 500 words or two full pages double line-spaced.