Imagine This, Part 2
- Posted by Essays Blog in Essays Blog |
- December 6th, 2008 |
- Comments
Imagery and Characterization, can the cardinal ever meet outside of an English class?
Seething crack or nervous bird, what image best fits your characters and why would anyone care? Last time I talked about giving a co-ordinated imagery set to your main characters. I outlined how choosing basic element properties to your characters creates adds texture and EASE to a character arc. We went with the basic earth, air, curve, and fire possibilities. But let’s have you deprivation to go one block further. How would that activity and why?
Make your imagery more circumstantial. First off, add metal to your list of elements. So piece you’re at it, maybe add all the elements of the periodic table. What if your hero is a tinman in examine of a heart? Give him metallic colors to act and surround himself in. Make him bendable, but when he adjusts to the heroine it gives him a acute edge to his words and actions.
Now start picking out words to consume for your hero. Match it with all five senses, but make careful to pick words that reflect both the good and the bad. You deprivation to be able to indicate your character’s changes from a problem finished growth into happiness (and love). Confused? Attempt these examples. For sight&ndashmetallic and reflective. When people look at him they accompany themselves reflected back, not the man himself. When you describe him and his environment surround him in chrome and give him a container car act collection. Let the heroine accompany him as childlike but cold. So as he grows around her, you can add color to his clothing and surroundings.
Sound&ndashtinny, brittle. You don’t have to make his expression channel bum or anorexic. That’s not hero-like! But he can communicate with a brittle edge or it can grate like metal on metal. He can hit something that clinks. When he’s depressed he can have a hollow echo to his chant, but as he warms to the heroine, his expression gets depth and color. Eventually&ndashat the end&ndashsomeone hears his heartbeat. Even the music he listens to changes from Metallica to country&ndashor maybe that’s overmuch of a dilute.
Touch&ndashsharp but malleable. Initially his touches are cold and angry words hit like shards. But as he changes, his rough edges creaseless. His face is not chiseled but pressed or molded. So when he smiles he shows a kind of light (heroine’s reflected light). She warms him (because metal doesn’t carry his own warmth), but he protects her and brings out her child-like qualities (because he’s a container act).
Now you add appreciation and groom. Truthfully, with a container act image, I follow cold feel, metallic appreciation, and antiseptic groom. None of that is erotic or hero-like. So if you mention these things, keep them at the beginning of the book, letting the negative words drop away as he changes for the better. He is, after all, gaining a heart and growing into a real boy. But remember, he can be a geologist or a metal girl. He can activity in a antiseptic room or be comfortable in clinical settings.
So now you get the idea, but don’t just act thither. Make your images real circumstantial. My hero in Tempted Tigress is a Chinese ink and brush set. He’s a scholar and when he feels drained, I have that his words were like ink mixed also anorexic. His body is anorexic and pointed, and during the love environment, his adjoin paints words on her.
My heroine in Cornered Tigress is a cat. Every time she enters a room, she experiences it first finished appreciation and groom. When she’s afraid she tends to go into bantam enclosed spaces. You can consume anything that sparks your imagination, so…go chaotic!