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148 Part III: Painting the Picture with Description
home, working and relaxing. These three areas involve different pressures,
emotions and states of mind, and so they provide different challenges to you as
a writer.
You may need to make careful observations of how people carry out particular
skilled tasks such as playing a sport, performing on a musical instrument or
making a clay pot or piece of furniture.
Homing in on domestic life
Characters are most themselves when in the privacy of their own homes.
Here they can let down their guard, say what they mean and do what they
want – unless of course there are domestic tensions to explore!
It’s helpful to try out different ways to get to know your character in his home
environment.
Describe your character in his own home performing the following activities:
✓ Having a bath or shower, washing and drying his hair
✓ Making a cup of tea or coffee
✓ Relaxing in the evening – watching TV, reading a book, listening to music
✓ Cleaning and tidying his home, making the bed
✓ Trying to find something he’s mislaid
Describe your character’s actions in detail. Does he rush or do things slowly
and carefully? Does he have any particular mannerisms? How does he interact
with the people he lives with?
Working at creating a work life
Work takes up a great deal of most people’s lives, and so don’t neglect this
aspect of your character’s life. Fiction often explores the world of work –
from Evelyn Waugh’s 1938 Scoop, which is about journalism, to Nick Hornby’s
1995 High Fidelity based around working in a second-hand record shop; from
Richard Yates’s Revolutionary Road (1961), where the main character works
in the advertising industry, to Lauren Weisburger’s The Devil Wears Prada
(2003), which revolves around working for a fashion magazine . . . not to mention
all the detective novels and spy fiction that are centred on the characters’
jobs.