Make it sing 5: Carl Hiaasen creates a character
March 24th 2011 05:44
Let’s take, for example, a character who has entered her advanced years with a rancorously judgmental attitude to life.
She’s bitter and twisted, and the novelist could describe her in those words. That, however, would be a cliché, and attractive to only the most undemanding of readers.
Or the writer could try letting the reader work it out on their own through the story. Some writers will introduce the evidence slowly. Some, like the masterful Carl Hiaasen in his new novel, Nature Girl, will give it to you in a rush of creative brilliance.
Hiaasen introduces a new character at the start of Chapter 7 with the following description: “Disappointment was the fuel that cranked the aging pistons of Della Shreave Renfroe Landry – disappointment in the father who’d cashed out his Shell Oil pension early and invested every dollar in the DeLorean Motor Company; disappointment in the mother who’d refused to hock her heirloom earrings and send Della to a prep school favored by the tall rangy sons of petroleum tycoons; disappointment in the three successive husbands who’d died without leaving Della wealthy and carefree; disappointment in the one daughter who’d run off to follow a rock band called Phish, then married a public defender who was a known Democrat and quite possibly a Jew; disappointment in the other daughter, who’d taken a nursing degree and, instead of bagging the first available neurosurgeon, hook ed up with the World Health Organisation amd moved to Calcutta.”
It’s a joyous romp of a sentence. It’s Carl Hiaasen doing what he does best, satirising America’s social, political and criminal misfits
And showing us what makes good writing.
Remember the words of our two great guides, Mark Twain, who said, "The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug," and The Round Mound of Sound, who said, "Make it sing."
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