Counterpointed Characterization

Posted by J. Mark Bertrand
on Monday, April 05, 2004
|
Permalink

 

It's hard to talk about writing without resorting to analogy. Both Henry James and Balzac, for example, were fond of describing the writer's work in the language of painting. For me, the best analogy has always been music. An author is a kind of composer. He begins with a form and fills it with notes, but the notes are organized into patterns. Themes recur, over time they are developed and resolved. Writing is also like composition in the sense that certain compositional techniques exist, and composers utilze, ignore and transgress against them as the need arises. Charles Baxter discusses the musically-inspired technique of counterpoint in a chapter from Burning Down the House titled "Counterpointed Characterization":

With counterpointed characterization, certain kinds of people are pushed together, people who bring out a crucial response to each other. A latent energy rises to the surface, the desire or secret previously forced down into psychic obscurity.

Baxter sees this technique of characterization as a more nuanced form of conflict. By putting two characters together, we discover something about one (or both) of them that would not have been revealed apart from the encounter, but not necessarily because they are at each other's throat. Either through irriation, frustration, enamoration or some other motive born of the friction, one of them speaks or acts in a way that shows the reader something the character would just as soon keep hidden.

The first commandment of fiction is Thou shalt show and not tell. This is true for characterization as well as plot. The question is, how do you show what is deep inside a character? How do you show something the character would never dream of acting out or talking about? This problem requires some thought from the writer. You have to know what your characters are hiding and why. Are they afraid of what people would think of them? Or are they afraid of what they would have to do if they opened up? Once you can answer these questions, then start thinking about ways to strip your character bare, not through high stakes conflict (the story can only afford so much) but through counterpointed characterization, through the fit and friction between one character and another.