Characterization in a One-Liner

Posted by J. Mark Bertrand
on Tuesday, March 13, 2007
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In addition to offering a great example of how a novel can be grounded in a metaphor, Kenneth Fearing's The Big Clock displays the author's talent for one-liner characterization, one of the traits we tend to associate with noir. When the protagonist, George Stroud, encounters his soon-to-be mistress sitting in a bar, here's the description he gives: "She was blonde as hell, wearing a lot of black." That blonde as hell tells us something about the woman's appearance, but it also reveals character -- a bit of hers and a bit of George's, too. All alone, it's not much, but in context the line is iconic.

Fearing takes the technique to the next level later in the book, when Stroud gives us his take on Steve Hagen, the dark manipulator behind Stroud's woes. Here's the description: "Hagen was a hard, dark little man whose soul had been hit by lightning, which he liked." That soul hit by lightning is good, but adding which he liked in passing is pure genius. Stroud goes on: "His mother was a bank vault and his father an International Business Machine." In other words, Hagen is all business, a perfectly amoral money-man, but it's no fun spelling it out.

Writers who take the injuction to "show, don't tell" too literally will never come out and tell us such things about a character, and writers who do nothing but tell rarely manage it with such interesting efficiency. Naturally, these one-liners come best from a first-person narrator, and they shouldn't be over-indulged or you'll veer into pastiche. To my mind, they're a great example of saying a lot with a few words, which is the essence of "packed" writing.