Yeah ok, so this is what we call self-promotion.
In 2005 (ish) I wrote a story called “Shell pieces.” It will appear in the first edition of the New York Skyline Review.
It’s reads like a romance story but I wrote the story with a higher literary goal. That was, to illustrate that you can tell so much about a character without saying a damn thing about them, and focusing on other ways to bring characters to life. It’s called showing and not telling. The way a character interacts with the setting tells you a lot about them.
Bad writers often rely upon a tell-you-about-my-character approach that is dry and boring.
In real life people don’t learn about other people that way. You wouldn’t walk up to a perfect stranger and say, “Hello, my name’s Booboo and I’m a short but spunky brunette with a gambling problem.”
No.
You learn about people by watching the way they interact with their surroundings, the way they interact with other people and their mannerisms.
Nothing is different in writing.
If you want to create strong, round characters, you need to do it in a believable way.
So back to my story.
I had two very contrasting characters. The girl, who is capricious, wayward and free spirited. A boy who is the exact opposite, calculating, intelligent and attentive. I didn’t give them names, and for a reason. I wanted to keep the story clean and simple, and names would have cluttered things up. I put them on a beach, and used the setting as a way to fill them out. The way that they interact with the environment tells you about them.
Also, the beach is the perfect setting because it lends a visual aspect to the theme. That being, that people will go in and out of your life in a natural rhythm that’s unpredictable as it is unavoidable. The waves rushing into the shore and then running back is a mental image device used to highlight this theme. I like that about my story.
The shell pieces are also a symbol. Because people chose them, just like you choose certain people to keep in your life. Some people pick up shells, and keep them. Some people pick up shells and toss them, some people don’t touch them at all. Naturally, people like different kinds of shells, some people like the shiny blue scooped shells of mussels, other people like the worn matte surface of sea glass.
Anyway, that’s just a little bit about my story, and what was going on in my mind when I wrote it.
Here’s a hyperlink if you want to purchase a copy. BUY ME
A small excerpt follows:
Shell Pieces
The balmy night shore stretched out around them on all sides. A line of heavy waves crashed down upon the beach, rushing up along the smooth incline of the sand, then swirling thinly around the base of her feet and just missing his.
They walked against the wind, keeping close to the line where the sand touches the sea. She sent up large sprays of foamy water every time she dragged her feet through the surf, and the bottom of her knee-length skirt was heavy with salt water.
He was carefully avoiding her splashes as he kept to the newly washed sand, his feet making slight indentations on the packed surface.... (The rest is in the book)