An Observation About Characterization

     Regard the following snippet from a novella from P. S. Power:

     “It’s a danger of taking responsibility for others, of course. A strong leader might have to make decisions that others wouldn’t. I can’t even tell you it’s wrong for you to be doing it. Just be careful. Taking on too much at once can be as bad of a plan as doing too little. You get time to see to things, too. Not everything has to be done now, after all.”
     He nodded at the wise sounding words.
     “Yeah. Plus, now I’m seeing my hands, stained with blood. A hallucination, not just, you know, well, do they look red to you?” He held them out, asking for confirmation, or possibly magic to happen. Instead the slightly curly haired woman simply shook her head.
     “Not at all. If anything they look a little green. From the grass clippings. That, well hallucinations are common for a human being when they meet a Wendigo. Especially things like blood. That it’s on your hands, well… yes. You’re a warrior. Perhaps a great leader, or a guardian. You have blood on your hands and will.”

     In the above, the subject is murder – executions, really – in one case, with extensive torture included. The protagonist is a fifteen-year-old boy, Jake Hines, who has been in the lead in orchestrating the murders. He’s even participated in the torture. He describes one of the psychological consequences above.

     Jake’s interlocutor is a military commander, a Colonel Calley. What she tells him about himself is plainly disturbing…but it’s also true. The truth of it is borne out by Jake’s decisions and actions in two previous novels plus this novella. Here we come to an important auctorial decision.

     There are three legitimate ways to characterize in fiction:

1. By what the character says;
2. By what the character does;
3. By what other characters say about him.

     However, not all three techniques are appropriate in every situation. The above snippet is a good example. Jake could never convincingly – convincingly to the reader, that is – describe himself as “a warrior” or “a great leader.” The evidence for each of those things is plentiful…but he could not say those things about himself. P. S. Power put the attributions in the right place: the mouth of a commander who clearly knows something about the burdens of leadership. Jake himself was only just coming to understand them.

     Just another episode in the continuing saga of “how it’s done.”