I’ve been thinking about the physical description of characters–how to work it in gracefully, how much is enough, what might a reader want or need to know. So I was struck by an instance of description in Barbara Kingsolver’s Flight Behavior. Now, there are plenty of things to admire in Kingsolver’s writing; I’m just going to pick out one tiny piece. But maybe it’s the accumulation of so many just-right tiny pieces that makes the novel so good. Ya’ think?
SPOILER ALERT? No worries–I’ve just started the book; this won’t give anything away.
“Hester reached back, divided her thin gray ponytail in half, and gave both sides a hard, simultaneous yank to tighten it. This was one of about five thousand personal habits that drove Dellarobia nuts. Why not just get a tighter ponytail band? Her mother-in-law seemed to use hair-yanking as a signal” (23).
Why do I think this is so brilliant? Because the detail is unexpected yet spot-on: I’d bet just about anyone who’s ever worn a ponytail has performed that yank maneuver, though maybe with less pointed intent. And because now we know a little more about Hester’s appearance (thin, gray hair) but that information is more than visual, it serves character development as well. By the end of the paragraph, we know more about both women: we know Hester’s a kind of control freak who constantly needs to assert her control rather than just solve the problem (tighter elastic) and we know Dellarobia’s just about up to here. And when the ponytail yanking returns, even in passing, we’ll know what it means.
Source: Kingsolver, Barbara. Flight Behavior. New York: Harper, 2012.