Portrait of the Artist: Characterization

Characterization is important. It gives life to your characters and resonance to your narrative. In the academic world, it's formally known as "characterismus," and BYU’s Silva Rhetoricae furnishes the following definition - "The description of a person's character. If this is restricted to the body, this is effictio; if restricted to a person's habits, this is ethopoeia."

How would you describe a character in a story? You might focus on their mannerisms, interests, or behaviors (ethopoeia), or on the other hand, you might illustrate what they look like (effictio). Allow me to provide examples.

I think a wonderful example of ethopoeia comes from A Portrait of a Artist as a Young Man, Joyce's semi-autobiographical novel. In the novel, Stephen Dedalus describes his father as "A medical student, an oarsman, a tenor, an amateur actor, a shouting politician, a small landlord, a small investor, a drinker, a good fellow, a story-teller, somebody's secretary, something in a distillery, a tax-gatherer, a bankrupt and at present a praiser of his own past."

Although the father’s physical features are left unmentioned, we gain a sense of who he is because of what he has done.

As for effictio, which deals with physical appearance, consider another passage from the same novel. One of the priests, Father Dolan, is described like this: “Stephen lifted his eyes in wonder and saw for a moment Father Dolan's white-grey not young face, his baldy white-grey head with fluff at the sides of it, the steel rims of his spectacles and his no-coloured eyes looking through the glasses.”

How can you balance these two methods of characterization in your own writing?