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Several days ago, I finished transforming a room in my home into a creative studio.
I’ve recently taken up watercolor painting, and it’s been a bit inconvenient to have to clear my painting supplies off the kitchen table when I wanted to eat lunch or dinner or off my desk if I wanted to work there with my laptop.
My new creative space has two desks: one for writing and one for art. It also has a couch, perfect for curling up to read a book.
Having a place devoted to my creative projects has been wonderful for my focus and writing productivity. I think one of the things that has made me love this new space is how much it reflects my personality. I decorated it carefully with objects that match my taste or evoke a specific memory.
For example, on the writing desk, there’s a decorative box once owned by my grandparents. On the walls, I hung posters of paintings of Arles by Vincent van Gogh (one of my favorite artists). My parents had purchased the posters at a Metropolitan Museum of Art exhibit in the ‘80s. When I look at the posters, I think not only of van Gogh but also of my parents.
Additionally, I hung a poster of the Hudson River that reminds me of the Hudson River Valley where I used to live. To anyone else, these objects and artwork would not have the same meaning.
I filled the room with vibrant colors to match the posters. If someone else had been decorating the room, they might have chosen a more muted palette. Perhaps they would have needed only one desk, not two.
Recently, I saw a photo of Ernest Hemingway’s writing studio in Key West. He lined the room with book cases and displayed his hunting trophies on the walls. He arranged a wooden chair and table for his typewriter as well as what looked like a lounge chair where he could write while reclining. His writing space certainly looked nothing like mine!
Years ago, I wrote an article about the creative spaces of different famous authors. Each one was unique to their personality and writing style.
As I surveyed my new creative space, I got to thinking about how the decorations in our homes tell us a lot about who we are.
In the book I’m working on about crafting memorable characters, I’ve recently finished a section where I explored how masterful authors describe a character’s dwelling place. The best authors use this dwelling place to give readers an understanding not just of the setting of the story, but also of the character’s personality, origins, ambitions, prized possessions, and more.
I looked at the furnishings I’d selected, and I thought, “If I were a character in a story, what would all these objects say about me?”
How to Reveal a Character Without Describing Them
This all came full circle when I was reading a chapter today in The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoevsky, translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky (my current read).
The protagonist, Prince Myshkin, is searching for the house of his friend, Rogozhin. Myshkin has never visited there before. I was struck by these lines when he first nears the house.
One house, probably because of its peculiar physiognomy, began to attract his attention from far away…The house was big, grim, three-storied, without any architecture, of a dirty green color.
Physiognomy is the pseudoscience of judging a person’s character or personality from their outer appearance.
Since I am reading an English translation of Dostoevsky’s novel, I don’t know if that is the exact term he used in Russian. But it seemed an apt one for this powerful technique of illuminating a character’s inner personality through the outer appearance of their rooms (or any place where they live).
Here’s another excerpt from the novel.
“I recognized your house just now from a hundred paces away, as I was approaching,” said the prince.
“Why so?”
“I have no idea. Your house has the physiognomy of your family and of your whole Rogozhin life, but ask me why I think that—and I can’t explain it…It never occurred to me before that this would be the sort of house you lived in, but when I saw it, I thought at once: ‘Yes, that’s exactly the kind of house he had to have.'”
…”So gloomy. You sit in such gloom,” said the prince, looking around the study.
Myshkin is not off the mark as Rogozhin is currently depressed and following a self-destructive path that is turning his soul as ugly as the house.
Describing a character’s dwelling place is a wonderful way to show instead of tell. An author can describe a happy character through something happy about their room. Perhaps it is a small, shabby space but the character has decorated it with flowers and bright pictures.
If the character is miserable, the room would reflect that instead. Perhaps the furniture is severe and uncomfortable, as Charles Dickens describes the home of the miser Anthony Chuzzlewit in his book Martin Chuzzlewit.
A dim, dirty, smoky, tumble-down, rotten old house it was, as anybody would desire to see; but there the firm of Anthony Chuzzlewit and Son transacted all their business and their pleasure too…Thus in the miserable bedrooms there were files of moth-eaten letters hanging up against the walls…while the meagre bedsteads, washing-stands, and scraps of carpet, were huddled away into corners as objects of secondary consideration, not to be thought of but as disagreeable necessities, furnishing no profit, and intruding on the one affair of life.
Four Writing Exercises to Turn a Room Into a Character Study
All of this culminated in me typing up the following exercises that have helped me strengthen my writing and storytelling:
- Describe a room or space in your home that reflects your personality. It could be your living room or your writing desk, but it should be one that you decorated. What do the objects say about you? Your interests? Your life history? What you value? If someone else decorated it or you decorated it jointly with someone else, describe what those objects say about you as well.
- Now describe a room in the house of someone you know well. This is also a helpful exercise if you’re writing a memoir about a living person. Consider what the objects in that room say about them. How do they reflect that person’s personality, interests, and life history? (You may need to visit this person’s home to observe the room closely.) This is a fantastic exercise for exploring different personalities and getting ideas for fictional characters.
- If you’re writing a story, even if you don’t include a description of your protagonist’s dwelling place, consider the kind of place the character lives in. They might also have several different dwelling places throughout the story. What objects would they have based on their personality? How does the dwelling place make them feel? How would it be decorated? Would they decorate it themselves or would someone else?
- Another fantastic exercise is to describe the same space twice. The first time invent a room (or any dwelling place) where a character lives. The second time change the character and consequently the furnishings. Try to hint at the character’s personality without directly telling us. For example, instead of telling us that the character is disorganized, you might describe the piles of laundry or unopened mail and packages.
I hope you enjoy these exercise and that they give you inspiration for your own writing!
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Thank you! Wishing you much success with your writing projects this year! God bless.
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