11 of 14·Decide

Characterization

ethopoeia

Write a speech in someone else’s mouth.

A bus window with a copper arc of voice.
  1. 01Learn
  2. 02Spot
  3. 03Make

Characterization is speech in character, at a particular hour. You borrow their limits: what they can do, what they refuse to say, the words they would actually spend. If you explain them from the outside, you are back in narration.

A voice

A bus driver, the Tuesday after a route change, to a rider filming her: “You can film. The camera does not move the stop. I can kneel the bus. I cannot invent a corner.”