Having failed to pick a name for my short film in the last entry, I decided to take executive action. After all, names can always be changed later and I had bigger fish to fuck.
And so our hero’s name was chosen: Clive Jackman.
Wow. That’s a powerful name. Clive has an air of worldly knowledge and sophistication and Jackman sounds like it might have some quasi-phallic implications.
Perfect.
But now the tricky part: presenting Clive Jackman to our reader using words.
Using words to convey ideas has always been an area of writing that I struggle with. But that’s no excuse to not try. I came up with:
Walking out of the shadows is… CLIVE JACKMAN, 32, looking not unlike a young Christopher Walken. While listening to his retro Walkman, he walks to a walk-in freezer.
I had to take a breath from the raw creativity that poured out from me. And then I re-read what I had written.
But I had the strange feeling that something wasn’t quite working. So I dissected it piece by piece.
The beginning of the description was a must. Emerging from the shadows creates an atmosphere of intrigue. That wasn’t it.
Saying Clive looks like Christopher Walken not only puts a clear image into the reader’s mind but also saves me the trouble of having to articulate what he looks like. So that couldn’t be it either.
While the Walkman is certainly dated, my instincts told me that it gives a flair to Clive. He’s a man stuck in a different era. That couldn’t be it either.
I was unsure why the paragraph felt off.
And then it hit me: Clive Jackman needed a clear positive identifier. Something to let the audience know he was the good guy. Something to make him sympathetic.
A dog.
People love dogs. If Clive had a dog, the audience would immediately know he was compassionate.
We could even have the bad guy kill the dog later if we want to make the audience mad.
So after a quick re-write, I had Clive Jackman’s character introduction:
Walking out of the shadows is… CLIVE WOCKMAN, 32, reminiscent of Christopher Walken. Walking in front is the dog he walks to the walk-in freezer while listening to his Walkman.
Something with the language still felt off but I couldn’t put my finger on it. So it’s probably just the perfectionist in me being paranoid.
NEXT TIME: We give the dog a name. Maybe Scruffy or Barney. Or we’ll advance the plot.
Aspiring Writer 