Students are asked to look at the pictures before them. They are apprised that these pictures show various items found in archeological digs at Teotihuacan and that they will once again be calling on their imaginations in order to describe who the people in the pictures are. As they look over their pictures, several questions will be put to them that have to do with aspects of characterization:
-
Is the person male or female? Young, grownup or old? Strong or weak?
-
Attractive or ugly? (Physical)
-
Is the person nice or mean? Generous or greedy? (Social)
-
Is the person smart or dumb? Outgoing or shy? Happy or sad? (Psychological)
-
Is this a person who tries to do good things? Or a person who tries to do bad things? (Moral)
-
Does this person have a job? Is the person a king or queen?
-
A priest or a god? (Typified)
-
What is the most special thing about this person that makes him or her different from anyone else? (Individualized)
-
Do most people like this person? Or do they dislike this person? (Sympathetic)
To introduce students to the technique of characterization, the legend of La Loba (The Wolf Woman) will be relayed to them as an allegory for the process of creating a character. In the story (modeled after a retelling of the same by Clarrisa Pinkola Estes from her book, Women Who Run With the Wolves) we find:
La Loba, an old hag, roams the desert in search of bones. She particularly likes wolf bones. She gathers bones throughout the day and brings them back to her cave in the mountains at night. When she has gathered enough bones, she assembles them into a skeleton of a wolf. She then lights a fire and decides what song she will sing. As she sings, the wolf begins to change as muscles, organs, arteries and veins begin to form. La Loba continues her song and the wolf becomes fleshed out and covered with fur. She sings louder and the wolf comes alive and runs from the cave. But La Loba keeps singing even louder and stronger. And as the wolf runs away, a sudden rain shower stops him in his tracks. With the sound of La Lobas song and the rain, the wolf is transformed into a beautiful maiden.
Characterization fits well with La Lobas methodology. In defining a character, we must gather the bones, the details with which to construct the person. We can shuffle through our details, selecting the most important ones in order to create a structure and eliminate what we feel is unnecessary. With the skeleton of our character complete, we must then call upon ourselves to breathe life into it. What of ourselves do we bring to the process? What emotions and thoughts do we give to this character? When the character is fully formed, we may think that we are done, but there is one further step -- transformation. This is the inspiration that we can give to transcend the mechanics of construction; perhaps a point where we can become our own creation and thus it becomes real.