Types

I want to talk about two things: the first is that I saw yet another video of Caitlin playing basketball!!  This time I sort of knew what to expect, and I could keep a watch out for what makes her such a phenom.   It isn't really a mystery; what I thought I saw the last time I watched was pretty close to what I saw today: she can sink a basket (is "sink" the proper word to use?) from an enormous distance—I believe that baskets made from far away score more points; I could be wrong—but of course they're riskier.  So the only way to stop her from scoring is to either keep her from getting the ball at all, or keep her prohibitively far from the basket. 

The second thing is: types.  When I'm writing a story, and a new character comes along, I'm usually thinking of this character as a brand new person, with all the special properties that I imagined him or her with.  (The exception might be Helen Nordstrom herself; more about her later.)  But if I'm introducing a minor character, or friend, I imagine them as belonging to a certain type.

When I say "type", you're probably imagining an ethnic type.  In a way, ethnic types are the archetypes for types generally; urban Americans, and since Television, all Americans, think in terms of types; and now,  probably, all over the world people think in terms of types.

For example, let's talk about some specific characters in the Helen story.  Helen's dad is supposed to be of Scandinavian descent, and I imagine him as essentially a Midwestern guy.  Annie, Helen's classmate, who married John Nordstrom, Snr, I imagine as a sort of Irish type.

Cindy—Mary-Catherine O'Shaughnessy—I also imagine as an Irish type, but with a lot of English ethnicity mixed in.  Gena and Allie I imagine as English, Erin as Irish; but James as German/Scandinavian.

Lalitha and Sita are generic Indian; Lorna is Jewish, and so is Becky.  Maryssa was an interesting problem.  I thought of her parents as Armenian, or Russian, or something like that, but Maryssa acts and behaves very Anglo.

Angie Connors, Helen's one-time Calculus student, despite her Irish name, feels very Italian to me.  So does Little Elly.

Jane, the stories, had lots of interesting characters.  Jane herself is what we call Pennsylvania Dutch over here; they're Germans who were members of very rigid protestant denominations, many of whom chose to become Lutheran or Methodist.  Deanna, the other main character in that story, is Jewish; Stephanie Johnson is generic Midwestern; Maria and Szuzsanna Varady are Hungarian; Mary-Ellen is generic Midwestern; Martha Schultz is German.

When I create a character, I don't start with a type; the type is an attribute that gets added on afterwards. 

Take James, for instance, Helen's little boy.  I think I modeled him after a cute little fellow I used to babysit while in college.  The fact that he's German comes from the fact that his father is Jeffrey Gibson, whom I imagine as half-English, half-German.  Helen named him James Gibson, which is kind of ethnically neutral.