Craft Corner: Character Counterpointing

Characters lie at the heart of many great stories. The things that happen to them, or their desires, are often the impetus for plot to take shape. The way we give information about these characters: their wants, their likes and dislikes, their backstories, etc., are all part of characterization. This is the process of making these characters into people readers can connect with. One surefire way to engage in meaningful characterization is to use a technique called counterpointed characterization.

Counterpointed characterization is a technique used by writers that positions two or more different characters against, or, indeed, alongside, one another in such a way that this positioning helps to elucidate aspects of these characters that would not otherwise be clear to readers. In addition to doing characterization work, this technique can also be a natural way to create dramatic tension in a narrative. It is important to note, though, that counterpointed characterization is not the same thing as creating a foil for a character. To counterpoint two characters, they do not need to be opposites or versions of one another. They can be two distinct character types who exist alongside one another and who the writer wants to see what their proximity to each other might yield. 

There are many famous examples of counterpointed characterization that might help make this technique clearer. Jo March is the main character in Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women. She is counterpointed against the responsible, proper Meg, the sickly, saintly Beth, the feminine, sometimes vain Amy, and the rich, aimless Laurie. By putting Jo alongside these characters, Alcott gives the reader greater insight into who Jo is. Readers see what she envies about her sisters and Laurie, and what she judges them for.

Another excellent, and more contemporary, example of this technique is found in Raven Leilani’s wonderful novel, Luster. The novel tells the story of Edie, a 20-something Black woman in New York City who forms a romantic relationship with a man in an open marriage who has an adopted daughter, Akila. While the man and his wife are white, Akila is Black. These two characters are counterpointed, not against, but alongside, each other:

“…I take a moment to really look at her, her shiny brown cheeks, her soft frown and Adventure Time nightshirt, her towering hair and balled fists. Because once upon a time my weird adolescent breasts were subject to the dissection of aunties everywhere, my BMI always a hot topic among the Jamaican deaconesses in our SDA church, I would like to mind my own business when it comes to the subject of Akila’s hair. However, it is a massive, two-foot condemnation of her limp-haired parents, who had clearly made some previous effort that did not pan out.

‘You’re the girlfriend,’ she says with no ire or judgment, which somehow makes it worse.”

This example is so rich and illustrative of how counterpointed characterization can serve a story. The moment above, in which Edie meets Akila for the first time, gives the reader an example of Edie seeing herself in Akila right away. By putting Edie and Akila in this situation, Leilani has a vehicle to weave pieces of Edie’s backstory and emotional landscape into the story with a light touch.

Counterpointed characterization is just one way to utilize counterpointing in general. Though this technique is the focus of this specific post, one might also benefit from seeing what counterpointing can do for other elements of a story. A writer might also counterpoint settings, ideas, desires, and more to see what surprises it might open the door for in their story.

— Debbie Miszak, Mid-American Review

Craft Corner: An Argument for Non-Linearity  

Eggs for breakfast. Turkey sandwich for lunch. Spaghetti for dinner.  

Short stories and novels tend to use the same structure over and over again: linear. Probably because linear stories make sense. The story starts somewhere, character A makes a mistake or changes their life or meets character B, and then conflict arises out of that change and, look, there’s the middle of the story, until finally the ending, where everything is either nicely resolved or wrapped up in a fiery death. Humans experience time linearly, so they write linearly as a default. And that works well for many stories, but the presence of a default implies the existence of an abnormal structure that has the potential to be, well, abnormal. Always using a linear structure is like eating the same thing every day. Eventually, you get sick of eating eggs each morning. 

Deciding to use a non-linear structure should not be taken as an open invitation to create a story structure that confuses the plot and character arcs. Those and other elements should still be preserved in the narrative. But it’s possible to start somewhere that isn’t quite the beginning. Maybe a particular story began a long time ago, and the main character is desperately trying to escape it. Or perhaps two, or more, stories are intertwined, fighting for presence in the structure before coming together. A story that jumps around in time creates intrigue and tension that compels readers to push on. 

The 1957 short story “Sonny’s Blues” by James Baldwin is a great example of non-linearity working to the benefit of a story. The story opens with the unnamed narrator finding news about his brother Sonny getting arrested for the selling and use of heroin, and, after jumping ahead a couple years to his release, the story moves to the past for a whopping twelve pages. There, the story lingers on a moment where both brothers are on the cusp of a new version of adulthood. The narrator has joined the army and is about to get married. Sonny, still a teenager in school, struggles to pin down his future. He wants to be a piano player, but the practicality of this dream begins to chase him down as he grows older.  

If the story had been linear, opening with the brothers when they were younger, the reader would be just as in the dark as the characters. However, since the story gives readers the information that Sonny has been arrested for drug use, it provides a different interpretation of the backstory that Baldwin shifts to, lending a darker tone to these early moments in the characters’ lives. One scene on page twelve, a conversation with the narrator and his mom about Sonny, is particularly harrowing knowing where Sonny is headed:  

“I want to talk to you about your brother,” she said, suddenly. “If anything happens to me he ain’t going to have nobody to look out for him.” 

“Mama,” I said, “ain’t nothing going to happen to you or Sonny. Sonny’s all right. He’s a good boy and he’s got good sense.” 

“It ain’t a question of his being a good boy,” Mama said, “nor of his having good sense. It ain’t only the bad ones, nor yet the dumb ones that gets sucked under.” She stopped, looking at me. “Your Daddy once had a brother,” she said, and she smiled in a way that made me feel she was in pain. “You didn’t never know that, did you?” – “Sonny’s Blues” by James Baldwin

She goes on to tell him about how his dad’s brother was carelessly run over by a car full of white people, killing him and traumatizing his dad in a way that he never recovered from. Though time and history is linear, its effects against oppressed minority groups are often not. The past imposes itself onto people in the present. In creating a plot line that frequently jumps around in time, with his familial history pushing forward into the story’s present, Baldwin mirrors this non-linear aspect of history in the struggles Sonny and his brother face in 1950’s Harlem.  

Linear stories offer a neat narrative, where backstory might be added in through dialogue or a throwaway line to give any needed context to a character’s life. Done right, a non-linear plot line can be just as clean, and it grants writers freedom to give details as they see fit. To adapt the clutches of time to their own interests. To deviate from one of the most standardized elements of storytelling. So, please, enough with the eggs. 

– Haley Souders, Mid-American Review

Craft Corner: Code-Switching as Shapeshifting in Poetry

A poem that moves between languages has a special mystery. As a Mexican American writer, the Spanish/English code-switch speaks to me in a personal, almost mystical way. Through its agility, I feel the fluidity and tension of dual language, culture, myth, and perception. I sense the poem’s exploration of “otherness,” but also its “both-ness,” which especially fascinates me. What type of experience would compel a writer to enmesh two languages to communicate meaning? What is gained through the mergence, or the mezcla (mix), and the semi-obscurity of blending languages? I think that through code-switching, the poet inhabits dual identities simultaneously and “appears” to readers as constantly transfigured. This means that a code-switching poem is a shapeshifting poem, and in that sense, poetry is made metaphysical. 

Code-switching, or moving between more than one language in a poem, is an inherently daring move. The writer risks losing or alienating readers, obscuring the poem’s message, or skewing its ultimate landing and interpretation. Yet, poets who achieve this shapeshift imbue their poems with multi-textural meaning and voice that extends beyond literal translation. This act of linguistic agility often defies and invites multiple interpretations. It creates separation, mystery, and play. It imbues the poem with cultural nuance, regional parlance, idiosyncrasy, phrasing, music, humor, and voice. Poets who code-switch fearlessly and are masters of this linguistic fluidity include Eduardo C. Corral, Natalie Diaz, Iliana Rocha, and Natalie Scenters-Zapico. Eduardo C. Corral’s stunning “Testaments Scratched into a Water Station Barrel,” from his book Guillotine, is one example of an arresting English to Spanish code-switching poem.

In “Testaments,” Corral explores the stories of people displaced from Mexico along the borderlands of the United States. The “testaments” described in the poems revolve around graffiti and random messages scrawled onto water stations scattered throughout the desert. In this twenty-five-page poem, there is an arresting sense of loneliness and anonymous yet personal anguish. We share the visions of a speaker who is lost, ill, exiled, thirsty, hungry, afraid, wandering, and desperately lonely as he staggers between borders and cultures. The language mesh that happens in “Testaments” is deeply poignant. Diane Suess calls this an “erotics of loneliness” and says of the poem’s striking calligrams that blur walls of words in both English and Spanish, “it’s as if I’m reading through smoke, through tears” (Corral, back cover).

One of these calligrams creates a blurred cross shape using the word “clavo,” or nail. Running through the center of the cross is the phrase “Me falta un clavo para mi cruz,” or “I’m missing a nail for my cross.” Another juxtaposes random graffiti from the borderlands like “BUILD THE WALL STOP DRUGS” above “chinga tu madre gringo ™” (Corral 15). Another calligram in the poem, composed of the speaker’s haunted thoughts and prayers, says “Déjame viver, Señora de Las Sombras,” or “Let me live, Lady of Shadows” (Corral 23). The speaker tells The Lady of the Shadows (which we can interpret as death) “no hay dinero / ni trabajo” followed by “the dead gather.” This heartache and anguish are raw, and straddle both worlds. In “Testaments,” the speaker observes “God is circling like a vulture / gracias nada mas / corazón de oro / a quién vas engañar” (Corral 35). This is language that clearly expresses dread and struggle—even if the literal meaning of each word isn’t precisely grasped.

I think that intuiting the meaning of unfamiliar words creates its own engagement and mystery that deepens the experience of a poem. For the average reader whose primary language is English, words like diablo, río, corazón, for example, likely exist at some level of fundamental comprehension. Yet, even less commonplace words like molcajete, calavera, and charro, when taken in the context of an engaging poem, are thrilling linguistic gestures that invite further immersion and investigation. I find the musicality, delicacy, and bravado of Spanglish and its particular code-switch especially intriguing because the languages push in a “prickly” way against each other. When a phrase in Spanish is inserted into a stanza in English, a thrust and swagger happen that is part of the music, part of the shapeshifting. This happens when the speaker in “Testaments” observes “Blood soaks my sneakers. The handkerchief / around my head / reeks like sobacos” and “A severed hand / black yarn around / the thumb. Welcome / to the cagada” (Corral 21). Here, “sobacos” are “armpits” and “the cagada” is “the shit.” But doesn’t that swagger and music lead you to a strange sense of intuited understanding through context?

Even if the words in the poem are of a specific dialect not immediately understood, the reader can still sense an authentic utterance—and that these particular words have simply been chosen because this is how the poet experienced the poem. The speaker in “Testaments” says “I try to recall the taste of Pablo’s sweat. / Whiskey, no. / Wet dirt, si. / I stuff English / into my mouth / spit out chingaderas” (Corral 11). Regional aphorisms and untranslatable figures of speech create an innate sense of withholding, or inability for certain expressions to exist beyond linguistic boundaries in a single form. So, the poet must keep both language and meaning fluid and flexible, as in the lines “Cada noche / I sleep / with dead men. / The coyote was the third to die.” The stitching of languages is innate and hypnotic, as in “there’s a foto / in my bolsillo / of a skeleton / shrouded / in black flames: / Nuestra Señora de la Santa Muerte” (Corral 11). It’s a dynamic gesture and a dazzling process to feel happening in a poem.

The Spanish/English code-switch has a special significance for me as a reader, but it has also changed my linguistic parameters so that I’m drawn to poetry with unfamiliar terrains. This makes the experience of turning to poems an act of seeking the shapeshift; that is, I turn to poetry not only to be immersed in a story, and a psyche, but also another psychic reality with its own elemental textures of language, phrasing, music, and thought. Immersing ourselves in the poetics of multiple languages is vital for growing in perception, awareness, and empathy—and code-switching is the mystical crossing that allows it to happen. As Eduardo C. Corral writes in “Testaments Scratched into a Water Station Barrel,” “a proverb: beauty / can’t be talked into speech. The sky isn’t blue. / It’s azul.” and “Saguaros / are triste, not curious.” Perhaps beauty cannot be conjured by speech, but it can be built and transfigured within these careful layers.

––Mary Robles, Mid-American Review

Note from the editors: The works in this craft essay are cited from Guillotine by Eduardo C. Corral. Minneapolis, MN: Graywolf Press, 2020. 72 pages. $16.00, paper.