“We’ll just have to sell him,” I remember my mother saying with finality. “It will be a long winter and I will be alone here with only these children to help me. Besides, he eats too much and we will not have enough feed for the cattle as it is”…

My mother is speaking as she energetically pokes at the wood and coal within her stove. The smoke escapes, billows upward and flattens itself out against the ceiling. Whenever she speaks she does something with her hands. It is as if the private voice within her can only be liberated by some kind of physical action. She is tall and dark with high cheekbones and brown eyes. Her hair, which is very long and very black, is pulled back severely and coiled in a bun at the base of her neck, where it is kept in place by combs of coral.

This character from Alistair MacLeod’s story The Fall is extraordinarily vivid because the writer focuses above all on capturing her energy—through her clipped speech, the smoke’s billowing, the severe pulling back of her hair by combs. And this energy reflects the intensity of her need—to ensure the survival of her children. What if we see our own characters, not as a miscellaneous collection of traits, but in terms of their fundamental life force—what they are driven to do and the energy with which they do it? As writers we are more likely to connect with them on a visceral level, and so is our reader because everything we imagine about them—how they speak, move, dress—will become powerfully expressive of this fundamental force.

Whether you’re creating a new character or working with an existing one, whether this person is real or fictional, ask yourself what does this person want, and what is the quality of energy associated with their goal or desire? We’re not used to talking about characters in terms of energy, but try thinking of them—experiencing them—in this way. Each character will become that much more of a living presence—even while confined to the page. This is the magic of language, of craft. Alistair MacLeod’s output was small compared to many, but each of his stories is a translucent gem, filled with passages that make me wonder at how he could convey so much with so little.