On Avoiding Personification

Except...

What do you feel about sentence like this? —

Her notebook sat on her desk.

Unobjectionable? Nothing wrong with that?

Okay, how about this? —

Her notebook lay waiting on her desk.

Or a little more excessively —

Her notebook lay waiting for her on her desk.

Is this the kind of sentence you might include in a story?

If so, then what about? —

Her notebook lay patiently waiting for her on her desk.

Or, more pushily —

Her notebook lay waiting impatiently for her on her desk.

In terms of personification, this is all fairly mild stuff. It’s nothing like —

As she strode into the dark castle, its walls closed protectively around her.

Or —

As she strode into the dark castle, its walls closed malevolently around her.

I’m guessing you don’t still write sentences like this.

Not since you were in your early teenage years.

I certainly wrote of many them, and loved doing it.

Maybe we’re both clear of that kind of prose.

But what about? —

The brakes screamed in her ears as she fought to stop the car.

There is a certain amount of personification built into our verbs.

Try to think of alternatives to screamed. Most of them are equally derived from ways humans vocalise: shrieked (quite Hitchcock heroine), screeched (more of a hint of bird), squealed (maybe a little more piggy).

The only other way of doing it, which seems utterly lame, is The brakes made a very high pitched noise…

Which means that I am certainly not saying you should avoid all personification. That’s impossible.

Personification is referring to an object as if it had subjectivity — defined by the OED as ‘Consciousness of one’s states or actions’.

A notebook does not really sit or rest or lie on a desk. Not like you sit or rest or lie on the floor.

But if we instead go for the plain —

Her notebook was on her desk.

that is still, if we’re being picky, giving the notebook the capacity to be — to be subject to the verb to be.

Heidegger would say the notebook doesn’t really have that. Only humans have Dasein, there-being, often just translated as Being. Objects have no relation to what Dasein experiences as Being-in-the-world. Objects persist as objects.

However, there is a big difference between using is and was and will be in the way we commonly do, even Heideggerian philosophers, and writing —

As she strode into the dark castle, its walls closed malevolently around her.

Firstly, although walls may subjectively feel malevolent to humans, they are not capable of malevolence.

(Yes, horror stories. Yes, the Gothic.)

Walls are not in fact capable of ‘the wishing or the disposition to wish evil to others’.

Walls don’t wish.

Malevolence suggests, at the very least, an awareness of the future as a time in which evil might (ha ha ha!) happen.

This sentence means, more accurately —

As she strode into the castle she felt its walls close malevolently around her.

And you could say, Of course that’s implicit in the first version of the sentence — the one that’s more flowing and fun.

We’re close third person narrating this character. We know the perceptions of the prose are hers.

Yes, true, but now we come on to my secondly.

Secondly, although walls may subjectively feel as if they are closing in around us, they are not capable of movement.

This is where personification crosses an important line.

There is a difference in degree between —

As she ran through the meadow, the grass caressed the hem of her dress.

And —

As she ran through the woods, the branches slashed her face.

And —

As she ran through the woods, the branches slashed into her face.

And —

As she ran through the forest, the roots reached out to trip her up.

The moving castle and the reaching roots have become active subjects within the story. They are implicitly or explicitly characters. They can act wilfully upon other objects.

If a story is Gothic or fantastical, this may very well be a good fit. You may want a universe in which your main character is assisted by friendly desks and chairs and notebooks, and threatened by malevolent ones.

In horror, the last house on the left is, we know, actively evil and consciously wills harm on the living.

Horror movies show this by having POV shots from upper windows when no-one — no human or ghost — is looking out.

I’ve already said that personification is built in to our verbs, and therefore unavoidable.

But for most realist fiction my advice would be — Avoid personification that comes anywhere close to suggesting movement or intent.

Personification is something professional readers (agents, publishers) will be on the alert for, along with elaborate metaphors and similes, as a sign that a writer is pushing too hard — meaning they’re probably inexperienced, and not quite ready yet.

As she strode into the dark castle, its walls closed malevolently around her.

That’s the very definition of telling, not showing.

If you start off doing it, in the first five pages of your story, you have to continue with it — you can’t be inconsistent. In your universe, thingy things are alive.

Her notebook lay malevolently waiting for her on her desk.

Yikes.