Today is garbage day in my neighborhood. Naturally, when I went for a walk with my dog Annie this morning, I looked at my neighbors' garbage. What did people throw away? What did their trash mean? What what can we discover about a person from what they throw away, and how they throw it away?
People leave clues about their character in their trash. Today we will practice character development by writing about someone's garbage—what they throw away.
Study Garbage for Character Development
There are many ways to find out who your character is. You can develop your character by how they stand or ask them Marcel Proust's list of thirty-five questions. Or, you can study their garbage.
Does your character stack recycling neatly, or just throw it in the bin? Are they organized? What cartons did they throw away? What containers are in recycling? Do they drink wine, whiskey, bottled water, or soda?
One of my neighbors once had pizza boxes from four different stores in their recycling bin. Did they have a pizza taste-testing party? Do my neighbors have trouble making up their mind?
An Example of Character Development Through Garbage
Let's say a detective finds a body. The dismembered parts are in separate bags, all neatly wrapped and stacked up. There are three possible suspects.
The detective goes to the suspects' houses. It's garbage day, so he peeks at their trash as he arrives. How would the murderer dispose of their recycling? Neatly stacked or loosely thrown in the trash? Could you deduce who the killer is by looking at their trash?
While interviewing each suspect in their kitchen, the detective “accidentally” spills a box of toothpicks on the table. How would the three suspects respond to the spill? Would they stand the toothpicks neatly or just toss them back into the box?
What would the murderer do? Is the murderer pretending to be organized? Does checking out their garbage help you interpret the spilled toothpick test?
Your Garbage Writing Mission
Does this garbage character development technique sound interesting yet? Here are three ways to try it out yourself:
Mission 1: Find Interesting Garbage
Your mission, if you choose to accept it: walk around your neighborhood on garbage day and find interesting garbage. If you want, take a photograph to show us. Then, take fifteen minutes to interpret the garbage and imagine what its owner is like. Make a story up using the garbage items as prompts.
This message will self-destruct in three seconds after you read this. (This is not really true. But we can pretend it is true. I have always wanted to be in a real mission, like the television show Mission Impossible.)
Mission 2: Imagine Your Character's Garbage
Choose a character from one of your stories and write about their garbage. Using their garbage as a prompt for character development, show us what they are like by what they throw away.
Mission 3: Pick a Photo of Garbage
Use one of the photographs from my personal collection of garbage photographs and write a story about the person who threw away the garbage.
Get Creative with Character Development
There are thousands of ways to show your readers who your characters are. Get creative, and keep your eyes open. If you notice something around you that sparks your imagination and makes you wonder about a person—like the garbage by someone's driveway—use it as fodder for your stories.
Isn't one man's trash another writer's treasure?
Have you ever wondered about a person from what you saw in their garbage? Please let us know in the comments.
PRACTICE
After you have decided which mission you want to accept, begin your adventure.
Find a neighbor's garbage to use as a prompt to develop a character, take a person from one of your stories and write about their garbage, or use one of the photographs in this article as a writing prompt. Write for fifteen minutes about one of the garbage missions, then post it in the comments.
Please be kind and comment on someone else's writing. What can you tell about the person from their garbage?
xo
Pamela
P.S. If it takes you a few days to find good garbage, do not worry. I will keep checking back this week to read your garbage stories.
When I saw the topic of the TWP practice, I thought, “I’m going to try to guess which contributor wrote this.” I guessed correctly, Pamela, just from the title! Thanks for another interesting, useful, fun approach to improving and expanding my writing skills!
One morning back when we rented a house in the Italian section of Montreal, I carried our own garbage and recycling boxes to the curb. With some surprise I noticed that our neighbor had put a nice-looking washer and dryer set out at the curb for the garbage truck to haul away.
Actually I was more like amazed. First of all, that he actually thought the garbage men were going to load his washer and dryer up. Like, this is heavy metal, sir! The garbage truck is not meant to pick up appliances and heavy stuff like this.
Secondly, this appeared to be good stuff. They probably just got a new set when one of the pair stopped working. We wondered why wouldn’t he dispose of appliances like this in a more useful, recycling-minded way — sell it or even give it away. Surely some handyman could fixed them up and resell.
The biggest surprise that morning came when the garbage truck arrived. Of course we were curious, so we watched from inside as the truck lumbered to a stop in front of our neighbor’s trash. The men grabbed the washer, manhandled it into the back and brought down the compactor arm. We were fascinated at the way the compactor chomped up the washer! It took a couple of tries, as the machine was so big, but slowly the washer was crushed as flat as one can get it. Next they heaved in the dryer and crunched it up, too.
What this tells me about the neighbor. Money is no issue with him. He didn’t try to get anything out of either appliance. Also, he’s not opposed to bending the rules for personal convenience. And he’d resort to bribery. Because this “trash” was not “legal” for street-side pick-up, the only way the garbage men would have done that job for him was with a healthy bribe. (We were informed by our landlord that this was an effective way of disposing of otherwise “unacceptable” items — and now we saw it in action.)
If an investigator had witnessed this, he’d likely conclude this fellow could have disposed of a dead body the same way, if he’d had it properly enclosed /disguised.
Wow, Christine – did this actually happen? I felt like I was there with you, shaking my head in amazement. Unusual take on ‘what people throw away’ – sometimes one person’s trash is another person’s treasure. Last sentence was a little out of place, but good job!
Yes, this actually did happen.
I was going back to this statement: “The detective goes to the suspects’ houses. It’s garbage day, so he peeks at their trash as he arrives. How would the murderer dispose of their recycling? Otherwise the last sentence does seem odd.
I see. Forgot about that prompt. You have interesting neighbours.
The day I moved to my new hostel room, was a few days prior to the day of the opening of new term. So the person in the next room was not yet there.
After unpacking and arranging my belongings, my inner Sherlock Holmes decided to make an appearance. What is better than having wild guesses about my absent neighbor on an idle afternoon!!!
I started my musings with only one clue available to me- the trash can and recycling boxes. As it was a ladies’ hostel, so the neighbor was definitely a “she”. The first things which came to my notice were two big boxes of Pizza, four bottles of cold drinks and a broken glass. It seemed that they had a cozy and crazy party time. I felt somehow relieved thinking that my neighbor seemed to be a friendly and social person. Though there was no guarantee that she would be the type of person I like to be friends with, but still I had hope.
Then there were a few bottles and boxes of expensive cosmetics- so a fashionable one too! May be I could have some beauty tips from her once in a while.
There were also a few use-and-throw pens. Some old magazines of scholarly articles, exercise books were peeping from the recycle box.
When my inner Sherlock Holmes was thus engrossed in analyzing another person’s garbage, a hand suddenly touched my solder making me jump in surprise. My yes met intelligent brown eyes. The owner of the eyes had an amused smile on her face when she extended her hands and said, ” Hello, Lady Holmes! I am Hannah Jordan”.
You kinda misspelled “eyes” as “yes” back there but aside from that, it was a really nicely written analytical deduction 🙂
Oh! I misspelled it while typing, you may call it a typing mistake 🙂
I have corrected it now.
Thank you for you review 🙂
I definitely needed to read this article. Thank you so much! Both literally and metaphorically!
“Sutherland!”
“Avanti. What is it?”
“You need to get downstairs and clean your room! Sable will kill you if she sees that mess.”
/Oh shit. I forgot!/ I sighed and nodded. “Si, of course. I’ll be right down.” I squirmed out of the corner I’d wedged myself into, set my book down and followed Holly downstairs. I dashed into my room, shut the door, locked it, and took a moment to examine my space. Wow – I really had been slacking off. There were clothes on the floor, the bed unmade, crap piled on my desk, laundry hamper full of unwashed clothes. I was usually fastidious about keeping my space clean, but things had gotten beyond busy lately. I remade my bed, tossed a few loads in the wash, dusted and wiped down every surface. Once everything was clean, I turned to dump a bunch of junk in the trash-can.
One of the pictures I had had on my nightstand had been knocked into it, turned face down in an abrupt act of violence: the frame was cracked, and the glass had gone foggy with humidity, which left the edges of the picture to curl, almost as though they’d been burned.
Gingerly, in case the glass was broken, I took apart the frame and turned the picture over. My heart heaved in my chest, stuttering in time with the memories and the shock of seeing her:
Five years old, in the kitchen, holding a wooden spoon and attempting to stir cake batter.
Seven, in the living-room, clutching at her dress while I wailed the loss of my favorite stuffed animal.
Nine years old, in the bathroom, wincing as she patiently bandaged up my bloodied and bruised knees.
Eleven, in my bedroom, begging as I watched her pack up the last of her things before she left.
Twelve years old, in the church, sobbing as I got the news that she had been killed in a hit-and-run.
Fourteen, in a bathroom stall, staring as the blood ran down my arm and hit the floor like rain. I thought of her.
Seventeen years old, out in the rain, screaming as I hacked off the things that made me a monster in his eyes. I cursed her.
Nineteen, lying on her grave, bleeding as I prayed for my god to just make the pain end. I saw her there.
Twenty-one years old, in some sleazy bar, slurring my words as a pretty young thing led me to my demise. She looked like her.
Twenty-three, in the middle of a store, stuttering out a prayer as the medics tried to revive me. I heard her voice.
Twenty-five years old, in my bedroom, talking to myself just to try to cling to something real. I could no longer see her face.
I shook myself, sucked in a breath, dropped the photo and its hollow frame, went to empty it. There was nothing really important in there anyway — just memories.
This is such a cool way to get to know your characters! I’m always on the lookout for unique techniques for character development. Once when I was on a walk with my dog, I noticed what looked like a wedding ring sitting on top of a bunch of garbage bags. It made me wonder if the ring had been purposely tossed or accidentally lost when the trash was getting taken out. Interesting stuff!
Shoe rack. Yellow brush for sweeping leaves in the yard. “Personal organizer” boxes from Ikea, $12.99 for a set of four. How pretty they looked in the showroom. How much prettier they would soon look in her trash.
Enough of rules. Enough of hierarchy. She’d just been laid off and by gum would that be the last time anyone fired her, because she was never working for someone else again.
No more nine-to-five. No more white picket fence, no more 2.4 kids. Life was full of possibilities. Why couldn’t anyone else see them? Life was a maze, not a ladder. Glorious chaos, not whitewashed order. And from this day on, her home was going to reflect that.
She surveyed her shoes on the floor. They’d been unceremoniously dislodged from their previous home, yet still lay in pairs before her. It was time to change that. She gave a pair of flip-flops from Sydney a kick. They flew, hit the wall with a satisfying smack, and fell back down.
What d’ya know – that was fun! She started storming around in her rows of shoes like a child kicking August leaves.
Ten minutes and three broken-off heels later, she decided the result still wasn’t anarchic enough. The heap of shoes was still beside the door – such a conventional place to store them. Where else could she put shoes? What about the fridge?
She worked over the entire house. Bringing out the trash had never felt so liberating. She wasn’t just throwing away clutter, she was discarding symbols of oppression and closedmindedness.
She surveyed her garbage. Shoe rack and other trash by the curb. Personal organizer boxes sorted by size and stacked atop one another. Recyclables separated in the green recycling-collection box. All in a neat row ready for the 3.30 pickup.
Getting rid of rules was going to be harder than she thought.
Maria Delgado searched through Alan Biedermeyer’s trash. There was a poopy sheet, a broken laptop that was totally smashed, and forceps. She picked up other medical tools, a bloody rubber glove, smashed porn DVD’s, and empty lotion bottles.
“Sick mutha. I knew he was a creep.”
She went through some opened mail. “Weird punk.”
Maria gagged at the poopy sheet then almost vomited when she noticed the towel that had a huge amount of a lotion like substance on it. “Heard of do your laundry day, dumb dipstick?”
Then she tossed her rubber gloves on top of the pile then jogged next door to her home. She was satisfied that she lived next door to a psychopathetic, sick, porn-loving, nasty-living doctor.
And she was not happy about it.