What one sentence from an Agatha Christie novel can teach you about developing characters

Skilled writers don’t waste a word. They recognize the value of what a sentence conveys to readers, and work diligently to instill each phrase with momentum to carry the story forward or details to develop characters.

Whether you write fiction or non-fiction, you can learn from a simple sentence that begins Agatha Christie’s 1971 classic Nemesis. In this opening line, what information is Christie conveying to us about the main character, the famous detective Jane Marple?

“In the afternoons it was the custom of Miss Jane Marple to unfold her second newspaper.”

Christie reveals Marple’s personality traits and attitudes with this one sentence. How?

Marple is of a certain class (“Miss”) and enjoys a steady routine (“was the custom”) suggesting she is a person of routine habits. We don’t get a sense she leans toward spontaneity, or jumping into something she doesn’t prepare for beforehand.

Then to the most telling part of the sentence: “….to unfold her second newspaper.”

I love that word choice: unfold. Not open, but unfold. To me, that word connotes reading a newspaper content’s thoroughly, not just opening the newspaper to any section. There is a deliberate behaviour to unfolding a newspaper, as if she is taking her time with this task.

Then comes the real kicker: “second newspaper.” Marple is not a person to just get one perspective on the headlines of the day; she needs a comprehensive analysis of global affairs, something only a second newspaper would give her.

In that one sentence, we are introduced to a character who is fastidious and careful, seeking knowledge during an established routine that she has no intention of breaking anytime soon.

Look back at your writing and find those phrases too bloated to include. Are you crafting the most rounded pictures of your story’s main players through sentences as clear and intentional as Christie’s opening line to Nemesis?