“I know you, Al”

“I know you, Al” is both a practical exercise in character construction and a compact critical test: it asks whether a story gives its characters traits and boundaries that can be meaningfully described, rather than leaving them as functions of the plot.

The Exercise

The exercise begins with the sentence “I know you, Al. You’re (not) the kind of man who—” and challenges the writer to complete it in a way that reveals an understanding of the character. Examples include identifying a man who still opens doors for women or a girl who does not forget an insult. The point is not simply to attach a trait, but to make a revealing distinction about how the character behaves.

Workshop Shorthand

In advanced workshops, the exercise’s name becomes a diagnosis: saying “I know you, Al” signals that a story’s characters have not been sharply defined. Its usefulness lies in how quickly it converts a broad craft problem into a question a writer can test against the story’s people. If a character resists any specific, illuminating description, the story may not yet have made that character legible.

Use in Class

During a workshop discussion, William Henry Devereaux, Jr. applies this test to a story about victims and a murderer. He asks whether the victims count as characters, then what the class knows about the murderer beyond what was done to him. The response to the latter question is that they know nothing. Devereaux argues that recognizing the absence of characters earlier would have saved the class an hour of discussion. One student, Leo, dissents, insisting that Tiffany feels real to him; the disagreement shows that personal attachment to a figure is not, by itself, the same as evidence that the story has developed that figure as a character.