When I create a character I’m not just
creating a new actor for my tale, I feel as though I’m creating a partner, a
person who will work their own magic on the story as they develop their skills,
insights and experiences. My characters often take over and move the plot
forward in ways I hadn’t imagined.
That’s why early character development is
so important. Here are a few of my strategies for creating great characters.
Build
a psychological profile. Creating a complete
psychological profile is one of the best ways to get to know a character. Yes,
the physical description and demographic information is important but the
motives and emotions and choices that real people make come from their
psychological profile: how they think; their belief systems; values, and
worldview. I use a 20-page character worksheet that I’ve developed to create major
characters. It has sections on family background; habits, tastes and hobbies;
education and work history; relationship history; and faith, morality and world
view scenarios. I use this long worksheet with two or three main characters,
the ones who are driving the story, not the entire cast.
Take
the character out of the story. When I’m developing
a major character, I don’t leave them on the page, I take them around with me
out in the real world. As real life happens, I ask myself how this character would
react to that event. Even better I ask them and we have a conversation about
it. Often I’ll take that conversation and write it as a scene as if it were
going to be in the story. This has a dual purpose. One, seeing how the
character reacts. Two, sometimes the scene does make into the story as a new
plot angle or twist.
Eavesdrop. Another method for getting to know your characters is to start a
conversation between two or more of them and step back and let the conversation
flow. It’s like you are sitting in a restaurant eavesdropping on someone else’s
dinnertime chat. Sometimes this occurs as I’m writing a scene and the
conversation goes in a completely new direction and I just let it flow even if
I don’t think it will make it into the story. Sometimes it just happens in my
head and I stop what I’m doing and watch the scene play out in front of me.
This is also a good strategy for breaking writer’s block. Just go somewhere
quiet and visualize the characters’ conversation. Don’t feel compelled to write
it down, just let it flow.
Ask
them. This happened when I was writing Web of
Betrayal. My main character, Peter Ellis, kept referring to a time when he was
four years old. I had no idea what he meant but this was clearly a strong
memory for him so I went to a quiet place where I can visualize and asked him:
“Peter, what happened to you when you were four?” I waited, and all these
memories poured forth about a traumatic event that happened when he was four.
That memory unexpectedly ended up being one of the major plot turns and
character conflicts of my novel.
Write
the backstory. Almost every writer creates
backstories for their characters. That’s part of what’s needed to make the
character come alive. Usually the backstory, like the profile, is something the
writer records so they have the details to work from. Consider taking that one
step further and actually writing the backstory as a real scene. Write the
description and the dialog precisely as it would occur then the backstory is
not just background information, it is a real life experience that your
characters have. I used this technique in a story in which the characters had
known each other for several years. They had a conflict and I wanted to know
how that conflict began. By writing their very first meeting as a real scene, I
was able to experience the root of their initial anger and frustration and make
the scenes in the novel much more powerful.
Every reader has at least one character
they can never forget. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if that character was
yours?
Clare witnessed the birth of the commercial Internet firsthand as a research director with the Gartner Group, the global leader in information technology consulting. As a principle analyst in Gartner’s Internet Strategies Service, Clare assisted many of the world’s biggest technology companies (IBM, Microsoft, Cisco, HP, Sun Microsystems, Oracle) in their bid to make the information highway a reality. That experience prompted her to write her first novel, WEB OF BETRAYAL, set in 1994 at the birth of the Internet. Fury is unleashed when a long simmering grudge match between a brilliant hacker turned killer and a renegade tech visionary erupts into murder and betrayal, and a struggling reporter risks his life and one true love to find the truth. Clare began writing at age five with her short story, “My Dog Nicky.” In her career she has been a business journalist, tech industry journalist, Internet industry analyst and a VP of marketing for several software startups. Clare is an Ohio native and a graduate of the University of California, Berkeley, with a B.A. degree in Rhetoric. She currently lives in Sacramento, California with her two Shetland Sheepdogs, Dan and Toby.
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