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Finding Your Characters
By Mary Cook
When you left
the cinema as a child, did you dance off down the street, convinced
you were the Gene Kelly character? Nowadays, are you the hero
or heroine whenever you read a novel?
The cinema hero probably owed
more to the skills of the actor than the writer. One thing's for
sure - you got to know him pretty intimately during the big picture.
But the successful writer can make you "see" characters
without the aid of pictures. And the most successful characters
in fiction are the ones you identify with or feel you know.
At the risk of sounding obvious,
writing and reading are complementary activities. The writer must
engage the reader with realistic characters. And the reader should
be able to say, "That's me!" - or, "I used to know her."
Characters are the driving force
behind the plot. They're not vehicles, dragging the plot behind
them like a trailer. You live your life, it doesn't just "happen" to you. You do things,
say things that reveal who you are - and so should your characters.
To the author they must be real because he/she breathed life into
them. They have a name and a history.
Naming
names
Start by naming your character,
giving as much thought to the exercise as you would to naming
a newborn infant. Don't fall into the anachronism trap - names
"date" a character. An old lady wouldn't be called Billie-Jo,
for example, any more than an old man would be called Darren.
Look in phone books and baby-naming books. Try collecting names
off gravestones. My all-time favorite is Hypatia
Jiggins, exhumed from a cemetery in
Portsmouth,
England,
the birthplace of Charles Dickens. He was a master of the name
game, with every name giving a clue to the personality.
It was Dickens'
friend and sometime collaborator Wilkie Collins who wrote The Moonstone with its unforgettable
fictional detective Sergeant Cuff, based on a real-life police
inspector. Note the brisk efficiency encapsulated in the name
"Cuff". A well-chosen name should always tell you something
of the character.
Mannerisms
maketh man
Wriggle under
the skin of the person you're creating. Give him strengths and
frailties. Mannerisms impart credibility. Remember the guy who
cracked his knuckles incessantly in class? He almost certainly
had a greater long-term impact on you than the one who punched
you on the nose in the playground.
Try
this exercise: Sit in a coffee bar for as long as you can
without getting thrown out. Watch the people arriving and leaving.
Don't judge, just observe, taking notes if necessary. Your characters
may be fictitious, but watching people going about their everyday
lives will help you turn words on a page into flesh, blood and
spirit.
Talking
the talk
Dialog is what
carries the action along. A character's individual voice and vocal
foibles bring him to life. Does your character have a favorite
expression that he/she often repeats?
One of the first
short stories I ever sold had an elderly woman as its heroine.
Based very loosely on someone I knew, she mixed up traditional
proverbs to comical effect.
Eavesdropping is a valuable means
of collecting convincing dialog. A snippet of overheard conversation
can give you the basis not only for characters but the start of
a plot. When you're writing dialog, it's important that characters
have different verbal mannerisms. As well as creating distinct
personalities, you avoid cluttering up the page with the "he
saids" and "she saids"
of a game of consequences.
Recycle It's
OK to take bits of one person and attach them to another - a ghoulish
but effective exercise. But never lift an entire character from
life if you want to avoid charges of libel. "Recycle"
your friends and relatives.
Think of those
Happy Families toys made up of sliding rings set around a drum
and painted with pictures of different characters. By rotating
the rings you can create a whole new set of characters by lining
up a postman's head, for example, with an old lady's body and
a cowboy's legs. Interchange physical mannerisms and idiosyncrasies
of speech, as well as appearance. Take revenge on people who annoy
you. I once put the face of a woman who offended me onto the character
of a public lavatory attendant.
A
sidelong approach
Use an oblique
"show-not-tell" means of creating characters. Drop hints,
rather than making bold statements.
The heroine knows
her partner almost as well as you, the author, do. Kylie knew
Terry was lying because he looked at his feet shuffling them like
a naughty schoolboy.
A womanizer is
trapped in an embarrassing situation. Caught between his new love
and his ex at dinner, James loosened his tie and shot darting
glances around the room, looking for an escape route.
The woman up
the road is a lady until she opens her mouth. Mandy MacDonald
wore a sharp outfit with a matching tongue. "Go fly a kite
and don't bother letting go the string!" she yelled at the
rapidly departing salesman.
The macho hero
feels uncomfortable around weeping women. Jiggling Madeleine's
elbow, Frank said, "Hey, don't
cry. It makes your mouth look like a letterbox."
These, I would
point out, are my own off-the-cuff examples, not models of the
ideal.
Watch
and learn
Watch television
soap operas as a means of research. It's not just an excuse for
being lazy. Follow the characters and see if they ever behave
out of character.
Try this exercise:
Pick one character, preferably one you can identify with, and
follow his or her storyline for several episodes. Do you like
him/her? Does he/she always act in character?
Take note of
where he/she veers off the path of credibility. Ask yourself what
you think he/she should do. What would you do in similar circumstances?
Are they the same thing?
Think you can
do better? Of course you can. Once you've cracked the credible
character code, you can create convincing personalities time after
time. See them clearly in your mind's eye. Talk to them and see
if they talk back. If you're writing fiction in a room on your
own and you hear a voice behind you say, "Hey, I'd never
do that!" you're on the right track.
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