One of the fiction writer’s jobs is to create characters,
and I’m sure we all do it in different ways. Some writers create a biography
for their character before they ever put pen to paper to write their story.
Some writers may model their characters on people they know, taking a little
bit here and another bit there and amalgamating them into a new character. Some
writers start the book first and let the character grow out of the narrative. I
could go on and on.
However, it was something Cally Phillips said in a recent
blog which was ‘walk a mile in their shoes’ in order to understand someone, and
this applies to characters as well as people.
Anyway, Cally’s comment got me to thinking, because when I’m
creating characters I like to get inside their heads, and I like to walk in
their shoes. Oh, I do all the other things as well, but there’s nothing quite
like getting inside someone’s head to really get to know them.
Mind you, a lot of my writing can be scary and my characters
are not always likeable, so the inside of their heads is not a comfortable
place to be.
Take the Night Watcher, for example. I lurked in dark
corners with him, spied on his chosen one, and shared his delusions. Inside his
head was a really scary place to be and if I had exhibited schizoid tendencies
when I was writing this, it wouldn’t have been surprising. Julie, the main
character in this book started out as a nice person, and I shared her grief
when she lost her husband. The self harming wasn’t particularly nice, but it
was part of who she was and how she coped. But then she became so eaten up with
thoughts of revenge on the woman who stole her husband and ultimately led him to
his death, she changed. She had some rather nasty thoughts, and I became involved
in the psychological games she played on Nicole, who was the other woman.
Nicole was selfish, ambitious, and liked other women’s husbands, but she also
had her vulnerabilities. So, all in all, none of them were very pleasant heads
to be in.
Kara, in Dead Wood, was another head it wasn’t always
comfortable to be in. I was with her in the woods with the serial killer and
shared her fear and despair. I ran from Tony’s thugs as well as the killer, and
understood her desperate need to rescue her children from the care system,
which was something that kept her tied to Dundee
and was ultimately her undoing. Sharing her street walking experiences, her run
in with the serial killer, and her panic at being hunted by Tony’s thugs was
distinctly uncomfortable.
Then there’s Bill Murphy, who appears in Night Watcher and
Dead Wood. I was there with him in the snake room as well as his own neglected
flat. I shared his despondency, his heartburn, his doubts and fears.
You would think that Belle’s head in A Salt Splashed Cradle
would be a nicer place to be, because it’s a historical saga and Amazon
promotes it in their newsletters as a romance. Well I suppose it is a romance,
just not a very soft, sweet one. So back to Belle’s head, if you think it would
be nice to be there, you’d be wrong. You see Belle has her problems. She wants
the romance and the happy ever after, but it’s not in her nature to have that.
So I shared her ostracism by the villagers, her sexual encounters with the
Laird’s son, and lots of other stuff. Then there was Jimmie, her husband. I
sailed with him on the fishing boat and then the whaler. I sailed to the Arctic
seas with him, climbed the masts and furled and unfurled the sails with him. I
chased whales with him, shivered with him, shared his frostbite, and his love
for Belle. And of course, there’s Sarah, who cannot understand why her mother
does not love her.
Then there’s my short stories. I’m not even going to go
there, too scary.
So I come back to my original question – Do you become your
characters? Or do your characters become you? Oh, and how do you get back out
of their heads again without losing your mind?
(This post was originally published on the Authors Electric site "Do Authors Dream of Electric Books?)
(This post was originally published on the Authors Electric site "Do Authors Dream of Electric Books?)
