Creating and developing characters

When writing a novel a writer should create living people; people not characters. A character is a caricature.– Ernest Hemingway, Death in the Afternoon

My main characters have lived in my head for a very long time. As in, for ‘half my life so far’ very long time. So much of writing them comes to me so instinctively now that it’s the part of the writing process I most enjoy and the one I least consciously consider.

Which is a problem when I want to write about it. So, this is not exactly an advice post, but more the ‘character rules’ I (mostly) subconsciously abide by, which can give an insight into my process and characters – and if you’re looking for tips, something here might help you too.

Past, present, and future

To paraphrase ‘Cotton-Eyed Joe’, where has the character come from and where are they going?

Everyone, in real life or otherwise, has a past, i.e. the events that have made them the person they are today. I believe most interesting characters are those who have experienced something that still makes them uncomfortable, whether that’s full-blown trauma or just some kind of niggling regret.

Either way, it should inform their decisions in the present, whether overtly or subtly. After all, a satisfied character is a boring character – why is why I said ‘most’ interesting characters have previous trauma seeing as you could just open a work with said trauma as the inciting incident (I’m thinking Luke and Leia in Star Wars, for instance).

Finally, the future needs to be a consideration: in other words, what does the character want? Why do they want it? Are they equipped to get it and how will they react when they do (or don’t) get it?

For Alex in Coldharbour I, the blurb really says it all: she’s had a failed suicide attempt (past), now she’s back in Coldharbour (present), and she needs to sort her life out (future). It’s just that she’s not expecting supernatural complications…

Together and apart

This ties in closest to the ‘present’ part of the above: what is the character like on their own and what are they like with other people? How do they see themselves? How reliable is their perception of themselves? How do they interact with their environment and with other characters? Are there frustrations? Lingering resentment? Desire? Joy?

Also, how is this expressed? In the way they speak? Their body language?

To give another Coldharbour I example, Alex’s interactions around her children’s father, Sam, are very evasive – she shrugs off every touch and deflects difficult questions, demonstrating the complexity of their relationship and how certain events are rawer for her than they are for him.

And when she’s on her own, she isn’t much better: her mind races and she’s always on the edge, operating at such a high level of anxiety that she desperately craves distractions. She constantly questions herself and at the start of Coldharbour I, she needs outside intervention to get her out of her head.

The importance of the arc

Most characters should have some kind of arc, i.e. character development which ensures they’re not exactly the same at the end of the work as they were at the beginning (and not just because they’re six months older, for instance). This is obviously most important for protagonists, antagonists, and deuteragonists – it just depends how big your cast of characters is.

For example, in Coldharbour I, there’s one protagonist, two deuteragonists, two antagonists, and four secondary but still important characters. Out of those nine characters, I would say the protagonist and deuteragonists have the strongest character arcs (as they should), but the other six characters (except maybe one of the baddies, who is utterly unrepentant) also undergo some kind of journey.

To keep spoilers light, I won’t use names, but a particularly selfish character makes an immense sacrifice, a rigid rule-follower bends them for the greater good, and a character who’s always been running chooses to become part of the family. And that’s not even talking about the ‘main three’.

Every scene counts

Full disclosure: the published version of Coldharbour I is 95,000 words. The first draft was 275,000. It took me three years of work to produce this streamlined version, whereas I’m already a good way into the next two books.

All this to say (ironically), I’ve learnt a very important lesson on the way: that every single scene needs to count for something. It doesn’t have to be some earth-shattering revelation, but it has to do something. Honestly, this is where reverse outlining really helps me interrogate the utility of a particular scene, because I have to decide what the purpose of it is: for example, does it reveal character? Build suspense? Move the story forward?

As someone who tries to balance character with plot (I’m never going to be winning any literary fiction prizes, let’s put it that way), I do want every single scene to convey something about at least one of the characters in it. My all time favourite moment in Coldharbour I is the night of the storm, but I’ve already used that in a previous blog, so here is a condensed version of Alex and Elizabeth’s second meeting:

Elizabeth was sitting in a booth to Alex’s right, wafting her own streams of smoke from the shadows like a vampire in a black and white film.

But then vampires in black and white films probably didn’t read newspapers and even at that distance, Alex recognised that schlocky font. It was one thing reading it for the latest on horrific crimes, but to read it recreationally over a Scotch was up there with hanging out with Slobodan Milosevic.

Elizabeth was already smiling at her.

Knowingly.

Again.

Alex offered her a tentative smile, catching her breath when Elizabeth gave her a little wave. Alex gestured at the bar and when Elizabeth nodded and tapped her glass with a sharp fingernail, she asked the barmaid for a vodka and tonic and whatever Elizabeth was having.

When the barmaid warned her that it wasn’t cheap, Alex pulled out the twenty from her pocket with a wince, but her reward …

Well, that was being the lucky recipient of Elizabeth’s small smile of approval when Alex finally dared to hover by the booth, condensation and sweat slicking her fingers.

“May I join you?”

“After earlier?” Elizabeth said, but she still slid along the seat, which Alex shuffled onto with sweaty hands.

Of all the things Alex expected from Elizabeth, she didn’t expect this softness, the way she was one wrong move from cricking her neck as she tried to recapture Alex’s attention.

“I don’t expect you to tell me everything,” Elizabeth continued, “Or anything at all—”

“Good.” Alex laughed. “Cos I’m sick of talking about it. I’ve done nothing but talk about it for the past month.”

Now, that wasn’t entirely true, was it?

She hadn’t spoken at all that first week.

“And having people treat you like a child?” Elizabeth asked.

Alex dug her fingers into a damp paper napkin and let the soft strands of crimson catch in her broken nails.

“I’m jobless and homeless. At thirty. Can hardly blame them.”

Elizabeth pulled out a black box of cigarettes, the golden lettering glinting under the warm lights.

“Is it true?” Alex asked, “People with Power can smoke without their lungs turning into schnitzel? The same way it’s hard for us to get drunk?”

But not impossible. Her own mother and brother had been testament to that.

Elizabeth nodded and offered a cigarette to Alex, who declined as politely as she could when her mind was getting dragged back to Matthew and the way he’d stash the fags he’d nicked off their mum under his bed …

Alex caught herself and returned to her drink, swallowing away her thought. It was just being back in Coldharbour that made her think of him. Just Coldharbour and Power.

“Do you mind if I do?” Elizabeth asked, placing a cigarette between her red lips. Alex hadn’t noticed that before. The red lipstick gleaming around those crooked teeth …

“Alex?”

“Go ahead,” Alex said, before taking an ambitious gulp of her vodka that scraped its way through her with the burning viciousness and unpleasant suddenness of being glassed in the throat.

The longer version of this scene has to balance exposition with character development, the priority being the development of Alex and Elizabeth’s relationship. Not only does it build on their previous meeting, it starts the process of unpeeling Elizabeth’s personality: that underneath her self-assuredness, there’s a curiosity and a compassion there which in turn begins to tease out Alex’s anxieties and fears that she’s been trying to distract from and deflect so aggressively. Again, to quote my own blurb, they really are two lost souls drawn together in the darkness.