The Secret Life of Characters

While I was writing my quartet of crime fiction novels, all about the same character, I got too know  Sabbie Dare really well. She felt like  my sister at times.. 

Now, I love it when people reviewing the books talk about Sabbie as if she’s real, listing her faults, her hopes and fears, the things that make her tick. But I can say honestly, that I know Sabbie Dare better than any of her readers. Better than Sabbie Dare knows herself.

Creating a protagonist that will be sustained through hundreds of thousands of words of fiction will need more planning, dreaming and creating than the main character in a short story, or even the first draft of a novel, but don’t think that lets you off the character hook. 

You want your readers to be driven by emotion as they read, and in fiction it’s the characters who engage that emotion. For this to happen, the reader has to be trapped in a sort of magic…temporarily, and must believe the character is real. One hundred percent a living person, who is relating their story through words on a page. That’s the magic of fiction and it is perhaps a strong reason why people want to write and why they enroll on creative writing courses. In the past, you may have found yourself totally identifying with a compelling character in a novel, a play, or even a short story or poem, and now you too want to create such characters.

How did those previous writers do it? How did they get you to totally believe in their inventions? One route towards gaining that sort of direct link with a reader is to know your character as well as anyone; better than the character themselves.

When my protagonist, Sabbie, starts out in book one, In the Moors, I reveal that as a child she lived in a children’s home, and the social workers encouraged her to make a ‘My Story Book’ that would fill in some of the blanks in her past. In a way, I helped her stick the photos in and reluctantly write underneath them in large, misspelt capital letters. I know that she still has this scrapbook, and that she’s hidden it from herself by tossing into the loft space.

So how do you acquaint yourself well enough with your characters to fool your reader into believing they are authentic people? Picking apart the words on the page can reveal a host of useful strategies.

When I'm mentoring my writing clients, I ask them to create a history of their main character. It is tempting to dash through writing exercises  such as these quickly, without thinking too much, but I employed these ideas to help me create Sabbie Dare, and I found them wonderfully useful.

First,  chose a character if you don't already have one,  and then ask these questions

within the context of any  story you are building around them so that they grow in your mind: 

• What do they look like?
• What is their full name?
• What do they like to be called?
• Do they have a nickname?
• How old are they?
• What sun sign are they?
• Who do they live with?
• What is their relationship with these people?
• What are their more secret feelings towards these people?
• What is their home address?
• Within that environment, what room or area is their favourite, where they feel most themselves?
• What clothing and accessories do they wear and is this a conscious choice?
• What car do they drive?
• What car would they like to drive?
• What is their job and where do they work?
• Are they happy in their work?
• What social status do they maintain?
• Who are their friends?
• Are there important places or possessions in their life?
• What small details would help you discover more? Do they love animals, always watch the Six Nations?

This will help to develop them. I chose to use freewriting to do this and took on the  first person persona, because I wanted to get into Sabbie’s head and under her skin. I let each question take care of itself, often scooting wildly off the subject, letting Sabbie talk until she’d talked herself out. 

Some questions were pages long, and other barely got a nod. Here is part of my freewrite  for the first question:

Q: What moral values do they have?

A: One thing I know; where ever they came from, my ‘moral values’ didn’t come from my mum.There were times when my mother was up to being a good mum. They can’t have been frequent, but obviously they were numerous enough to keep our heads below the parapet of the social services’ gun-sights, for no one tried to take me away from a woman who was mostly out of her head. But when life smiled on Izzie Dare, she’d assume we’d behave like sisters. She’d scream at me –  ‘we are not staying in!’ as if it had been my decision to do so, zip up my pink anorak and we’d be riding a bus, with her whispering, ‘what shall we do when we get into town, Sabrina?’

She took me to the first Bonfire Night I can recall. I am very clear about this memory. I know I was in Miss Goodwin’s class, as I went up from Reception to Year One five months before my mother died, so it had to be that November the fifth. I clung to her as we watched the fireworks rain down because, although my head was filled with starry wonders, I was terrified that the explosions could hurt her. I don’t think I ever worried that things might hurt me. It was in my heart from the first that my mother was the vulnerable one.

The second exercise I underwent was to find Sabbie's Deep, Dark Secret

This is something that will lend considerable depth to a character’s qualities is to endow a secret upon them…or discover what their secret is. Not all people have deep secrets, but a surprising number do. A character with a secret is highly attractive to readers, who will read on to find out what is hidden in someone’s life, perhaps because in real life, secrets mostly stay hidden, but in fiction there is one person who is privy to the secret…the writer. So ask yourself, does your character have a secret? As before, knowing this secret may not change the way you write a story around this character...or it might change it radically. Equally, you might not include the secret in the story, or you might allow the character to hint about it, or you might make it central to the character’s motivation.

I spent some time thinking about secrets  using these  categories which you, too  can work with:

•  Secrets of birth
• Family secrets
• Crimes
• 
  Finances, such as bankruptcy or hidden wealth
• Love, closeted or unrequited
• Festering hatred
• Phobias
• Secret connections or relationships
• Physical problems 
• And here are some specifics to give you further ideas...
• The photo of Sam they never carry
• The friend they’ll never speak to again
• Why they can’t or won’t have children
• The reason they never see their dad
• Why they have a secret bank account
• That they refused to donate a kidney to their wife
• That they never mention 1989
• What is under the patio/in the locked drawer

I took my time making notes, to develop the story behind the secret.

Remember – this secret may not be a main part of the story of that character – it may not be part of the story you’re telling about them at all, but it is part of their overall story and so important in the enrichment of their character…it will affect how they behave.

 By choosing two of the list given – ‘secrets of birth’ and ‘family secrets’ I was able to
develop ideas for Sabbie. I revealed that  she does not know much about her mother and nothing about her father. In book one she explains this to the reader, but in book two On the Gallows, she begins to learn some of that history, and in the third and four books of the series, Under the Tor and Through the Floodgates, this theme continues to expand. 

Don't presume that your character will not know about their secret, though – they could very well know it – they may hide it away as the dark core of their story,  they may simply not need to tell it now, or even be able to articulate it to themselves. One way or another, this secret will enable you to know more about your protagonist, than the reader.

The Shaman Mystery Series by Nina Milton, published by Midnight Ink Books is available at Amazon.