Authors live & die by their characters. Without good ones our stories are bland, lifeless dreck barely worthy of the bargain bin. As an aspiring author, I’ve often wondered how successful authors created those wonderfully entertaining, quirky, yet REAL characters that transcend the pages of a book to reach into our very hearts.
Today, I believe I know.
If you’re a writer, please don’t take umbrage to this, but I don’t think there’s one bit of “character creation” that is actually done by the writer.
Now, don’t get excited. Hear me out!
You see, I WISH that there was a character creation process. I used to think that there was a step by step, “start at point A and travel a tidy little path to point B and end up at a book signing at Border’s” process.
I can’t tell you how long I searched for “the right way” to create little people for my books. I read numerous books detailing how to use character sheets and bios to manifest that divine personage..Protagonist. I read dozens of articles by authors describing how they took bits of this friend and that relative and merged them all into the dastardly Antagonist. I did research galore, all to no avail.
I still couldn’t find THE RIGHT WAY to do it.
All I ended up doing was staring at blank pages or worse writing clichés…the spoiled villainess with daddy issues, the incorruptible heroine who wields a mighty sword. <insert yawn here>
So yeah. I’m sorry, but all the filling out of character sheets and Frankensteining together of people we know will never lead to the brilliance of the characters that walk within the pages of books such as “The Lord of the Rings.” Not that I’m even remotely comparing myself to Tolkien! But someday I wouldn’t mind rubbing elbows with Mercedes Lackey and Jim Butcher, ya know? But anyway…what’s a budding young author to do?
Listen.
No, no…not to ME. Listen to THEM.
Apparently, I’m a little more deaf (read: hard headed/thick) than your average writer.
No. Really.
It’s taken me years to travel around in a big ole circle just so I could come to the conclusion that I instinctively knew when I first decided that I was going to write a fantasy fiction series.
We don’t give birth to our characters. Our characters give birth to US.
What I discovered was that looking for “the right way” only made their voices harder for me to hear. It took a midnight shriek in the ear from my antagonist to finally wake me up. (Special thanks goes out to Malee, Antagonist Extraordinaire of “Rise of the Maiden” – currently being written by yours truly. That rock to the head did wonders for me, girl!) Thanks to Malee, I know now that all I really need to do is show up when she (or Chandra or any of the gang) calls me, listen to what she has to say, and take dictation (ie…type really fast!).
That’s it. Just listen. They’ll take care of the rest.
~PJ
