Getting To Know Them

Characterisation in fiction by Richardson

 

All authors characterise in advance, don't we?"

Yes, we do. Even those who say they don't think about their characters before starting a story, do.

We all make decisions about our cast before starting on a piece. These range from the horror author who decides the monster's favourite meal is raw human, to the writer of porn who gives his heroine 'assets' the size of small planets. These are all elements of characterisation, no matter how obvious or basic.

So, how much characterisation is enough?

The simple answer is, I think, as much as you need to write effectively. It was something I first thought about seriously when I decided I was going to write a novel about a group of people who met unsavoury ends, one by one. Anyone who has seen films like Alien or The Descent will understand the principle; it's even a plot that Agatha Christie used!

I needed a group of nine characters, and I knew I was going to struggle to keep them all in check without careful planning. The story relied on the people in it to keep the momentum, so both cast and author had to hit the ground running. There was no opportunity to develop the characters as I went along.

So, what did I do?

I planned in advance. It sounds obvious, but I needed to know my group of nine as well as they knew themselves. Not only that, most of them already knew each other, so I also needed to know how they got on with each other, and their relationships needed to be already formed.

So, I needed to get me some characters! In this piece I'll describe how I make my people and integrated them into a group. A few suggestions might work for some people, other elements for other writers. I hope, though, that there'll be something useful here for most.

The first task was to decide on the characters I wanted, by writing a couple of sentences of outline on each, until I had somewhere between a dozen and fifteen possible members for my nine-person group.

Next, I downloaded a variety of character sheets from several websites, and cut and pasted the good bits to make one that suited me (I got rid of some of the science fiction bits, like the number of arms my people had…). I finally designed a sheet with several sections that printed off neatly into four pages (so I could print off four pages on a single sheet, and have a ring-folder containing all my characters).

One really useful thing I did was to include thumbnail pictures of every character. I knew roughly what I was looking for ('cute blonde', pompous professor', and the like). I did Google image searches, and cut thumbnails from the picture. This turned out to be useful in ways I hadn't expected. Not only did I have a reminder of what my characters looked like, but also the pictures gave ideas for characterisation. For example, one photo had a man in a bandana, which in my story he always put on when a fight was imminent. Another had a goatee, which he stroked when thinking, and a fedora, which he swept politely from his head when greeting a lady. Yet another had dyed hair; I decided she changed the colour of her locks on a regular basis.

My character sheet delves into a lot of detail - it takes me a day or so to create each person. However, even if I don't use all the information the process still makes me think, and helps me make the character as more rounded. Some of the more obscure detail I fill in has been the most helpful, in that it's given me some useable character quirks.

Character sheets are also helpful for recording character traits you know you'll need in the story, or, on the other hand, for coming up with traits that can be weaved into the plot. For example, take a story set in a stereotype medieval keep, with narrow, winding staircases, a great view from the battlements, and lots of hidden corners.

Are you likely to set a scene on the battlements? If so, this might have extra tension if you know one of your characters is afraid of heights. Maybe he or she becomes a quivering wreck during the scene in question, or has to overcome that fear in order to survive. Of course this trait needs to be shown early in the story so it doesn't come as a surprise to the reader.

The same can be done with the narrow staircases - maybe a character has a fear of enclosed spaces. And the hidden places where people rarely venture can be a home for other phobic possibilities, like spiders or monsters.

Of course, characters can also use aspects of the castle to their advantage. Maybe one is a near-Olympic standard diver, and has no qualms about leaping from the top story at the first sign of danger - providing he or she is confident the moat is deep enough, of course!

Now, I've got a handful of characters, and I know their personalities and appearance. I also know how some of their traits can be slotted into the story to give a more 'human' angle (or in the case of horror, maybe a more 'vampire' or 'shapreshifter' or similar angle…).

So, you have your characters. Now you can start writing. Right?

No!

Not yet. People interact with each other. That includes characters in a story!

As I mentioned earlier, my group of people needed to be able to 'hit the ground running' in their relationships with each other, which needed to be pre-formed. They wouldn't be able to find out about each other as they want along. In my story, most of the characters were academics working in the same university department, but of course the principle is exactly the same for any group of people who work or socialise together.

So, I wanted to work out the characters' relationships with each other. To do this I made another spreadsheet, in the form of a grid with very large cells. Each character had their name at the top and down one side. In the line that ran horizontally, I wrote a sentence or two about what the character thought of the person they 'met' in the appropriate column. Whether they respected then, were afraid of them; or were attracted to them, and so on. A general liking meant the cell got shaded green, disliking red, and ambivalence yellow.

Next, names!

I already know my character's names. I needed to know, though, what each person would call the other, and also put that in the cell. A formal colleague or parent would be more likely to call someone by their christened name, an acquaintance a shortening of it (Jon for Jonathan, Liz for Elizabeth, etc); a close friend might use a nickname, or a lover something slushy.

The name was important not only for group interactions and to give the group 'life', but also to help the reader. Freddie Mercury, in the interviews I've seen, calls everyone 'My Dear.' A character addressing everyone as 'My Dear…' will immediately let the reader know who is speaking, so avoiding the need for a tag. Where different people call the same character by different names, the speakers become easy to identify - but as with every aspect, it's important to strike a balance and not to overdo it. The reader will know if something is being forced for their benefit!

Finally, those who have ploughed this far this might remember me saying I needed nine characters, but that I did character sheets for somewhere between twelve and fifteen.

Why?

Well, having too many characters gave me the opportunity to jettison any I didn't like. Some characters didn't seem to have a rapport with the rest. Others would have upset the group's balance - I wanted a rounded bunch of people. For example, I had a handful of people who were simply unpleasant. In any group I've been involved in, there are very few people I haven't liked, so I limited my 'nasties' to just one or two.

A few other characters had to go because they were just boring!

There were also some people who just seemed to hit it off. For example, I had two females who were completely opposite. It was easy to make them best friends, and I was able to have some fun with them during the story, with the flirty outgoing one trying to bring the quiet, shy girl out of her shell. The reserved friend, on the other hand, attempted to rein in the outgoing one's excesses. Their opposite 'pulls' gave the novel some (hopefully) humorous asides. In fact, this couple were so much fun to write, and seemed to work so well together, that I change their names and use them in a lot of my work.

So, I now had a group of nine characters. Over the course of the exercise, I not only got to know the people, but how they interacted with each other, and the dynamics of the group they formed.

And did it work?

Well, I'm a compulsive planner of plots, as well as characters. I knew what was going to happen, and I now knew how my characters would react to events and to each other. This meant I could just get on with enjoying the writing almost unhindered. And I must have got something right, because Eternal Press published the novel as 'The Wood'.

A master copy of the spreadsheet I use to flesh out my characters is at the link. (Note that while this conveniently prints four sheets to an A4 page on my PC, different computers may have different defaults, meaning some configuration may be needed.)

Andrew Richardson lives in Swindon with a wife, child, rabbit and a shoal of tropical fish. His novels have been published by Dark Realm Press and Eternal Press, and his short stories have appeared in various British magazines.

http://ajrichardson.tripod.com/