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One of the comments I get from readers is
that my characters feel real, even if there are a lot of them (it is a
‘multi-protagonist�� book). This was not always the case. In early drafts of the
first book, The Eden Paradox, the characters were a little stiff,
two-dimensional: ‘ciphers�� in writing jargon.




This is neither what the author nor the
reader wants. As readers we want to know some of the characters better than
real people in our lives, characters who stand out, lift off the page, or as
Hemingway put it, leave footprints in the snow. Characters we will remember,
for good or bad.




So, I decided to ‘borrow�� from some people
I knew. Sometimes it worked, sometimes not. In this blog I cover the following steps,
which for me were a progression, and led to having some (apparently) memorable
characters:




Basing characters on yourself
Using physical traits (looks) of other people
Using speech patterns (dialogue)
Using mannerisms (‘handles��)
Borrowing personality traits from friends and enemies
Mixing personality traits of different people you know
Extending personality traits
Upsetting real people with their characterisation
Creating characters from scratch
Letting characters write themselves





1.
Basing characters on yourself

It is a truism that an author’s first novel
in particular will in some ways be about the author, that his or her traits and
mannerisms will creep into at least one of the characters. This is not
necessarily a bad thing. My first reader said I was in two of the characters:
she told me I wanted to be Blake, the archetypal hero, but in fact I was in
reality more like Micah, the main protagonist, who is actually an anti-hero. I
laughed, because that’s what you do when you hear something about you that has both
the ring and sting of truth. ‘Write what you know�� is the best way to
successful writing, and certainly some (though not all) of Micah’s interior
monologues were exactly how I would think and react, if in such situations.




But not all. In fact one of my first
professional reviewers of an early draft said of Micah that he could be a bit
of a jerk. I laughed again, a bit more forced this time. That was when I
learned the most important lesson, the main one you should take away from this
blog: don’t base any character completely on someone you know (unless you’re
writing a biography, of course). I’ll return to this point in part two of this blog. The
clear advantage, though, is that your novel will have a definite ‘centre of
gravity��, and, after all, most readers will never meet or get to know the
author personally, so what they actually think of your character is less
important than the fact that they will remember that character.




The risk, however, is that the character
based on yourself will skew the book in your favour, and can be an ego-centric
exercise in getting the things you always wanted but never had, saying things
you wished you’d said but never did, in other words, living out your life in
fiction to make up for some unsatisfactory real-life experiences. The reader
will notice this, maybe not consciously, but will probably put the book down.
That was why I made Micah an anti-hero, and gave him such a hard time.




2. Using
physical traits of people you know

When a reader ‘meets�� a character, they
need something to latch onto, what is called a ‘handle��. The easiest one by far
is physical looks. But saying ‘she had long dark hair and penetrating emerald
eyes�� won’t stay in the reader’s head for very long. Here’s how I describe
Blake, the first time you meet him, through the eyes of Zack:




The harsh red flicker
from the Ulysses holo reflected off Blake’s rusty hair and chiselled features,
lighting up the bow-shaped scar above his right eye from hand-to-hand combat in
Thailand, and the pockmarks on his left cheek from the gassing at Geronimo
Station. Blake had lost a lot of men in the War, but always got the job done.




What is interesting is that this face is
based on someone I once met, then never saw again, but I can still remember and
picture his face. Think about it �� it’s not a bad approach, right? But don’t
picture someone famous, the readers will recognise you as a thief��




And here’s Zack, whose personality is based
on a friend, and whose physical characteristics are completely made up:




Kat nudged her
forearm upwards just enough to reveal Zachariah Katain, his large, oval black face
grinning downwards, framed by wire-mesh eyebrows and a gleaming bald pate. His
jaw stuck out, as if permanently mocking life. His eye-lids were a different
story �� they always seemed to be a fraction closed �� alert, as if targeting
something. She’d met other vet attack-pilots who’d had that same perpetual
hunter look, like they couldn’t switch it off any more. It reminded her that
although Zack appeared to be a regular, jovial wife-and-two-kids guy �� because
he was �� he also had that killer instinct just underneath the surface.




What’s interesting about Zack is that a lot
of readers like him, but forget he is black. I have no idea why, or what that
means. Maybe I need to mention it a few more times, but to me colour isn’t much
of an issue (in the future, at least).




Here’s Micah, described by his work buddy
Rudi:




Rudi stretched
his hands forward, framing Micah between thumbs and indexes as if taking a
holopic. ‘I mean, look at you. The basics are okay �� no hunchback, all your own
teeth, body parts in the usual places. But the wiry fuzz on your head, the
bulging eyes �� is that a thyroid thing, by the way? And as for dress sense...��
Rudi’s hands returned to their habitual position, clasped behind his head.
‘Does your Mom still buy your clothes, or what? No style. That’s the problem, Micah. The girl you want is pure class, you’re not.��




Micah’s looks are based on someone I know
well, who hasn’t read the book, and I’ve not asked him to either��




I don’t describe him much, actually,
because the reader gets to be in his head a lot, and knows him that way. This
is an important point. If you want the reader to identify with a character, but
you over-describe him/her, nailing them down completely, then most readers will
find it less easy to slip inside that character’s skin. Some of my favourite Scifi
books have very little (or even no) description of the protagonist, you just
get a feel, an image in your head of what they must look like. This is one
reason why sometimes we go see films of our favourite books and are
disappointed, because the characters on the silver screen look wrong. A good
caster can overcome this, though, as in Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter, for
example, whereas in every version of Dune I’ve seen, the character Paul
Atreides on the screen is somehow dead wrong.

     

Try and avoid clichés and tropes (tall dark
stranger�� yawn), and ideally mix in a bit of personality with the physical
attributes: e.g. as in my character Jen, who was almost pretty, a little on the
plump side with short blonde hair, showed a bit too much cleavage, and had
bottle green eyes that spent most of their time looking sideways at people when
they weren’t looking back. Do you see her? Will you recognise her later on in
the book? Do you want to know what makes her show cleavage and look at people
sideways? Do you know someone like this? Do you already have a gut feel what
she is like as a person? If you’ve read any of the Millennium books by Steig
Larsson, I only have to mention a certain female character’s crooked smile, and
you know who it is. In ten years�� time, you’ll still know.




3. Using speech patterns (dialogue)

Finding a character’s voice is really
important, especially if you have a lot of characters, as otherwise they will
sound the same, and your writing will appear flat, it won’t engage. The
character Sandy in my book is based on a real person, in particular what she
says. I can never get the last word with this person, in real life or on the
page. Here’s an example, from a scene where Sandy is being interrogated by
Vince, a Chorazin Interpol agent, who himself is a no-BS hardball. They are in
a small room, on two chairs, facing each other, no table in between:




Sandy leant back
in her chair. “Are you going to ask me all the shit again about Keiji’s murder?
About what I saw, which was pretty much nothing. Why I hid?�� She inhaled
deeply, blowing out a long plume of smoke sideways, not at him. “That’s the way
it always goes in the vids, isn’t it? Ask everything four times, story
cohesion, all that bullshit?��

            She
watched him as he uncrossed one leg and crossed the other. Muscular thighs. Shit, she thought, as she flushed, I don’t believe this. What’s this crap I
suddenly have for bald-headed, athletic, blue-eyed men? She wondered if
he’d noticed; of course he had.

“No,�� Vince said.
He spoke with an unexpected nonchalance. “As you say, that’s what they do in
vids. In any case the Sensex cleared you three hours ago of being Mr. Kane’s
murderer or an accomplice. According to your deposition you saw little, given
your relative position to the killer.��

Yeah, right, she thought, I was giving Keiji a blowjob under the desk
when the killer walked right in.

“…and you
yourself were potentially a target, depending on what the killer thought you
knew. But staying there all that time was a little extreme, don’t you think?
The killer had made his getaway. You could have left.”��

Sandy crossed
her legs, then changed the cross. His gaze didn’t falter. She looked around for
an ashtray. She flicked a small head of ash onto the floor, and took another
long drag.

“You know that
blondie Chorazin is screwing Micah? I had a ringside seat. She’s kinky, you
know. A bit out of his league.�� She watched for a reaction, a movement, a
flicker of the eyes. Something; anything. Nothing. She pressed harder. “They
must train you people pretty good not to react to shit like that. Must take
stuff out of you, huh? You must lose something, you know, a piece of yourself.��

Vince’s eyes
intensified then broke her gaze. He stood up and walked around to the back of
his chair. “Actually, it’s more like they put ‘stuff�� in.”��

 She gave a short, hollow laugh. “Good grief, a
piece of Chorazin philosophy! I’m honoured.�� She took a last drag and dropped the
cigarette on the floor, stubbing it out with her shoe. She ground it longer
than necessary with her heel, not looking at the messy stain.




Zack is also based on a real person,
especially what he says. He’s a more rounded character, a counterpoint in
amongst a stiff military group. Here he is with Pierre, who is Zack’s polar
opposite, a scientist, (also based on somebody who hasn’t read the book, though
in this case I do ask him to):




‘About time,�� Zack said.

Pierre primed a contact syringe, and in one
smooth movement flicked it switchblade-style towards the side of Kat’s neck.
There was a hiss, like a sharp intake of breath. A wash of deep red crawled
across her face then vanished.

            ‘Will
it calm her down?�� Zack frowned at her normally smooth, fine-featured face, now
crumpled like a piece of paper, slick with sweat.

            ‘No,
but she’ll realise she’s in a dream. If she remembers, she can control it.��

            Zack
looked down at their youngest crew member. Yeah,
if she ain’t too shit-scared. Her chest rose and fell with increasing speed.
‘Her vitals okay?��

            Pierre
tapped the holopad next to the cot �� several red spikes radiated outward, but
none pierced the edge of the surrounding green hexagon. ‘Tolerable. In the
dream she’s running, so her lungs work faster.��

            Zack
chewed his lower lip. The nightmare was coming more regularly the closer they
got to Eden, and Kat reckoned it wasn’t a normal dream, always exactly the
same. So they’d decided to try a lucid dreaming technique, injecting a stim
during the nightmare, so she could maybe
control it, and recall what was chasing her.

            Pierre
gazed into the mid-distance as he discarded the syringe. ‘Do we run because
we’re afraid, or are we afraid because we run?�� He said it as if reciting, a
hint of his Parisian accent lingering.

Zack sighed, wondering for the hundredth
time why Pierre wasn’t back in MIT, surrounded by his best friends �� equations
and a muon-scope. ‘Spare me the psy-crap, Pierre.�� He glared at him. They both
knew why she was running.

‘I have to go. I’m finishing some tests. There’s
a strange variance –��

‘Whatever.�� Zack gave him a sideways look.
‘I thought you liked Kat?’��

Pierre hung there for a moment,
fish-mouthed, then spun on his heel, and retreated to the cockpit.

            Zack
re-focused his attention on Kat, planted himself on a mag-stool, and leant back
against the graphite-grey inner hull. ‘Take it from me, kid, sometimes it’s
okay to run. You run as fast as you damned well can.��




Kat is not based on a real person, but I
like her dialogue, she parries all the time, because of her past, and supreme
lack of trust in men, but is very incisive, both cutting and cut-up at the same
time. She’s been around in my head so long she’s become real to me. Here’s an
extract from the upcoming third book, Eden’s Revenge:




“Hello, Pierre,��
Kat’s avatar said. “Platinum suits you. It’s your colour.��

            Pierre
felt pleased at first, then caught himself �� was he pleased with the
simulation, or to see her again? Just an avatar, he reminded himself �� let’s
keep it professional. He addressed the slim, short-haired brunette with the
crooked smile. “You have access to all my premises. We go to meet the female
Kalarash known as Hellera. What do you advise?��

            She
cocked her head. “I missed you. I thought it would go away, you know, fade. It
didn’t. Not much, anyway. Not nearly enough.��

            He
had an urge to clear his throat. This wasn’t working to plan. He thought about
removing some of the emotional algorithms his brain had reverse-engineered into
her avatar, but of course that would affect her intuition. He had to play
�����DzԲ���

            “I
�� missed you too, in a way.��

            She
glanced away. “Whatever. Your daughter �� Petra
�� of course you remember her name, it’s the last thing you said to me.�� Her
eyes flashed dark. Anger, he realised. But she continued, waving a hand dismissively.
“You’re seeing something that the Tla Beth are missing, but you’re also
avoiding an obvious solution.�� She folded her arms, stared at him.




4. Using
mannerisms, ‘handles��

I’ve already mentioned the famous ‘crooked
smile�� or Larsson’s famous character. Zack is bald, but has a habit of running
his hand over his head, as if smoothing non-existent hair down. Micah clears
his throat a lot (ahem, I do too, actually). It’s a nervous thing, so I only
use it in such situations. Louise flirts a lot with her hair and eyes. Jen
skulks around whenever she is amongst strangers. Blake steeples his fingers
when making decisions. If you’ve read my books, and I mention the word
‘cigarette��, you’ll know who it is, because he is never ‘seen�� not smoking. But
it is memorable because of the way he smokes. You’ll maybe remember that when
he stubs out a cigarette, it’s with tangible regret, as if he was shooting a
beloved horse. His only notable possession beside his sharp suits, is his gold
cigarette case.




Characters can have nervous ticks, scratch
themselves, purse their lips, sigh a lot, have hollow or excessive laughs, etc.
Watch people, we all have them. They’re useful handles, because we can’t keep
saying to the reader, ‘and here’s Jen again, remember, the one with the bottle
green eyes?��




5. Borrowing
personality traits from friends and enemies

A friend of mine writes vampire stories.
When people piss her off in normal life, she casts them in her stories, and
they come to a rather nasty demise. Love it. You think you know friends better
than enemies. I hope so. But sometimes your vision of an enemy is more
crystallised than that of a friend. I used one person I don’t like to represent
a bad character in my books. It’s well-hidden, including the fact that I
changed the sex for the characterisation. But it works. It also stops ‘baddies��
from becoming cartoon-like rather than real people. You have to let the baddies
have a rationality behind their machinations, no matter how twisted. Remember
that everyone is a hero in their own version of events, and this goes for any
bad character, even evil ones. Here’s an example, without naming the character
in case you’ve not read book one:




She leaned back in her chair, clasping her
hands behind her skull. Galileo, my dear man, you should have listened to me.
If you had, then you could have seen with your own eyes what your brilliance
had only just managed to grasp �� not just the non-Euclidean solar system, but
the rest of the galaxy. And Amadeus �� at least we will take your music with us,
though you chose to remain so finitely mortal. She thought of the people she
had known over the past six hundred years. Most she despised �� her perspective
was so different that she no longer thought of herself as human, and found
humans �� earthlings as she had started to call them, hopelessly bound to this
doomed planet �� their pitiful, short lives and limited vision, their petty
selfishness. Humanity left alone would never rise above itself. There had even
been a time when she had questioned the Q’Roth-Alician pact, but the longer she
trod the Earth the more she knew the inevitable choice was between cull most
and upgrade a few, or cull all.  

There had of
course been some exceptional men and women �� a few. She and others had tried to
turn them, most without success. Still �� there were five hundred like her, a
few even older, roaming the world. They controlled humanity, misguided it, kept
it off-balance, bringing it to ripeness for the return of the Q’Roth. Soon ��
very soon �� almost no time at all, this self-obsessed civilisation would be eradicated,
and they, the five hundred who knew what was coming, plus another five thousand
promising Alicians, would have their own ships and a passport to the Grid. A
new existence and legitimacy as a sponsored Level Five species. The hierarchy
they had heard about would know this new humanity for the first time and would
respect it: our next stage of evolution.




Notice this is all done via ‘internal
monologue��. I’ve known a few people with twisted minds (I’m a psychologist).
They are very careful about what they vocalise, most of it stays inside, and
you watch their eyes, wondering what horrors lie behind�� Besides, if this was
done as dialogue or narrative, it wouldn’t sound right. Evil stays quiet, a
neat trick a lot of SciFi films miss when they get their arch ‘baddie�� to wax
lyrical about world domination or whatever. One advantage books have over film.





Using friends is actually trickier, because
we are often too close to them to see them objectively enough to get it down on
paper coherently. Also, we won’t want to kill them off, for example, when
perhaps the plot demands it. So, I borrow traits from friends but change
things, so at most half of the resultant character is based on a real person.
One of my characters, Pierre, is loosely based on a colleague and friend at
work. He refuses to believe it, though his wife can see it, and he doesn’t read
science fiction. I joke back that the character Pierre would be far too serious
in real life to read science fiction anyway.




But the main advantages of basing
characters on friends is that you know how they would react, what they would
say, and so it has more credibility and depth. One of my favourite school-day
books was Wind in the Willows, and apparently all the characters were based on
friends, obviously some eccentric ones, including Toad of Toad Hall.




Of course your friends might not like the
way you portray them. I’ll come back to this in part two.




One psychologically interesting point is
that if you base characters on friends, it can be a nicer experience writing
the novel, because, let’s face it, writing is a lonely endeavour. I really like
Naipaul’s writing, for example, but most of his characters are people I would
not like as friends�� Same for Coatzee. Maybe that’s what it takes to win Nobel
prizes for literature��




More to come very soon...