by Henry McLaughlin @RiverBendSagas
People have asked where my characters come from. My response frequently is, “I don’t know. He just showed up one day and said he had a story to tell.”
That’s how Michael Archer, the protagonist of my Riverbend series, came to be.
The first glimmer of book one, Journey to Riverbend, came, like most of my story ideas, from an image. There was a guy standing on a ridge looking into a valley. The sun was setting. He wore a cowboy hat and held the reins to a horse. OK, I thought, it’s a western. I like westerns. Other than that, he was a dark silhouette, a mysterious shadow.
I said to myself, “Who is he and why is he standing there?” At that moment, I took my first step as writer. I met my first character.
I didn’t know much about the craft, especially about creating characters. I just knew I had to write. So, I jumped in with both feet. Of course, the water was over my head.
But I had enough sense to get to know Michael and what his story was.
He was in his late twenties and had lived a prodigal life before coming to know Jesus. In an almost Inigo Montoya voice, his told me, “My name is Michael Archer and I believed I killed my father.”
He told about his early childhood on a farm in Southern New England. Not a prosperous farm because his father was a drunk and abusive to Michael, his sister Ellie, and their mother. One day, at age 13, Michael caught his father molesting Ellie. He defended his sister with a pitchfork and stabbed his father. He ran away leaving his father gushing blood. His sister ran to a neighboring farm. His mother was dead on the kitchen floor after another beating from her husband.
Michael drifted into a life of alcohol, gambling, and violence. He was becoming just like his father. Except he hated farming. Until…he was sitting in a jail cell in a small town in Missouri after another night of drinking and fighting. The town minister visited him and led him to Jesus. This is much condensed version of Michael’s conversion experience which took several visits from the preacher often with the risk of a punch in the nose, or worse.
In learning the craft, I’ve come across and tried to use various tools to build characters. I’ve used Meyer-Briggs and other personality trait systems. I’ve completed detailed questionnaires. These I found to be frustrating because they took a lot of time to fill out and yielded a lot of information I never used.
The system that works best for me is what I used with Michael. I let him tell me his story. I’ve added some questions to get deeper into his motivations.
Questions to Dig Deeper into a Character
- What is the character’s primary story goal?
- Why?
- What will the character do if he or she doesn’t achieve this goal?
- What are the character’s core values?
As I write the story, I look for ways to bring these values into conflict, so the character must make a choice between two good values at the climax.
At the climax of Michael’s story, I had him face a conflict of two of his core values:
- He would always keep his word
- He would never kill anyone.
To keep his word to a character early in the story, he face the possibility of having to kill someone.
One of the best questions I found is, How will this character face death?
I discovered this question while learning from James Scott Bell through his books and workshops.
Of course, Michael couldn’t tell me how he was going to face death. It was never on his mind that he would die.
Death can take forms besides physical death. And it can draw from real life. We all face death in the shape of psychological death, emotional death, professional death, death of a relationship, and, for a Christian, dying to self.
Another key component for me to bring a character to life is to expect surprises from the character as the story moves along.
When I let the character tell the story, he reveals more about himself. Stuff not shown earlier or in the preparation of the story material. For me, this makes the character alive, not bland information on a sheet of paper or in a form or chart. The character is more human because he or she has the opportunity to do something unexpected. If it surprises me, it will surprise the reader and make the story more dynamic.
What are some things you’ve found useful in bringing your characters to life?
TWEETABLE
I have to live with a character in my head awhile to get to know them. Sometimes, I just have to throw them into a scene and get them talking to get to know them.
ReplyDeleteAwesome! That's the way to do it!
DeleteI love this post, Henry! I spend time getting to know my characters, but my characters come from my first what if idea. After that, I start my character interview. Partway in, I turn to the internet to look for her (my main characters are women). I may have look at hundreds of photos, because I'm a visual writer. But when I see the one I want, it's an ah-ha moment. The character in my head says, "Yes! That's me!"
ReplyDeleteWe don't have a story w/o characters. Sometimes we get the "what if" idea, and sometimes the character pops up in my head and won't go away until they tell me their story. I had one character tap me on the shoulder to tell me my first series wasn't finished because I left her pregnant in the last book.
DeleteFascinating account of how you developed the Michael Archer character. When I start to write, I have the seed of a character. Often their physical appearance, vocation, and basic beliefs. After that, the characters often do or say something while I'm writing that I wasn't aware of! It's as if they reveal themselves as I write.
ReplyDeleteThey do reveal themselves as the story unfolds. I think that's great because they will take the story places I wouldn't have thought of if I stuck to my outline or first character sketch.
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