All authors need a mechanism through which they record the traits and appearance of their characters. Leaving it to chance or memory is a sure way of risking that dangerous inconsistencies may slip through to the final manuscript, and label you as ‘unprofessional’ in the eyes of an agent or editor. How do you do it?
One way is to keep a character record. Some writing software will even offer to do this for you. You write – or even fill in a form – detailing physical appearance, age, job, temperament and any other information you feel is relevant. You then use this as a reference template for the character throughout the book.
This doesn’t work for me for one very practical reason. I don’t envisage characters fully formed before they appear in a work. I don’t want to sit down and think them through beforehand. It seems an artificial way of working, unintuitive and, most importantly, out of sync with the way a reader will meet these same characters. They won’t see your cribsheet here. All they will have to help them are the words in your book.
So my approach is to use those words to populate my character records. I have a rough idea of what someone looks like, their age, what kind of human being they are. Then, when they appear in the book, I just write them as I see them at that stage of the story. Note the word ‘see’. I think visually as I write. This is very important to me. I need to visualise what’s going on. Having some index card of a character pre-written would hinder this, not help it.
When I’ve finished writing the character, I cut and paste the exact words I’ve written into a character entry in my book diary, in the Characters folder. On the next page is the entry for Alberto Tosi, a retired Venetian pathologist who is a key figure in Carnival for the Dead. With Tosi my life is made easy by the fact I’ve met him before. He appeared as a minor figure in an earlier instalment in the series, The Lizard’s Bite. So the first thing I do is go back to that earlier book and paste in the descriptions of him here, in this case in MacJournal:
If a character is entirely new I’ll give him a name and a brief description in terms of age and appearance. Then I simply write the person as they seem to fit in the story. After that I copy and paste those words into the entry in the character record, at the top. I always remind myself: this is all the reader will see. Readers don’t have access to your book journal. If it contains essential information which isn’t in the book you’ve still got work to do.
I find this makes much more sense than a pre-planned index card. I can go back and view the character in isolation, outside the book, make notes about things I need to address, then return to the manuscript and try to fix them.
Some people love index cards and thinking through a book before they start writing. Some are very fond of another technique to visualise their characters. In addition to a written description they will find a photo from somewhere, in a personal collection or on the web, and paste that into a character record for inspiration. Well-known actors often seem to work in this respect. It’s not a habit I’ve ever followed but it’s certainly worth a try. Here’s a possible Charlie on the opposite page.
A quick OneNote tip. I often think of new characters while writing about a current one. OneNote has a very clever way of saving time as you deal with entries in your journal. Let’s imagine I’m writing about Charlie and decide to give him an enemy called Jonathan Black. OneNote uses what’s known as ‘wiki’ conventions for linking items. I will type this: ‘Charlie is hated by the school thug [[Jonathan Black]]’.
The software recognises anything surrounded by two square brackets. First it looks for an entry with that name. If it finds it, a web-style link will be created to take you straight to it. If, as in this case, the name doesn’t exist, OneNote will create a page of that name automatically at the end of the page list. You then drag it to the location you want.
This is a very quick and easy way to build up a reference file you can navigate swiftly. If your project is going to involve a lot of research those automatic links will come in very handy.
