CHAPTER 2 Characters

The Plot Kernel and What Follows It

Long before I went to Cornwall, I had made my decision about using surfing as part of Careless in Red because of a conversation I’d had with someone from my UK publishing company about a small town called Bude. During this conversation, Bude’s association with surfing had come up. I’d never before heard about surfing in the UK, and I assumed that most readers—other than those from the UK—wouldn’t think of England as a surfing spot either. Because of this, I reasoned that they might find the idea of surfing in such an area interesting. So in the initial stages of my process, I intended the novel to be about the death of a surfer. Ultimately I went in a different direction, one that was based upon the part of my research that involves interviewing people.

When I do my preliminary reading, my location research, and my interviewing, I’m attempting to come up with something that I call the plot kernel. For me, this is a general statement or a set of statements that will illuminate the through line (which is to say, the path that takes us to the conclusion) of the novel. It acts as a guide to illustrate for me what it is that I’m going to be writing about, and it also directs me toward a specific ending.

Because I write crime novels, the plot kernel expresses itself through the killer, the victim, and the motive for the killing. In a YA novel, the kernel might be the heroine, the challenge she faces, and the result. In women’s fiction, it might be the heroine, the issue at hand in her life or in her family, and the resolution. Every story begins somewhere for the writer, even if, upon reflection, the writer isn’t at all sure where she actually came up with the idea in the first place.

In my preliminary reading about Cornwall, I had discovered that in addition to surfing, the sport of sea cliff climbing had many enthusiasts. As part of my research into the various locations, then, I made arrangements to interview two sea cliff climbers. It was during one of these interviews that I arrived at my means of murder as well as my victim.

As I indicated in the Prologue, I find it extremely useful to let anyone I interview know that I’m writing a crime novel for which I’m looking for a means of murder. I’ve discovered over time that almost everyone gets into the spirit of the deadly game called How-Would-I-Kill-Someone. Images 13 and 14 illustrate this.

In Image 13, I’ve photographed three objects: a sling (this is the belt wrapped around the pole), a knotted rope, and a carabiner joining the sling to the rope. In Image 14, I’ve photographed what are called chock stones. My interviewee, Rob Byron of Outdoor Adventures, had taken me outside after our interview in order to demonstrate how these objects were all used as well as to show me how they could be doctored in such a way as to cause a deadly fall.

At the end of the interview with Rob, I had part of my plot kernel in place. I’d decided that my victim was going to be a young man engaged in the dangerous sport of sea cliff climbing. The means of murder would be the damage done to a piece of climbing equipment.

That left me looking for the last two parts of the plot kernel. I would need these before I could go on: the killer and the killer’s motive. The killer ended up emerging from a conversation I had with my husband, who suggested a revenge novel: someone out to avenge the death of his or her child. So now I had what I always need: the killer, the victim, the motive, and the means. I could now engage in the next part of the process: the creation of characters.

Before I get into that, however, I’d like you to see how the interview with Rob Byron ultimately found its way into the novel. The she in question is Bea Hannaford, the officer in charge of the investigation into the death of the sea cliff climber.

Over here referred to a shop selling sporting goods: both equipment and clothing for outdoor activities. Hannaford did an admirably quick recce of the place, found what she wanted, told the shop assistant they needed no help, and directed Lynley to a wall. Upon it were hung various metallic devices, mostly of steel. It wasn’t rocket science to sort out they were used for climbing.

She chose a package that held three devices constructed of lead, heavy steel cable, and plastic sheathing. The lead was a thick wedge at the end of a cable perhaps one quarter inch thick. This looped through the wedge at one end and also formed another loop at the other end. In the middle was a tough plastic sheath, which wrapped tightly round the cable and thus held the two sides of it closely together. The result was a sturdy cord with a slug of lead at one end and a loop at the other.

“This,” Hannaford said to Lynley, “is a chock stone. D’you know how it’s used?”

Lynley shook his head. Obviously, it was meant for cliff climbing. Equally so, its loop end would be used to connect the chock stone to some other device. But that was as much as he could sort out.

DI Hannaford said, “Hold up your hand, palm towards yourself. Keep your fingers tight. I’ll show you.”

Lynley did as she asked. She slid the cable between his upright index and middle fingers, so that the slug of lead was snug against his palm and the loop at the other end of the cable was on her side of his hand.

She said, “Your fingers are a crack in the cliff face. Or an aperture between two boulders. Your hand is the cliff itself. Or the boulders themselves. Got it?” She waited for his nod. “The lead piece—that’s the chock stone—gets shoved down the crack in the cliff or the aperture between the boulders as far as it can go, with the cable sticking out. In the loop end of the cable”—here she paused to scan the wall of climbing gear till she found what she wanted and scooped it up—“you clip a carabiner. Like this.” She did so. “And you fix your rope to the carabiner with whatever sort of knot you’ve been taught to use. If you’re climbing up, you use chock stones on the way, every few feet or whatever you’re comfortable with. If you’re abseiling, you can use them at the top instead of a sling to fix your rope to whatever you’ve chosen to hold it in place while you descend.”

She took the chock stone from him and replaced it along with the carabiner on the wall of goods. She turned back and said, “Climbers mark each part of their kit distinctly because they often climb together. Let’s say you and I are climbing. I use six chock stones or sixteen chock stones; you use ten. We use my carabiners but your slings. How do we sort it all out quickly and without discussion in the end . . . ? By marking each piece with something that won’t easily come off. Bright tape is just the ticket. Santo Kerne used black electrical tape.”

Lynley saw where she was heading with this. He said, “So if someone wishes to play fast and loose with someone else’s kit, he merely needs to get his hands on the same kind of tape—”

“And the equipment itself. Yes. That’s right. You can damage the equipment, put identical tape over the damage, and no one is the wiser.”

What’s important about putting one’s own research into a novel is to make a natural part of an ongoing scene and a logical next step in the plot rather than just stop the story, produce your research like Athena emerging from the head of Zeus, and then start up the story again. Research needs to be buried, and the writer buries it by making it part of what’s happening at a precise moment in the narrative. In what comes before this scene, Lynley and Hannaford leave the police station because Bea Hannaford knows that Santo Kerne’s equipment has been damaged. She explains the use of the equipment to Lynley, which is logical since her next step will be to talk about what it means that more than one piece of equipment has been damaged.

If the plot kernel is a decent one—which merely means a workable one—it will prompt me to ask questions. The answers to these questions will enable me to people the world of the plot kernel in a generic fashion, which is all I want at this stage. If you consider the plot kernel of Careless in Red, I hope you can see that there are immediate questions offered, primarily:

Who is the sea cliff climber? (Answer: a nineteen-year-old boy who is something of a free spirit.)

Who is the killer? (Answer: a man out to avenge the death of his son, which took place more than twenty years earlier.)

If the climber is only nineteen, who is his father? (Answer: a forty-four-year-old man attempting to open a destination sports-oriented hotel.)

If the climber is only nineteen, who is his mother? (Answer: a forty-three-year-old woman with untreated bipolar disorder.)

Does the nineteen-year-old have a girlfriend? (Answer: yes, an eighteen-year-old with whom he has just ended a tumultuous relationship.)

Does she have siblings? (Answer: yes, a twenty-two-year-old ne’er-do-well brother.)

Who is their father? (Answer: a forty-eight-year-old surfboard shaper.)

And on and on I go, developing questions about characters not only from the plot kernel but also from the answers to the primary questions that came out of the plot kernel.

Only when I’ve asked sufficient questions to people the world of the plot kernel do I move on to the next step of the process: giving my generic characters specific names.

At this point in my process, I’ve returned from my research trip. I’ve printed all the photographs that I took in Cornwall (generally between two hundred and three hundred pictures); I’ve written the precise location of each picture on the back of it, and I’ve organized the pictures in a way that I’ll find useful for the novel (i.e., all beach pictures together, various villages together, all surfboard-making pictures together, and on and on); I’ve printed all of my interviews and digitally recorded location notes (which I’ve typed into my laptop each evening while in Cornwall doing the research); I’ve chosen a few—but not all—locations from those I’ve seen; I’ve given them names where necessary. For Careless in Red, Bude became Casvelyn, Morwenstow became Alsperyl, a cider farm was renamed, as were a surfboard making establishment, a pasty maker’s shop, a town newspaper, and the location of Daidre Trahair’s cottage. Other places would ultimately remain as named: Widemouth Bay and Zennor among them.

So at this point I know the world in which my characters are going to operate, and now I have to create them with enough clarity that I’ll understand how they’ll operate.

I begin with each character’s name, and no name is chosen at random. It has to be a name that I can actually write about (not every name works for me), and it’s even better if that name suggests something to the reader. To illustrate this latter point: Bill Johnson isn’t going to suggest much to the reader while Mack the Knife is going to suggest plenty.

For Careless in Red, then, I would begin with the nineteen-year-old victim, and I would call him Santo Kerne. His father would be Benesek Kerne, called Ben. His mother would be Dellen Kerne. His girlfriend would be Madlyn Angarrack. Her brother would be Cadan Angarrack, and their father would be Lew Angarrack. These are mostly Cornish names, but they are also names that resonated for me. Additionally, I believed they were names that were different enough one from the other that the reader wouldn’t confuse them, for nothing is worse than reading a novel only to discover that ten characters have surnames beginning with the letter G. At the end of the day, more than just their names must distinguish them, but at least the writer is giving herself a head start by assigning names than bear no resemblance to one another.

Names have power attached to them in that they can shortcut around needless explanations. Names can suggest ethnicity, background, personality, education, relationships, proclivities, etc. In the books I write—nearly all of which take place in Great Britain—names also suggest social class. There is a reason, after all, why there is not, nor will there ever be, a King Kevin or a King Keith (with my apologies to all the Kevins and Keiths in the world). Kevin and Keith are perfectly nice names, but everyone in the UK would be able to tell you at once what their social class probably is. The same goes for Sheila, Chantal, Jade, Linda, and scores of other names that will never grace the person of a queen or princess.

Once I’ve peopled the world of my plot kernel, I move on to create these people. Doing this, I write what I call a character analysis, and I always do it in a particular fashion: I work in present tense because the character I’m creating is meant to be a real, living human being and when I get into the novel itself, I want the reader to be exposed to a life that has existed before the story begins and a life that will go on after the story ends. I write entirely in a stream-of-consciousness fashion. I don’t worry if I misspell something, if the sentences run on and on, if I encounter a detail that I will have to embellish upon later. All along I’m not listening to the noise in my mind but rather I’m feeling my body’s reaction to what I’m doing. I’m waiting for the moment when my body shouts “Yes, yes, yes!” because that’s the moment when I know I’m on the right track.

The important element in creating characters for my novels is this: The only character who is created to do anything specific is the killer. Every other character is created just to exist as a living, breathing human being who illustrates what William Faulkner said should be evident in every character: the human heart in conflict.

How is all this done without knowing the actual plot of the novel? It’s done by using what I do know: the plot kernel, the world of the plot kernel, the questions and answers that have come from the plot kernel, what I have learned while doing my research (the actual means of the murder, the various locations), what I have developed so far (my choice of specific locations that will illuminate characters as they appear in them). Thus, in my novels, once I have the plot kernel and the various locations I’ve seen while on my journey through Cornwall, everything else rises from the characters: the subplots, conflicts, theme, motifs, agendas, and the shape of the through line of the story. What this means is that when it comes to the real writing of the novel, character comes first for me and character counts most. What this also means is that my characters inform the plot of the book and not the reverse. This prevents my ending up with characters who are one-dimensional. This also prevents any feeling on my part that “the characters aren’t doing what I want them to do.” The reason I don’t find myself in a situation in which my characters are “misbehaving” is that prior to the activity of creating them, I have no preconceived notion at all about how they’re going to behave or what their agendas are or what sets them off. The analysis of them tells me that.

I follow a prompt sheet when I create a character. I use it merely to make certain I’ve touched on as many elements of an individual as I can. I don’t employ every item on the prompt sheet, for the prompt sheet is just a stimulus and what I write in stream-of-consciousness fashion is the response.

Below you can see the actual form my prompt sheet takes. I set this next to my computer, and from it I create a dossier about each character.

Character Prompt Sheet

Name

Age

Height

Weight/Build

Birthplace

Color hair/eyes

Physical peculiarities/unique details

Educational background

Best friend

Enemies

Family (mother, father, siblings, etc.)

Core need

Pathological maneuver

Ambition in life

Gestures when talking

Gait

Strongest character trait

Weakest character trait

Laughs at or jeers at

Life philosophy

Political leaning

Hobbies

What others first notice about him/her

What the character does alone

One-line characterization

Will reader like/dislike character?

Does he/she change in the story? How?

Significant event that molded the character

Significant event that illustrates who the character is now

This prompt sheet acts only as my guide, and from it emerges the character who rises up and tells me who he is, how he is going to act and to react, what his attitudes are, what his relationships to other people look like, etc. In his creation, as I indicated earlier, I’ve been the character’s biographer, psychoanalyst, social worker, spiritual guide, mentor, religious counselor, physician, psychiatrist, etc.

What follows is an actual character analysis from Careless in Red. The character is Selevan Penrule, one of the older individuals in the novel. You’ll note some sections are rendered in bold. The bold represents areas that I highlighted after writing all the character analyses for the novel. At that point, I reread each of them, and with yellow marking pen, I highlight the details that I most want to remember. This will be especially useful when I put all of the analyses together and need to find a useful item by flipping through all of the created characters.

SELEVAN PENRULE: Selevan Penrule is 65 years old and he owns the caravan park through which Santo trespasses to get to one of the sites where he surfs. Or maybe one of the sites where he climbs. He also has a granddaughter who has in the past been bit by the Santo bug, and she lives there with Penrule and she’s the real reason why Penrule won’t allow Santo on his land.

Penrule is a Cornishman born and bred. He’s a man who raised cattle on the land until he realized that he could turn the whole place into a caravan park for holiday makers and make, at least to his way of thinking, in one summer what it would take him two years to make as he worked the farm. So he sold off the cattle and used the money plus money he borrowed to turn the whole place into a caravan site. Some people live there all year long but most people have units that remain there and they just come on weekends, holidays, and in the summer. It’s a bare-bones holiday park and it’s out in the open so the wind is fierce. But Penrule has big plans for it. Penrule always has big plans and he doesn’t like people to get in the way of his making them happen.

Penrule is a bitter man. He always was. He always wanted to be in a different life but he never knew how to get there. He was a dairy farmer because his father and his father’s father and his father’s father’s father were dairy farmers on this same land. It was a family tradition and he couldn’t see a way out of the family tradition although he didn’t want any part of it.

Why did he end up as a dairy farmer then? Because his father had a stroke and he had to come home to help. He’d been in the Royal Navy but as he was the only son, he got compassionate leave and then a discharge when it became apparent that someone was going to have to take over the farm if his parents were to survive. His mother was less than useless running the dairy farm. She’d been a “society catch” the way Penrule’s father talked about her. But the truth of the matter was that she was just a minister’s daughter from Casvelyn who had never been on a farm and was wooed and won by Penrule’s father who went to church determined to find himself a wife the day he inherited the farm from his father.

So she was unequipped to be of significant help on the farm, especially where animals are concerned. She could do the house stuff and she learned to cook—albeit badly—and to can fruits. But that was the extent of it aside from her needlepoint which she sold at Friday market when she was able to get organized enough to finish a project. That’s what Penrule always saw as a boy: unfinished projects.

Penrule was determined to have a career in the Royal Navy, but this was thwarted when his father had his stroke. Penrule’s sister could not take over the farm as she was married to a sheep farmer in Shropshire and they weren’t in a position to help. She came for a while until Penrule himself got home. But then she had to return to her own farm and her family. It was a no-brainer that Penrule would take over the farm as he couldn’t sell it out from under his mother’s substantial butt.

So he worked the farm and he stayed with it mostly out of habit. He himself married to get a helpmate on the farm and not for love. He picked someone he thought he could put up with: a local girl who had no ambition beyond husband and family. She was someone who did her duty on all fronts: cooked, cleaned, was available sexually, had kids. But theirs was an empty life and all the kids (there were five) got away as soon as they could and return rarely. None of them were willing to take over the farm. None of them were even interested. This enraged Penrule who did his duty by his own parents and expects his children to do their duty by him. He can’t see that times have changed since he was a boy. He expects things to be the same.

The defection of his kids embitters him. He gets no pleasure from their various successes or from his grandchildren. He won’t travel to see them and when they come to Cornwall, he does not make them welcome. He is a man of few words and what words he has are bitter ones. Being with him is a chore. It’s no wonder his wife doesn’t call out for help or seek help when she first has heart trouble.

When she dies without being under the care of a physician an autopsy has to be performed. They discover she had a heart condition that she had to have known about but did not talk about. Penrule realizes that she was just waiting to die to escape him. This sends him into a tailspin. His selling the cows and setting up the caravan park is a way for him to recover.

His granddaughter comes to live with him because she’s in trouble in her own environment. She’s seventeen and she works in the pasty making place, perhaps. Or in Clean Barrel Surf Shop. She knows Santo (obviously), but she also knows Cade and Will. She drinks and smokes and perhaps she has had a relationship with Santo. Or maybe she wanted one and couldn’t get one. Yes, this is more likely. She’s not Santo’s type. She’s not into clean living. She’s interested in him but she can’t attract him, not like Madlyn and Aldara can. What’s her name? I’d say it’s Tammy Penrule. She’s the daughter of Penrule’s oldest son. She’s fallen in with a bad crowd wherever she lives and this is the family’s attempt to set her on the right path before she goes over the edge.

What does Penrule look like? He’s bald and wears a peaked cap at all times—indoors and out—because he’s embarrassed about being bald. He has perfect false teeth—white and straight—that look very odd in his weathered face. His face is round and deeply lined and has collapsed from the cheekbones down. He’s got a beer belly but he claims to be solid as a rock. He’s an endomorph. He dresses in jeans and boots and a black knit sweater and a waxed jacket all the time. It’s his uniform. He puts it on in the morning when he rolls out of bed. He drinks endless cups of Bovril. He eats Vegemite on toast for breakfast and lunch. He occasionally adds an egg or bacon or sausage to this. Or beans. He loves Heinz beans. No he has toast, Vegemite and beans for breakfast and a bacon bap for lunch. Every day. If you open his cupboards what you find is cans and cans of baked beans, jars of Bovril and Vegemite, bottles of ketchup which he uses on his bacon bap, and boxes of PG Tips.

He completed school to the point that he was able to join the Royal Navy. He was an indifferent student, not because he was not intelligent but because he wanted to be out of this place that he lived in. He was aware of the contrast in Cornwall to the rest of the country: the amount of poverty, the end of the mining industry, the difficulty in climbing out of the conditions in which one lives . . . He sees this and he realizes that the only way out is to get out, which was his plan. Out as soon as possible. But he didn’t make it out and this is something that he’s bitter about.

Bitterness characterizes most of his life. He was never able to reframe a single experience. His idea is that you’re supposed to work for what you want and God is supposed to give it to you. He has the idea that if you don’t get what you want it’s because you’ve done something morally wrong along the line. His understanding is the moral wrong he did was to his wife: marrying someone he didn’t love and expecting her to be a workmate.

Is he religious now? He goes to church. But he is angry at God. So he has no peace.

What is his core need in life? Forgiveness, I would say. Or is it to have things his way? To make things happen? Or is it escape? It seems that he’s wanted to escape from the very beginning and all his efforts to escape have been thwarted. So it must be escape. Escape the prison of his circumstances but also escape the body he has. Escape his baldness, even. He can’t admit who he is. So what he’s done is designed always to escape whatever circumstances he found himself in. The navy was to escape the farm. The marriage was to escape sole responsibility for his mother and the farm. What would he have done while he was a farmer to escape the marriage? Would he be a drinker? A gambler? A religious zealot? Maybe he’s a fixture at the Salthouse Inn. He definitely is that and he knows Jago from the Salthouse Inn. They are of an age, so they’re friends . . . as much as Jago can be a friend to anyone. Does Penrule know or learn something about Jago? Perhaps.

Since there is no escape, what’s his pathological maneuver? I would say anger. He goes right to anger. He’s angry about so many things in his life. No matter what kind of stress he faces, he takes things directly to irrational anger.

Why of all people does his son send Tammy to live with Penrule? It’s a lesson that he hopes she will learn, I guess. Or maybe he just can’t control her and he thinks his father can.

Why does Penrule take Tammy on? Because she represents to him a form of escape as well. If he can have her in his life and if he can make a success with her, he will have escaped. He will also have a form of forgiveness for what he did to his wife’s life.

What molded him: poverty and the need to escape it.

What illustrates who he is now? Once he learns about Santo’s rejection of Tammy, he won’t let Santo use his land although he’s allowed him to use it before.

Just freewriting off the top of my head, I’ve developed information that will allow me to step into the skin of Selevan Penrule in an effort to become him should his point of view be used in the book. It will also allow me to step into his skin when he has to relate to other characters. If I’m going to use his POV in the novel, I also have a leg up on what his voice is going to sound like, for from the analysis comes his attitude and attitude is essential in developing a character’s voice.

Once Selevan is developed, then, he can step onto the page of the novel as a fully realized human being. In the following scene, he’s in conversation with his granddaughter, who has come to live with him because her parents are unable to dissuade her from the life path she’s chosen and they’re hoping her grandfather can make a dent in her determination. As you read, you’ll notice that Tammy Penrule is very different from the girl described in Selevan’s character analysis. I changed her because I realized the alteration in her character was going to encourage more dramatic questions. It also avoids stereotyping her.

Selevan Penrule thought it was rubbish, but he joined hands with his granddaughter anyway. Across the narrow table in the caravan, they closed their eyes and Tammy began to pray. Selevan didn’t listen to the words although he caught the gist of them. Instead, he considered his grandchild’s hands. They were dry and cool but so thin that they felt like something he could crush simply by closing his own fingers roughly over them.

“She’s not been eating right, Father Penrule,” his daughter-in-law had told him. He hated what she called him—“Father Penrule” made him feel like a renegade priest—but he’d said nothing to correct Sally Joy since speaking to him at all was something that she and her husband hadn’t bothered with for ages. So, he’d grunted and said he’d fatten the girl up. It’s being in Africa, woman, don’t you know that? You cart the girl off to Rhodesia—

“Zimbabwe, Father Penrule. And we’re actually in—”

Whatever the hell they want it to be called. You cart her off to Rhodesia and expose her to God only knows what and that would kill anyone’s appetite, let me tell you.

Selevan realised he was taking things too far at that point, because Sally Joy said nothing for a moment. He imagined her there in Rhodesia or wherever she was, sitting on the porch in a rattan chair with her legs stretched out and a drink on the table next to her . . . lemonade, it would be, lemonade, with a dash of . . . what is it, Sally Joy? What’s in the glass that would make Rhodesia go down a trick for you?

He harrumphed noisily and said, Well, never mind then. You send her along. I’ll get her sorted.

“You’ll watch her food intake?”

Like a peregrine.

Which he had done. She’d taken thirty-nine bites tonight. Thirty-nine spoonfuls of a gruel that would have made Oliver Twist lead an armed rebellion. No milk, no raisins, no cinnamon, no sugar. Just watery porridge and a glass of water. Not even tempted by her grandfather’s meal of chops and veg, she was.

“. . . for Your will is what we seek. Amen,” Tammy said, and he opened his eyes to find hers on him. Her expression was fond. He dropped her fingers in a rush.

He said roughly, “Bloody stupid. You know that, eh?”

She smiled. “So you’ve told me.” But she settled in so that he could tell her again, and she balanced her cheek on her palm.

“We pray before the bloody meal,” he groused. “Why d’we got to bloody pray at the bloody end as well?”

She answered by rote, but with no indication that she was tiring of a discussion they’d had at least twice a week since she’d come to Cornwall. “We say a prayer of thanks at the beginning. We thank God for the food we have. Then at the end we pray for those who don’t have enough food to sustain them.”

“If they’re bloody alive, they have enough bloody food to bloody sustain them, don’t they?” he countered.

“Grandie, you know what I mean. There’s a difference between just being alive and having enough to be sustained. Sustained means more than just living. It means having enough sustenance to engage. Take the Sudan, for example—”

“Now you hang on right there, missy-miss. And don’t move either.” He slid out from the banquette. He carried his plate the short distance to the caravan’s sink as a means of feigning other employment, but instead of beginning the washing up, he snatched her rucksack from the hook on the back of the door and said, “Let’s just have a look.”

She said, “Grandie,” in a patient voice. “You can’t stop me, you know.”

He said, “I know my duty to your parents is what I know, my girl.”

He brought the sack to the table and emptied its contents and there it was: on the cover a young black mother in tribal dress holding her child, one of them sorrowful and both of them hungry. Blurred in the background were countless others, waiting in a mixture of hope and confusion. The magazine was called Crossroads, and he scooped it up, rolled it up, and slapped it against his palm.

“Right,” he said. “Another bowl of that mush for you, then. Either that or a chop. You can take your choice.” He shoved the magazine into the back pocket of his drooping trousers. He would dispose of it later, when she’d gone to bed.

“I’ve had enough,” she said. “Truly. Grandie, I eat enough to stay alive and well, and that’s what God intended. We’re not meant to carry round excess flesh. Aside from being not good for us, it’s also not right.”

“Oh, a sin, is it?”

“Well . . . it can be, yes.”

“So your grandie’s a sinner? Going straight to hell on a plate of beans while you’re playing harps with the angels, eh?”

She laughed outright. “You know that’s not what I think.”

“What you think is a cartload of bollocks. What I know is that this stage you’re in—”

“A stage? And how do you know that when you and I have been together . . . what? Two months? Before that you didn’t even know me, Grandie. Not really.”

“Makes no difference, that. I know women. And you’re a woman despite what you’re doing to make yourself look like a twelve-year-old girl.”

She nodded thoughtfully, and he could tell from the expression on her face that she was about to twist his words and use them against him as she seemed only too expert at doing. “So let me see,” she said. “You had four sons and one daughter, and the daughter—this would be Aunt Nan, of course—left home when she was sixteen and never returned except at Christmas and the odd bank holiday. So that leaves Gran and whatever wife or girlfriend your sons brought round, yes? So how is it that you know women in general from this limited exposure to them, Grandie?”

“Don’t you get clever with me. I’d been married to your gran for forty-six years when the poor woman dropped dead, so I had plenty of time to know your sort.”

“My ‘sort’?”

“The female sort. And what I know is that women need men as much as men need women and anyone who thinks otherwise is doing their thinking straight through the arse.”

“What about men who need men and women who need women?”

“We’ll not talk about that!” he declared in outrage. “There’ll be no perversion in my family and have no doubt about that.”

“Ah. That’s what you think, then. It’s perversion.”

“That’s what I know.” He’d shoved her possessions back into the rucksack and replaced it on the hook before he saw how she’d diverted them from his chosen topic. The damn girl was like a freshly hooked fish when it came to conversation. She flipped and flopped and avoided the net. Well, that would not be the case tonight. He was a match for her wiliness. The cleverness in her blood was diluted by having Sally Joy for a mother. The cleverness in his blood was not.

He said, “A stage. Full stop. Girls your age, they all have stages. This one here, it might look different from another girl’s, but a stage is a stage. And I know one when I’m looking it in the eyes, don’t I.”

“Do you.”

“Oh aye. And there’ve been signs, by the way, in case you think I’m blowing smoke in the matter. I saw you with him, I did.”

She didn’t reply. Instead, she carried her glass and bowl to the sink and began the washing up. She scraped the bone from his chop into the rubbish, and she stacked the cooking pots, the plates, the cutlery, and the glasses on the work top in the order in which she intended to wash them. She filled the sink. Steam rose. He thought she was going to scald herself some night, but the heat never seemed to bother her.

When she began to wash but still said nothing, he picked up a tea towel for the drying and spoke again. “You hear me, girl? I saw you with him, so do not be declaring to your granddad that you have no interest, eh? I know what I saw and I know what I know. When a woman looks at a man in the way you were looking at him . . . That tells me you don’t know your own mind, no matter what you say.”

She said, “And where did this seeing take place, Grandie?”

“What does it matter? There you were, heads together, arms locked . . . the way lovers do, by the way . . .”

“And did that worry you? That we might be lovers?”

“Don’t try that with me. Don’t you bloody try that again, missy-miss. Once a night is enough and your granddad isn’t fool enough to fall for it twice.” She’d done her water glass and his lager pint, and he snatched up the latter and pushed the tea towel into it. He screwed it around and gave it a polish. “You were interested, you bloody were.”

She paused. She was looking out of the window towards the four lines of caravans below their own. They marched towards the edge of the cliff and the sea. Only one of them was occupied at this time of year—the one nearest the cliff—and its kitchen light was on. This winked in the night as the rain fell against it.

“Jago’s home,” Tammy said. “We should have him over for a meal soon. It’s not good for elderly people to be on their own so much. And now he’s going to be . . . He’ll miss Santo badly, though I don’t expect he’ll ever admit it.”

Ah. There. The name had been said. Selevan could talk about the boy freely now. He said, “You’ll claim it was nothing, won’t you. A . . . what d’you call it? A passing interest. A bit of flirting. But I saw and I know you were willing. If he’d made a move . . .”

She picked up a plate. She washed it thoroughly. Her movements were languid. There was no sense of urgency in anything that Tammy did. She said, “Grandie, you misconstrued. Santo and I were friends. He talked to me. He needed someone to talk to, and I was the person he chose.”

“That’s him, not you.”

“No. It was both. I was happy with that. Happy to be . . . well, to be someone he could turn to.”

“Bah. Don’t lie to me.”

“Why would I lie? He talked, I listened. And if he wanted to know what I thought about something, I told him what I thought.”

“I saw you with your arms linked, girl.”

She cocked her head as she looked at him. She studied his face and then she smiled. She removed her hands from the water and, dripping as they were, she put her arms around him. She kissed him even as he stiffened and tried to resist her. She said, “Dear Grandie. Linking arms doesn’t mean what it might have meant once. It means friendship. And that’s the honest truth.”

“Honest,” he said. “Bah.”

“It is. I always try to be honest.”

“With yourself as well?”

“Especially with myself.” She went back to the washing up and cleaned her gruel bowl carefully, and then she began on the cutlery. She’d done it all before she spoke again. And then she spoke in a very low voice, which Selevan might have missed altogether had he not been straining to hear something quite different from what she next said.

“I told him to be honest as well,” she murmured. “If I hadn’t, Grandie . . . I’m rather worried about that.”

The deviations from Penrule’s character analysis—when it comes to Tammy—are part of the joy and the fun of writing: the moment when a character decides she isn’t quite as previously revealed during the analysis stage. But while there are details that change from the analysis, what doesn’t change is Selevan’s voice, his attitude, and the form that his dialogue takes. His dialogue, especially, is character-specific, and the specificity is illustrated through the choice of words which will reflect his attitude. Thus we have:

“What’s in the glass that would make Rhodesia go down a trick for you?” and

“We pray before the bloody meal. Why d’we got to bloody pray at the bloody end as well?” and

“So your grandie’s a sinner? Going straight to hell on a plate of beans while you’re playing harps with the angels, eh?” and

“What I know is that women need men as much as men need women and anyone who thinks otherwise is doing their thinking straight through the arse.”

No other character in the novel speaks like this. That’s what character-specific dialogue is meant to be.

I’d also like to point out the final two lines of the scene between Selevan and Tammy, for they constitute a dramatic question. Something has gone on between Tammy and the murder victim, and this is weighing on her mind. The reader doesn’t know what this is, and there is only one way to learn, which is, of course, to continue reading.

Optional Exercise 1

Take these three generic characters: a thirty-year-old man, a nineteen-year-old girl, and a fifty-two-year-old woman. Name each of these characters in such a way that something is immediately suggested about them: their personality, their ethnicity, their background, how they are related to each other, their level of education, their birth order, anything. (My favorite example of this came from a seventh grader when I was speaking to his class: Fried Chicken Sally.) As you consider the possible names, can you sense a story out there with these three characters featured in it? If not, look at the following example and ask yourself if a story could come of how the characters have been named.

Man, thirty years old—Jeff “the Hammer” Cribbs

Girl, nineteen years old—Fatima Binte Nur

Woman, fifty-two years old—Hester Silverman

Given these names, do you see any potential stories arising from them? Do you feel any relationship among them? What about conflict? If you feel the twinge of a tale growing inside you, that comes from the power of naming a character. You can take this one step further and actually name the relationships that exist among them. Once you’ve done that, you should be able to see more clearly how a story can emerge from who they are.

Optional Exercise 2

Establish a relationship among the three characters from Exercise 1. Make this a relationship that has the potential for tension. For example: mother / mother’s much younger boyfriend / daughter, or teacher / former student / principal, or stepmother / stepdaughter / stepdaughter’s much older boyfriend, or kidnapper / victim / kidnapper’s previous victim. Consider the various kinds of tension that could be present in this relationship. Jot a few down. Choose one and move that tension into an expression of open conflict. Write it in a paragraph or two.