Creating characters is rough. I worry that I’ve already created these people before, in one book or another. I long for them to be different from everyone I’ve already created—different the way each human being is different—but when I write them, I wonder if I’m just going back to cover old ground.
Journal of a Novel,
June 6, 2001
As I promised earlier, this section of the book is going to give you examples from my own work, as well as helpful lists and prompt sheets that you can choose, if you wish, to stimulate your own creativity.
The character prompt sheet that follows is something that I use when I’m writing my character analyses. I use it only as a guide. I set it up next to my computer screen and I occasionally glance at it as I free write about the character. I do not fill in the prompt sheet. That would be useless activity. Single-word descriptions will never stimulate the right side of anyone’s brain, and it’s only through getting into the right side of the brain that I know I can be in full creative mode, allowing my stream-of-consciousness writing to tell me what each character is like. But I use the prompt sheet to remind me of things I might forget. I generally don’t use every one of the categories on the sheet, by the way. They’re merely devices to keep me going in my rapid, free-writing analysis about the character, like a psychiatrist, autobiographer, and analyst, you’ll remember.
I’d recommend you do that same thing with this sheet. Type it up on a piece of paper or print it on a card. When you get to the stage of your writing to create characters, just put it next to your workspace and give it a look now and then. Allow yourself the freedom of writing from the top of your head. Clear your mind right on the page if necessary. But give your characters a chance to tell you what part they’re going to play in your novel. Believe me. They will.
CHARACTER PROMPT SHEET
[Use this as a prewriting activity to stimulate ideas for your written character analysis.]
Name:
Age:
Height:
Weight/Build:
Birthplace:
Color hair/eyes:
Physical peculiarities:
Educational background:
Sexuality:
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 or jeers at:
Philosophy:
Political leaning:
Hobbies:
What others notice first about him/her:
What character does alone:
One-line characterization (actual line from a narrative):
Will reader like/dislike character:
Does he/she change in story? How:
Significant event that molded the character:
Significant event that illustrates the character’s personality:
Next, you’ll find the actual analysis that I did of one of the main characters from In the Presence of the Enemy. Here’s what I knew about Eve Bowen going into the analysis: I had written a novel called Missing Joseph about a good mother who commits a crime to protect her child. She was a decent person and a nurturing, loving, single parent. Having created her, I wanted to write a book about a woman who was her polar opposite, a woman who should never have had a child but who did so for political reasons. She would be the antithesis of that character from Missing Joseph. So I created Eve Bowen.
What follows, then, is the analysis of her character. I’m including it without a single correction so that you can see how I go about this process. You can see that I don’t stop to find out if something I’m writing is true or even possible. Rather, when I get to that point, I simply make a note telling myself that I will have to find out and indicating a potential source of that information.
I consider the character analysis a bit of private conversation between me and myself and often I throw ideas up on the screen one after another until I get one that feels right for the character. I don’t have any preconceived notions about a character when I begin unless that person is the killer, in which case I know I’m designing a killer, or unless I’m attempting to do something specific with a character, as I was with Eve Bowen when I decided to create Juliet Spence’s antithesis.
Here, then, is the raw material of character: what I wrote about Eve Bowen long before she put in an appearance on the pages of my rough draft.
CHARACTERS
In a novel—yet unnamed—the theme of which is, at least for the time being, the price of hypocrisy.
EVELYN (EVE) BOWEN: Eve Bowen is the mother of the murder victim in the novel and one of the central characters. She is 40 years old and a member of Parliament for the fictional constituency of Marylebone. (See notes from Parliament visit for the boundaries of this constituency.) She is a member of the Conservative Party and a Parliamentary Private Secretary for the Secretary of State for Health (check this with Michael Fairbairn…. it may be that she has to be the PPS for a junior minister instead…or could she herself be a junior minister at her age?)
She was born in Canterbury and educated at St. Winifred’s Grammar School in Kent. She is one of two children. Her older brother, a captain in the Army, was killed either in the Falklands or in the Gulf War. Her parents still live on the farm in Canterbury where Eve and her brother Jonathon grew up. Her father is a fruit and vegetable farmer to this day. Her mother is a farmwife and housewife. They are down-to-earth people who love the country and love the land. They have made their living off the land and they have never expected a single thing from the government. They instilled in their children a strong sense of “doing their part” which was always left rather nebulous in the minds of the kids. Jonathon interpreted it as going into the Army. Eve interpreted it as being self-supporting.
Although her parents wanted her to go to the University of Canterbury and hence be close to home, Eve felt that her mother was too controlling (as she herself is) and too clinging (as she herself isn’t). Thus, she went to the University of Lancaster—in part to get away from her family-where she read politics.
Her relationship with her parents was a careful one, perhaps best described as cautious. She always felt they preferred Jonathon’s sense of what it meant to “do his part” to her sense of what it meant. Their house, in fact, is filled with pictures of Jonathon’s military career, and neither of her parents have been able to come to terms with their grief over his death. He was 36 years old when he died, engaged to be married to a woman who—in their minds—far too quickly married someone else. Eve has always felt judged by her parents and she has always felt that she had to project a certain image for them in order to gain their approval. The image she projected-dutiful daughter, good student—was not who Eve felt she was, but she grew rather used to the persona: Good, solid, respectable, middle class, self-starter, worker, team player, etc. Over time the act became the reality and she convinced herself that she actually was what she pretended to be. That’s the major quality about Eve: Pretence.
She started her career in journalism, working for a newspaper in Manchester after she left university. She moved to London when she was twenty-six and became a political journalist. She knew Dennis Luxford from the University of Lancaster only because they wrote opposing columns in the university newspaper and always took opposing positions in the debating society. She was not friends with him-he considered her far too straight-laced for his tastes. She had not maintained contact with him-there was no reason to do so. And when she came to London, she moved in a vastly different social circle from his. She met up with him again at a Conservative Party Conference in Brighton. She was covering it for her newspaper. He was at that time deputy editor of his newspaper. He recognized her from the university and joined her for lunch one day. They had a sharp and witty conversation which attracted him to her. So it was at this conference that she had her fling with him and became pregnant. Neither of them was married at the time, and he was willing to marry her, but she already had political ambitions and with his leftwing leanings, he was a liability. Or perhaps he didn’t want to marry her and while she didn’t want to marry him either because of her future, she still hasn’t forgiven him for not wanting to marry her. She knew that she couldn’t have an abortion in her past if she was to win a conservative seat. So she had the baby. Luxford has always been aware of the child’s existence but he respected Eve’s decision to keep the child’s paternity under wraps. Why? Maybe he was engaged? Maybe he was already married? Maybe he was relieved that she didn’t want to marry him because he knew it wouldn’t work out.
Eve’s physical appearance: All the accents here are on tradition and conservatism. She is traditional in appearance, with a page-boy hairstyle that is easy to take care of, quite attractive, and not fussy looking. It frames her face smoothly and touches the tops of her reading glasses. These are tortoise-shell, and round like Mr. Peeper’s glasses and they are her signature feature since she pops them on and off when she is speaking and uses them to gesture with. Her hair color is brown, the color of fallen beech leaves in late autumn. Her eyes are hazel. Her skin is extremely good and she looks about 32. Her only facial disfigurement—if it can be called that—is a scar that runs through her right eyebrow and another that creates a cicatrix starburst from her right eye to her temple. This scar is the result of an accident when she was ten years old. She was playing with her brother in the little conservatory that her father attached to the farmhouse for his wife’s forty-fifth birthday. They were rough-housing and Eve fell through one of the windows face first. She harbors a grievance against her parents for this, because she’s always felt that Jonathon wasn’t blamed enough for what happened to her. But this grievance, like all her other grievances against her parents, she keeps buried inside. Her parents don’t know she feels these grievances, but she takes her feelings out on them in subtle ways: like forgetting a birthday or failing to show up for a dinner or being unavailable at Christmas, etc. She always has an excuse for these little acts of punishment, however. When she was growing up, it was that she had schoolwork, or she had to stay at the university. When she came to London, it was a story she had to pursue. When she became an MP, it was parliamentary business.
Eve can’t forgive injuries. That’s her greatest weakness. Once you’re her enemy, you’re her enemy forever. Perhaps she feels enmity for Dennis Luxford now, not because he wouldn’t marry her (because he was willing to do so) but because he got her pregnant in the first place. Or possibly for both.
She is about five feet six inches tall. She exercises at a gym early in the morning. She wears makeup and wears it well, the sort of application that ends up looking like she doesn’t have any on in the first place. She wears only a wedding band, a gold watch, and the same kind of earrings all the time: button types that match her outfits.
Her clothes are tailored. She always wears suits. Unlike some of the women in the House of Commons who seem to favor bright colors in order to make their presence felt, Eve determined from the first that her presence was going to be felt by virtue of its being her presence. So she wears grey, black, charcoal, or navy suits, either solid or pinstriped. Her blouses are generally tailored as well. If it rains, she has a black trenchcoat and an Aquascutum raincoat. She is always careful to buy English only, right down to her shoes. These are either pumps in solid colors for work, or high spiked heels for dressing up.
Her core need in life is to prove herself and to be seen as The Genuine Article. She is ambitious but the ambition is directed toward proving herself. The more she achieves, the more she can convince herself and others that she is what she appears to be. When she is thwarted, she becomes furious and vengeful. She believes that people should suffer for the injustices that they do to her, and she defines injustice as anything that keeps her from achieving her goals and proving herself as quickly as she would like to do. She is expert at getting back at people, mostly behind their backs. A little word there, a little innuendo there. She feels she is justified in this because these people did something unjust to her.
Her relationship with Alexander Stone is one in which she gets nurtured by Alex who is essentially a caretaking kind of personality. She loves Alex as much as she is capable of love, but she isn’t good at expressing it and she also isn’t good at receiving it. She married him because he is an asset to her politically since he is a businessman who built his business single-handedly from the ground up.
Sexually, Eve is usually distant. She finds sex frightening and inside she labels her fright “a reaction to a bestial and distasteful encounter” but outside, she pretends otherwise. She operates best sexually when she has had a few drinks. She and Alex have regular sex because she knows that they’re supposed to. She has never had an orgasm with Alex, but she has always faked it because in her mind, real womanly women are supposed to have orgasms. She wasn’t overly sexual as a student at the university. But it was there that she had her first sexual experiences, just with two young men in the time she was there and both of them were boyfriends. With neither of them did she reach orgasm. Dennis Luxford represents the only time she had sex with someone with whom she wasn’t involved. He also represents the only time she had sex and enjoyed it. He brought her to orgasm and perhaps she can’t forgive him for that—for that momentary loss of control-either.
Of course the person she can’t forgive the most is herself: for having too many drinks, for getting involved with Luxford, for enjoying the sex so that she wanted to have—and did have—sex again with him during that conference, for getting pregnant. Perhaps she is such an overachiever because overachieving is the way she’s going to be able to forgive herself.
She is a fine chess player and she and Alex always have a chess game in progress in their sitting room. Sometimes they only have time to make one move each a night. Charlotte has been punished severely at least once for monkeying around with her mother’s chess board.
She also is a fine horsewoman and once rode dressage (check this) in Kent. She has youthful photographs of this as well as ribbons and trophies.
What molded Eve into a person who felt she had to prove herself is something that had to do with Jonathon, her older brother. It would be a situation in which she was asked by her mother in exasperation: Why can’t you be more like your brother? Perhaps the mother volunteered both children to do something for old people at a pensioners’ home or at a geriatric ward in a hospital. Eve, with an aversion to old people, did it once but was disgusted and refused to do it again. Perhaps it was reading to them and she hated the fact that you had to sit near them. Perhaps it was taking baby farm animals in to see them. No, I like reading to them. And maybe some old man felt her up or better yet slipped her hand under his covers to feel his erection and once that happened, she didn’t want to return but wouldn’t tell her mother why. This reading to the old folks was an activity started by their church and Eve’s mother signed both kids up to do it, thinking it would be good for them and it would be a way for them to “do their part.” Jonathon did his part obediently. Eve didn’t. Perhaps that was always the story of their lives. Jonathon doing his part according to his parents’ wishes, Eve wanting to do her part according to her own wishes. So what she’s had to prove all her life is that her decisions have been the right ones even though they weren’t the sort of decisions Jonathon made.
Guilt is her underpinning. Guilt over the fact that she was glad when Jonathon died. Guilt over the fact that she doesn’t love Lottie. Guilt over the fact that Lottie dies.
Ultimately she is undone in the novel. She loses everything.
Recall that when I complete an analysis, I read through it and highlight any part that I want especially to remember when I’m writing the rough draft. And I don’t begin that rough draft, you will remember, until I have all the characters created since so much of what comes out when I do create them tells me about the story itself.
You will also recall that I try to give my characters either a job or a sideline that gives the reader a hint as to who they are. A few years ago, one of my writing students compiled a list of potential places of employment for characters, and I’ve drawn upon this list more than once in a pinch when I’m casting about for inspiration. Here it is.
Where People Work
Hospital
Morgue
Newspaper
Adult bookstore
Video store
Pet groomers
Car lot
Car wash
Shoe repair
Drive-through dairy
Hardware store
Library
Restaurant
Mechanic
Price club
Dress shop
Lawyer’s office
Escrow office
Bank
Building supply
Sheriff’s office
Telephone
Operator
School
Beauty salon
Computer store
Doctor’s office
Movie theater
Stereo store
Piano store
Piano teacher
Grocery store
Food plant
Pest control
Truck driver
Gas station
Trading card store
Teacher supply store
Martial arts supplies
Printer
Upholstery workroom
Interior decorator
Veterinarian
Oil refinery
Farm
Water slides
National park
Fire department
Pawn shop
Health spa
Cruise ship
Airport
Accountant
Unemployment office
Air conditioning service
Insurance office
Plumber
Gardener
Flight training school
Antique dealer
Aquarium service
Art gallery
Auctioneer
USDA
Church
Ophthalmologist
Miniature doll houses
Stained glass manufacturer
Beauty supplies
Caterers
Industrial kitchen
Food lab
Crack house
Architect office
Recorder’s office
Government office
Jeweler
Limousine driver
TV repair
Locksmith
Sporting goods store
Lamp repair
Analytical laboratory
Mobile screen repair
Garbage collector
Florist
Driving school
Computer training school
Beauty college
Friends of the Sea Lion
Rescuing unwanted furry friends
Medieval times jouster
Carpet cleaner
Janitor of school
7-Eleven
Mobile library
Ice cream man
Hit man
Bodyguard
Lounge singer
Wigmaker
Telescope seller
Clockmaker
This is useful, but it’s not all-inclusive. Never turn up your nose at common resources you have right at hand: The Yellow Pages comes to mind at once. But so does travel in a car since from the windows of your vehicle, you have access all the time to telling details of sidelines or employment. In my novel A Traitor to Memory, the character Yasmin Edwards makes wigs for cancer victims and abused women simply because I was driving home along Pacific Coast Highway one day and I saw a wig shop in Newport Beach.
Finally, characters often need to engage in THADs. These are the previously described Talking Head Avoidance Devices, those elements of a scene that illustrate character or illuminate his state of mind at the same time as they obviate the possibility of a scene’s becoming nothing more than he said/she said. Remember that a THAD is more than just window dressing. It should serve a greater purpose than presenting the reader with a visual element during what would otherwise be only dialogue.
There is no limit to the THADs you can come up with. The only limit is your imagination.
But that’s true of most of the phases of the novel-writing process. The key is to move past your fear and your internal editor and to let your mind roam where it will.
THAD
Eating a meal
Cooking a meal
Lifting weights
Playing darts, chess, etc.
Rowing
Gardening
Working on a car
Programming a VCR
Coloring hair
Changing a diaper
Electrolysis, bikini wax
Grocery shopping
Drinking
Mixing drinks
Feeding a child
Feeding a pet
Training a dog
Editing film
Grooming a horse
Doing laundry
Doing dishes
Robbing a liquor store
Learning how to ski
Washing windows
Putting on makeup
Building a campfire
Getting a tattoo
Casting a spell
Autopsy
Cleaning a swimming pool
Fishing
Massage
Buying a Coke from machine
Figuring out Xerox
Kids pimping for beer
Batting cage
Driving range
Rifle range
Moving
Rearranging furniture
Hanging pictures
Building a structure
Erector set, puzzle
Laying carpet
Sculpting
Changing sheets
Doing homework
Mowing a lawn
Applying suntan lotion
Window dressing
Getting a bee into a jar
Catching a lizard
Knitting
Rolling yarn
Playing video game
Trampoline
Washing a car
Examining stamps
Trying on shoes in a store
Developing film in dark room
Surgery
Wrapping a present
Putting a puzzle together
Standing in line
Beating a rug
Sweeping a floor
Shopping
Packing
Hiking
Cleaning a garage or attic
Interviewing for job
Getting sworn in
Voting
Rescuing someone
Posing for portrait
Going through photographs
Digging for clams
Killing ants