Writing Real Characters--How I Got to Know the Characters in Me (and) Me
You may have noticed when
you’re in a café that there’s a person sitting there with headphones on,
humming to themselves, and seemingly in deep conversation with their own
thoughts.
See, I’m that person in
the café, listening to quiet music, and having conversations with the people
who live in my head. This is a weird confession, but my characters feel like real people already. Sometimes I even hear them chatting to me, or to each other. My job as a writer, it
seems to me, is to make those characters real to my readers too.
I actually follow a
series of steps, honed during writing five published novels (and many more
unpublished ones). Below I’ve shared these steps with you, just in case any of
you have characters chatting to you in your head too.
Step One: I search the
Internet for a face who looks like the made-up person whispering to me. Here’s
a picture of a guy who looks a bit like Alec (Alec is one of the main
characters in Me (and) Me). This guy doesn’t look exactly like Alec, but he’s close enough to give me
someone to look at when I need to write visual descriptions.
(Picture is not uploading)
Step Two: I interview my
characters, using this interview from my website. There are lots of other
writing workshops on there for those of you who love to write.
Step Three: I spend some
time researching the things my character loves. Lark is the protagonist of Me (and) Me. She’s a singer-songwriter. I didn’t know
much about that so I had to interview real singer-songwriters to get a sense of
what that life might be like. I needed to flesh out what Lark would know about
singing and writing songs. I also read a lot of books about writing songs, and
listened to tons of great bands.
Alec loves parkour. I
spent time with the parkour community in Saskatoon, where I live, watching them
and asking questions. I tried a few moves (I am NOT good at parkour), and
sought out YouTube videos of people doing parkour and free-climbing to root
Alec’s passion in reality.
Step Four: I listen to
people all the time. I make notes about dialogue I’ve overheard. This helps me
think about how characters sound. Then, when I’ve written a draft, I read the
dialogue aloud over and over again—I need to make sure the words I’m using echo
the person speaking in my head. I need them to sound as real to you as they do
to me.
Step Five: I let go. I
write the characters as best I can, and then I trust that my reader is smart
and has their own imagination. They can take the details I’ve shared and make
the characters whomever they want them to be. I want my readers to have their
own relationships with my characters and the only way for that to happen is for
me to keep MOST of what I know about my characters to myself. I have to choose
which bits to share to serve my story and then keep the rest in my head,
knowing that I’ve done my best to make those people lurking in my mind as vivid
and real as I can.
If you feel inspired to
do some writing, come and find me on Instagram where I share image
writing prompts regularly.
Thanks so much for having
me on your great site. I really appreciate it!
Bestselling,
award winning author Alice Kuipers has published four award-winning YA novels
internationally, most recently, The Death
of Us, a CLA shortlisted title. Her two picture books feature twins Violet and Victor and she
has an upcoming chapter books series with Chronicle Press. Me (and) Me, her fifth YA novel, is
described by Bif Naked as mesmerising.
Alice
has four children.
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I try to get back to all comments, so check the box for follow up emails, or give me the link to your blog and I'll stop by! I love reading comments!
Thanks Amanda