Characters are 'found'
Chapter 5 of the A215 workbook quotes Elizabeth Bowen saying that characters are 'found' in much the same way as someone slowly becomes visible across a dimly lit railway carriage. Rubbish, I thought: you make them up, don't you.
Over our snowy weekend away, I was thinking about the character of a 12 year old boy that I have been developing. His family are important to my story, and his elder brother in particular, so I decided to 'round the brother out' as the workbook suggests, by deciding what he looks like, what his biggest disappointment in life is, what makes him laugh, what names his brother might call him and so on. Having thought this would be tricky, I found it exhilerating. I circled round and round the character, finding that each fresh thought or question filled him out more, and sparked more ideas about my main character, about their relationship, and about the plot of my story.
I always thought the hardest thing in any story was naming the characters. As a child, the names I made up sounded false, like badly fitting wigs. By contrast, as I thought about my character and his brother, their names just came to mind, and fitted perfectly. I could immediately hear the banter between them, how they shortened their names, the versions they'd like to be called and the ones they'd hate.
It was at this point that I thought back to the description of characters being 'found' and understood it better. It's not as if they pre-exist and you uncover them, but it did feel as if making up one part of them seemed to 'reveal' another; they seemed to take on a life of their own. After a little while, I started to feel I knew what would be right for them and what they wouldn't like me to say about them.
A few weeks ago I read some thoughts in a blog about a character the writer had 'on her mind' and I couldn't relate to it at all. I had no experience of feeling like that. It's good to feel I'm moving on. I still can't figure out how to use colons and semi-colons correctly, though.
Over our snowy weekend away, I was thinking about the character of a 12 year old boy that I have been developing. His family are important to my story, and his elder brother in particular, so I decided to 'round the brother out' as the workbook suggests, by deciding what he looks like, what his biggest disappointment in life is, what makes him laugh, what names his brother might call him and so on. Having thought this would be tricky, I found it exhilerating. I circled round and round the character, finding that each fresh thought or question filled him out more, and sparked more ideas about my main character, about their relationship, and about the plot of my story.
I always thought the hardest thing in any story was naming the characters. As a child, the names I made up sounded false, like badly fitting wigs. By contrast, as I thought about my character and his brother, their names just came to mind, and fitted perfectly. I could immediately hear the banter between them, how they shortened their names, the versions they'd like to be called and the ones they'd hate.
It was at this point that I thought back to the description of characters being 'found' and understood it better. It's not as if they pre-exist and you uncover them, but it did feel as if making up one part of them seemed to 'reveal' another; they seemed to take on a life of their own. After a little while, I started to feel I knew what would be right for them and what they wouldn't like me to say about them.
A few weeks ago I read some thoughts in a blog about a character the writer had 'on her mind' and I couldn't relate to it at all. I had no experience of feeling like that. It's good to feel I'm moving on. I still can't figure out how to use colons and semi-colons correctly, though.
posted by Liz at 1:25 PM
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