Exercise:

Please have a good look at him or her.

Yes, I mean the person in nearest proximity to you right now.

If there’s no-one near you right now, go to the park. Hop on a bus or tube. Sit at a bus stop. Look. Pick a person to look at. Are you looking?

Describe: Age range. With most people, fairly easy within at least ten years. Sex or gender: with most people, fairly obvious. Their socio-economic group, income, class – a reasonable estimate can be made from their garments.  Fine. Can you do that? The chances are you will be somewhere near the facts, especially if you are a dedicated people-watcher.

If you are NOT a dedicated people watcher, please crawl into the ball of your own ego and give up the idea of ever being a writer! Because the main quality of the good writer – alongside a fair facility with language – is the ability to observe. The world is, after all, a movie for our benefit.

You looked, but did you see? Looking is just the start! Because even if you can draw fair conclusions under the headings above, you know next-to NOTHING about the person you’ve been observing.

Oh yeh? Then answer these questions:

What music do they listen to?

What’s their favourite food?

What do they do for sex?

What do they want from a lover?

Can you know their family background?

What car do they drive?

What do they aspire to?

Who are their heroes?

What illnesses do they have/will they have? What do they do (if anything) for fitness?

What makes them emotional?

What makes them cry?
-What makes them laugh?

What are their hobbies/interests?

What is their opinion of themselves?

WHAT WOULD THEY DO IF:………………………

That’s the main WHATLIST. The ones I can think of here in the Hot House Cafe over my veggie breakfast. (with a couple of other w’s).

But even more important is the WHY LIST. Add “WHY” to each of the questions above and you are beginning to know the person.

As a writer of Fiction, your job is to create characters with a FULL WHATLIST and a FULL WHYLIST.

So yes, you cannot fill in the Whatlist and the Whylist for that delightful creature sitting across the aisle from you. But you write Fiction, so it’s your job to fill both lists with utterly believable lies.

Does this mean you need to include all the Ws in the story or novel? HELL NO. But if you don’t know the answers, at least for your main characters, how the hell can you predict how they will react when they walk in on their mother having sex with their uncle, or when they lose a leg in a tram accident or when they are accused of child abuse?

With minor characters, the full list is not as important but you know what? I love to be able to write the backstory for each and every character, as you will see in Laszlo’s Millions and even more in my forthcoming novel, the Ragazzo.

If you create full, rounded, 360 degree multidimensional characters, they come to life. Believe me! You and your keyboard are the god who manufactures people and their worlds.

Inspiration for Characters

So no-one ever invents a character from nothing. (Challenge!). Every character in fiction is inspired, or sparked, or dictated by someone real. This is WHY the writer is a dedicated people-watcher. But you have to be more than that.

You have to be a PEOPLE COLLECTOR!

You and your notebook are the equivalent of the butterfly-hunter with her net. Everybody is individual, precious, special. Every person in the real world has a full Whatlist and a full Whylist. (See my previous blog for How, When, Which, W, W, W etc). Whatever you can find out – or collect – feeds into your understanding of humans, which can feed into your fiction. Ask questions. Observe. Especially facial expressions. MOTIVATIONS and BACKSTORIES are treasure.

Your friends and relations are the first people to collect! People you know most about have the most clues to yield to human motivations, types, reactions to events.

Love People!

Because the key to any character is (you’ve read this far so you deserve your reward) is not just what they are and why, but therefore –

WHAT DO THEY FEAR?

WHY?

WHAT ARE THEIR WEAKNESSES?

HOW WOULD YO DESCRIBE THEIR SELF-ESTEEM?

WHY?

And, of course, the opposites: What do they hope, why, what are their strengths, why.

Btw: A little extra madness for you to contemplate: Sometimes I like to decide when their birthday is, and their astrological sign. This helps me to set character, although astrology is probably bullshit. I would never bring it up in a novel unless it was relevant to the plot of course. And I only use it when stuck. Not routinely!

Another nutty thing I do: do you know what nominative determinism is? The theory that people’s names often send them to appropriate occupations. Dammit I’ve just heard a Food Programme produced by Dan Saladinho. Gardener’s World has a presenter called Bill Sourbutts. I bet you can think of loads of examples. Well, the same often applies to personal characteristics or personality types so I often bury a type within a name. This is nothing new; Dickens did it all the time! Uriah Heep, a snivelling creep. Scrooge – which came first, the name or the type of mean person? Check some of the names in my books or short stories, you’ll see why I mean. I do try not to be too obvious!

Body types: Bear in mind the basic types – ectomorph, mesomorph and endomorph. Ecto: naturally thin, hyper, they eat lots and never get fat. Meso: if they eat lots, they get fat. Middle! Endo: often overweight and self-indulgent (arguable). LINK the body type to their emotional and intellectual worlds. I’m not telling you how to do that. OBSERVE! COLLECT!

Intelligence: How people react and respond to events depends on how well they can calculate risk, how emotional they are at the time, how hungry they are, how tired, how randy… so many factors! Remember, IQ is only one measure of one type of intelligence. But always bear in mind your character’s ability to process information. I’m not telling you how to do that. OBSERVE! COLLECT!

There is no substitute for compassionate insight!

If you love humans, you will need to understand humans. If you understand real humans, you can give birth to fictional ones. You must inhabit their private worlds, even as you create them. If they are happy, you are happy. If they suffer and you, the writer, don’t weep, then your character is not real.

The fate of Pieter in Lazlo’s Millions plunged me into absolute misery and guilt for months. Pieter was 360 degrees of a person. Based firmly on someone I know very well, it was easy to define and encompass him with words.

Make them live! Your characters live, laugh, suffer, love and die at your behest. They will inhabit your world your whole life, and the worlds of your readers. You have the absolute responsibility to make them REAL. (God I hate cardboard 2d stereotypical characters. Avoid stereotypes! Even though some people appear to be stereotypes. Just look inside.)

(Sheesh. I could write a book on this topic. Perhaps I will. But meanwhile, please pick up and use some of the above in your writing. And always remember, if you would like free help and advice, you only have to email me johnelkon@yahoo.co.uk)

May good luck – and more important, hard work! – make your writing better every day.

NEXT TIME: How to WRITE A VILLAIN!