A novel can have the most powerful story-line in the world, but if the characters are not well-rounded the story will stay on the page. It won’t haunt your day-dreams, or follow you to work, running through your subconscious until the next time you pick up your book again. Characters are everything. As I tackle the latest draft of my book it is this area I am focusing on most strongly. I want to create strong, compelling characters which make my readers feel as though they know them, when they’ve only read a few lines.
One of the great things about being on a writing course is what you learn from the other students, and when I was at Chez Castillon last month I spent an invaluable hour speaking to Marie, a script-editor and film director. Although I had credible back-stories for all my characters, all that really gave me was a bunch of CVs: I knew where they’d gone to school, what they liked doing in their spare time, and whether they could roller-skate, but I didn’t know what was going on in their heads.
Marie explained the importance of analysing my characters, to really understand what made them tick. ‘I’ll show you,’ she said. ‘Tell me about last night.’
I laughed. The previous evening, Marie had come into the house to find me dancing on my own in the kitchen.
‘I just felt like dancing.’ I shrugged. But Marie wasn’t letting me off that lightly. Like a patient on the psychiatrist’s couch, I was encouraged to explore all the reasons which had lead to me tripping the light fantastic at midnight in a beautiful farmhouse in the South of France.
And it went something like this…
I was in France because I had won a competition. I had entered the competition because I was procrastinating one day when I should have been working. So I was in France because I was a writer, and I was in the kitchen because I was making a cup of tea. I was making a cup of tea because I always take one to bed, even though often I don’t drink more than a sip. I was still up at midnight because I can’t sleep until I am exhausted, and I can finally ignore everything going on in my head. I haven’t slept well since my son was dying seven years ago, when I would come home from the hospital still full of the sounds of his life support machine, and I couldn’t sleep for the imaginary, yet incessant, beeping in my head. I was dancing because I was waiting for the kettle to boil, and because I am incapable of standing still for that length of time. I was dancing because I was full of mental energy after a stimulating and creative day, and because I was full of physical energy and had no outlet for it. I was desperate to go for a run, but I hadn’t packed my trainers because it was the first time I had flown on a budget airline and I was convinced my bag would be too heavy, despite weighing it four times. And finally, I was dancing because I felt like it.
So you see there are many reasons why someone might be dancing in the kitchen at midnight in a house in the South of France.
Now I just have to ask my characters what makes them dance…