Falling in Love with Your Characters

Fictional characters may take on a life of their own, surprising their creators with the twists and turns the story takes. But the source of the character's identity and the ultimate guide to where they came from and where they are going remains only the author.






That’s why authors enter into an intimate relationship, a kind of lopsided romance with their characters, no matter how virtuous or flawed those characters may turn out to be. No part of writing a novel is more important than this visceral, under-the-skin, psychological connection.
The Reality of Your Character's Existence

Whether the story is told as a first-person narrative or as an omniscient third person focused on one character’s exclusive point of view, authors must commit to the reality of the protagonist's existence.

This means creating a back-story life, whether or not all of it is used in the book. It means developing a place of birth, family of origin, biological parents, siblings, family and friends, not to mention the teachers, mentors, childhood development, teen years and coming of age to whenever the book’s story begins.

Like any good and committed lover, the author must be honest about and accept of all the character’s weaknesses and strengths, including the less-than-admirable and vulnerable as well as the heroic.

It’s important, therefore, that authors do their homework as they create the characters they care about most.

Creating a Back-Story Life

1. Know how your character speaks. In fact, speak the lines out loud to ensure the words capture an idiosyncratic style, background and accent--different from anyone else in the book.

2. Have a portrait in mind of how the character looks, including height, weight, skin color, hair and posture. How they smell. Their favorite foods.

3. Know how the character dresses from coat to underwear, even if it never appears in the light of day.

4. Inhabit the character's deepest feelings--both admirable and not, so long as they are authentic and true to the person’s role and experience.

5. Understand their habits and skills, including special talents, obsessions, fears and aversions, traits found far beneath what the other characters in the book may perceive or understand.

Notable Alter Egos

F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote about Nick Carroway with a far deeper self-identification than he felt with the enigmatic Gatsby.

Virginia Woolf knew exactly what Mrs. Dalloway was thinking in her most private thoughts, as she created a heroine who was not honest to either her husband, Richard, or her former romantic interest, Peter Walsh.
"My Characters Force Me to Adopt Their Hobbies"

Best-selling author Patricia Cornwell inhabits and writes from inside the mind of Kay Scarpetta, the forensic pathologist and lead sleuth in a number of Cornwell's books.

To research the Scarpetta books, Cornwell became acquainted with forensic dissection by spending time in a coroner’s morgue, learned to fly a helicopter, and overcame her aversion to scuba diving so she could experience the verisimilitude needed for a scene about a deep-sea body search.
Is It Love?

You bet, and more. It’s what makes writing fun and rewarding. If you achieve that level of love for at least one character in every one of your books, your readers will benefit in the end.