characters

handmade and AI-generated

Welcome back, fellow characters in life’s ongoing story. This week I’ve been thinking about characters and where they come from. In part 4 ways forward I talked about the decisions to be made about whether to continue with exactly the same characters in a sequel, add or remove them, or indeed write about completely new characters but in the same setting/timeline. But how to come up with characters in the first place is virgin territory.

How characters come into being is something novelists are often asked about. In a recent interview (paywalled, so I won’t link to it) Haruki Murakami said he rarely uses real people as models, and only for minor characters, but when he does, he believes:

I don’t choose them; they choose me.

In contrast, in a Q&A session at a reading by Hanif Kureishi that I once attended, he admitted that sometimes he uses real people in his writing:

I sometimes just chuck people in whole.

There’s room for both invention and borrowing from real life, of course. I tend towards the invention side, though occasionally I remember something said or done by someone I’ve met that I find it irresistible to put in my writing. I’m the kind of person who strikes up conversations with random strangers on trains and planes, in airports and hotels, or wherever (though I’m very alert to people not feeling the same, and desist at the first sign they don’t want to talk to me). I don’t literally make notes on such conversations, but I do sometimes jot down ideas for possible character traits in a notebook, and if these accrete and start to sound like someone interesting, then I come up with a story to put them in.

Many creative writing textbooks include guidance on how to come up with believable characters, and I won’t rehash their advice, but a very common suggestion is to use character sheets to collect together everything about a character. I’ve found this helps keep consistency in a long novel, but more than that, it helps think about the character from many points of view, which can contribute to making a well-rounded sort of character.

It’s such a common technique that the word processor I use, Scrivener, has a template called Character Sketch which contains spaces for the following information:

• Name, age, location

• Role in story

• Goal

• Physical description

• Personality

• Occupation

• Habits/mannerisms

• Background

• Internal conflicts

• External conflicts

These align with much of the advice out there in books. Things like physical description and occupation help keep consistency throughout a novel (especially for minor characters which aren’t on your mind the whole time). I don’t believe that conflict is essential (as I discussed in part 22 carrier bag theory), but having a section for internal conflicts is interesting; internal conflicts can be just as interesting as external conflicts. I’ll expand on this next week. Habits and background are headings I find useful to collect ideas about a character which I won’t necessarily use, but they help me get a better understanding of the character, and the things they would or wouldn’t say in dialogue. Besides, you never know when something might just spark off another idea as you write. And personality, of course, can be as brief or expansive as you feel like. If I find myself having lots and lots of ideas under personality, it tends to mean this is going to be a character I’ll enjoy writing.

One thing that isn’t in textbooks yet is how you can use generative-AI in character development. For example, when I asked ChatGPT about mannerisms for a working-class Yorkshire novel character, it suggested use of dialect, love of tea, bluntness, sense of humour, hardworking nature, love of football, and strong sense of community. When I asked it if such a character would be internally conflicted if he hated football, it suggested:

Football is a big part of Yorkshire culture, and many people in the region are passionate supporters of their local teams. A character who hates football might feel like they are going against the grain, and might struggle with feelings of isolation or exclusion from their community.

On the other hand, a character who hates football might feel like they are being true to themselves, and might take pride in their independence and individuality. They might have other interests or hobbies that they are passionate about, and might feel like they are able to connect with others in their community on that basis.

None of which is especially revelatory, but if you keep asking questions you might get something that wouldn’t have occurred to you, or that sparks off a genuinely original thought – after all, as Linus Pauling said, the best way to have a good idea is to have a lot of ideas. I think these generative AIs (like ChatGPT, Sage, Claude and PaLM) are best used this way: you keep asking follow-up questions, and it keeps on generating ideas. After the above, I asked about what hobbies a Yorkshire character who hated football might have, and its suggestions included gardening, because “Yorkshire is renowned for its gardens”. I probably wouldn’t have thought of that. And of course, I write about Yorkshire because of the age-old advice write what you know, but if I needed a character from somewhere I don’t know, having some information about that place could save time on research. (Even if that information is dead wrong – in fiction, that doesn’t matter so much!)

Apart from keeping notes, where you can gradually build up details over time, there are writing exercises to do the same thing faster. Examples that I remember from my MA include: write down what your character keeps next to their bed, and describe what they do first when they wake up in the morning. The idea behind describing the everyday like this, is to get you inhabiting the character, and understanding them better. It’s not intended to produce material you can use, just get you more familiar with them.

waiting for a train

Long before I did the MA, I came up with a similar kind of exercise, describing how my characters would look while standing around waiting. These are characters from a novel I never finished:

A group of people is standing on a railway platform. Or perhaps they're not together, just near one another.

The tallest of them, just, is Tomislav Kiriku, Estonian. He is in his 40s and his receding hair is flecked with silver. His blue-grey eyes are focussed on the distance, where the train will appear. He stands with legs apart, on the balls of his feet, as though he is ready to break into a run at any moment, but his handsome face (with its prominent cheekbones) looks relaxed. When he got here, he was walking purposefully, with a graceful stride. He is a plumber and general handyman, and wears a faded one-piece coverall; but he is carefully clean-shaven and there is a hint of cologne about him. His left hand is scarred, and the fingers of his right are gently intertwined with those of the young woman next to him.

This is Sophie Lemond, and the top of her head is barely above his shoulders. Her hair is strawberry pink and cut in a neat bob (though her eyebrows are brown). She has vivid green eyes in a heart-shaped face without makeup, and she is looking the opposite way along the platform, so that you almost wonder if they are holding hands by accident, given that she is half his age. But when she sees you looking, she lifts her chin and meets your gaze very directly, almost aggressively. She is wearing an old denim jacket over a faded pink cotton top, scooped low revealing an ample cleavage. Her jeans are faded and patched too, stretched tightly across wide hips, and are tucked into boots that are laquered pink, the same shade as her hair. She speaks to Tomislav in English, but it's hard to place her accent.

Next to her, but turned away from her, is Basil Zafri. He has the coffee-coloured skin of a Malay, and many crow's feet around his eyes, but his face is expressionless, staring at whatever is in front of him with some attention. He has very long hair, which is silver and looks clean and kempt. He is short and slightly rotund, which is made more noticeable by the purple silk waistcoat he is wearing under his pinstriped suit. His white shirt looks crisp and his shoes are polished. When a woman traveller walks past the group, his eyes follow her, but his expression remains unreadable.

Standing near Basil - a polite distance, suggesting that they know each other distantly - is Dr. Z. Heriot (he doesn't care for his given forename and doesn't use it). He is tall, and is standing almost to attention, a position he finds comfortable to stand in for long periods of time. He is reading a book through plastic-framed spectacles. He is bald on top, and his remaining hair is grey. He has an ashen complexion, and his face is very deeply lined. He is wearing a bottle-green suit with patches on the elbows; he is English, and doesn't care if he looks like a stereotype. In his free hand is a cigar; its smoke winds around the man next to him, to whom he speaks in a deep, gravelly voice. He momentarily smiles, a toothy, lopsided smile, then turns his attention back to his book.

This isn’t polished writing, and I certainly never intended to show it to anyone. It’s an attempt at a character sheet in prose form, summarising what I know about the characters’ looks and personality in a more immediate and visual way than might emerge in a story, helping me to visualise them and remember their personalities across writing sessions that were sometimes months apart. It was probably also a limbering-up exercise at the start of a writing session. If you’re a writer, writing prose is just more fun and engaging than making notes on a form.

(As an aside, if you love observing people as much as I do, anywhere that people are standing around with their attention turned on something specific, such as a railway departures board, is a great place to have a good look at them. You can stare for as long as you like and they’ll never notice, unless they have exceptional situational awareness. One lecturer on my MA proposed we follow someone and hang around near enough to them to hear their conversations, but I prefer this slightly less active approach.)

I’m going to leave delving into the psychology of characters, and how it might change across a novel and its sequel, for next week. I’ve described some things that have been useful to me; I make no claim that it will work for everyone, and if you have a different technique for coming up with characters, please comment below.