By Owen Quinn author
So you have a story in mind and have begun writing it. But lo and behold you are struggling with the characters; you thought you knew them. But suddenly you find you don’t know them at all.
You thought you knew how a Londoner would speak and act but all you can hear in your head is Dick Van Dyke. Surely all cowboys say “Howdy.” All people from Ireland say “Top of the morning’ t’ya”. Some Scottish and Irish accents are so thick you have go dilute them down just as Walt Disney with Darby O’Gill And The Little People. We have watched so many stereotypes over our lives that we have a set image in our head of how they would be in real life. Gay men were portrayed camp and completely effeminate especially during the eighties and nineties but the vast majority are not like that. Television bosses exaggerated these to keep viewers happy and coming back for more but doing damage to what it means to be gay; and it isn’t mincing.
But how do you translate that into a character? How do they become more than a one dimensional caricature of what society thinks a certain type behaves. For me, look around you at all the people in your life. Who makes you laugh? Why do they make you laugh? Who has a habit that turns you but if used cleverly would stick in the reader’s mind to bring life to that person. If you can embed the character in the reader’s head then use it; embellish it to the advantage of your story.
I use everyone on my circle of family and friends to draw believable and three dimensional characters in my stories. I name characters after them because sometimes it is hard to decide on a name. Anyone that has a new baby knows that struggle. It is not as easy as you think. No one is one dimensional; everyone has multiple aspects to their character but utilise one in your company. How often have you come across a person you didn’t like but over time discovered something about them that changed your perspective? It could be their anger issues come from an unstable home background or have suffered a recent loss. Sometimes people are angry because they are just that; angry. Some people change when drinking vodka from your best buddy to a demon.
But when you present characters to an audience, you must give them distinctive
Characteristics to make them alive in the mind. of the reader You could have them dress in a certain way or have some sort of skill you wouldn’t think they would have. A circus strongman may be a brilliant painter. A serial killer could easily write poetry.
When I decided on the four main leads for The Time Warriors, I had a really rough time figuring them out. In one version, each had a super power of sorts including animal transformation but I abandoned all that into a simpler formula. Heroes are made through what life throws at them and the situations they find themselves in. The most docile of humanity can become the greatest example of them all. Again, look at the world around you and you will see thousands of ordinary citizens become heroes in situations where people comment “You couldn’t write that.”
I always think of that scene in the final Buffy The Vampire Slayer episode where her slayer powers are amplified and fed to every would be slayer out there. One overweight girl stands up to her bully while another stands up to whoever is hitting her. Buffy is slim and beautiful but that does not define a hero. Indeed there is a tendency to label people in movies and television shows.
Overweight people are written as comedy foils and slightly dim. The soap opera Eastenders is guilty of this as seen in their portrayals of Nigel and Heather. Shaun Williams’ character of Barry entered the soap as a ladies man and very successful business man. When Nigel left the show, Barry found himself promoted to fat guy status. His intelligence suddenly dwindled and he became a buffoon who ended up as a groom too blind to see his new wife was going to shove him off a cliff. That was a far cry from how he first was presented to the audience. On the flipside of all that you wouldn’t dare to mess with the overweight Tony Soprano.
When creating characters try not to fall into these stereotype traps. If you have to model them on every member of your family then do so. You can even put your own personality and life experiences. You are literally seeing your characters live and breathe already before you. All you have to do is translate that into your book so they have that same spark of life you experience every day.
Paul O’Grady, aka Lily Savage, based her on the string women that raised him. They smoked, they drank, they swore and ran the place when the husbands were working or off to sea. He could get away with anything as Lily but he worked so well because it was based in reality. The character and the comedy translated so well to the audience because they understood what he was talking about. Men issues, dirty habits, borrowing off Provident cheque, being skint, poverty, sitting round in the dark telling ghost stories but having enough for cigarettes and riots in Liverpool. Like Billy Connolly, Lily’s experiences resonate with the people watching because at least some of her experiences they have lived too. They dream of a better life while draped in the cloak of poverty; the only coat they will wear forever. That hopeful tragedy resonates with us because that is our lives. Lily’s jokes and stories are her ay of telling her story. Follow that example and you can’t really go wrong.
They say write what you know but I have never met an alien or travelled in time. But I imbue my characters with ordinary lives and habits and see how they react to this new crazy life. Show their fears, their joys and let the audience see them cry and falter. Every hero has a redemption arc but equally vey few are truly evil so how do we make a villain interesting and new?
Clive Barker said it best that villains should speak eloquent evil. Villains are motivated by a thirst for power and control. But it is not all they are. Do they like music? Is there something that brings a tear to their eye? What motivates them to do the things they do? Yes you have monsters like Jason and Freddy and in Michael Meyer’s case we have no idea what motivates him.
My arachnoid Mentara are tarantula based in appearance because people have a natural fear of spiders. And while they feed on human flesh, there is a very good and disturbing reason for that. But you will have to read the books to find out what that is.
A trick I use is (thanks to Doctor Who writer, Malcolm Hulke) to give every character no matter how small, has a background. In his novelisations he gave even the smallest character a full background and this stuck with me all these years. This idea was furthered in the Austin Powers movies when a faceless security guard is killed and we see his friends and family mourn his loss. The best example of this is in The Time Warriors story Experiment 4.
A minor character, an islander called Ernie, is killed by something in the dark but you get Ernie’s full life story before he dies and I am happy to announce I made people cry with that one.
But that is what I mean about using your character to connect with the audience so they root for the heroes or weep when a one off character dies. There has to be a human heart within the sci fi and the horror to make it work.
Star Trek The Next Generation did it in the season three episode The Offspring. Data creates a daughter who then dies in his arms later on. Her deaths scene is one of the most emotional and powerful things I have ever seen and is has reduced grown men to tears. It is that connection of loss, especially the loss of a child, that triggers us here.
There are plenty of examples out there; indeed what was the last thing that made you cry and why? What was it that connected with you as the audience?
You figure that out then just translate that to your story. You won’t go wrong.
The Time Warriors and Beyond 