Where do you get ideas for your characters?
Readers always ask me: Where do you get ideas for your characters? How do you choose a character to write about?
Does it make me sound like a crazy weirdo writer person if I tell you that I don't choose the characters? Because I don’t. They choose me. Okay, it probably does make me sound a little nutso, but there you have it. The secret is out. I don't choose the characters, they choose me. I can hear the next question: But if they choose you, where do they come from? And the answer to that question is even weirder: From the dark recesses of my demented mind. You unlock this door with the key of imagination. Beyond it is another dimension. A dimension of sound, a dimension of sight, a dimension of mind. You're moving into a land of both shadow and substance, of things and ideas. Oh no, wait, that's the Twilight Zone. Seriously, though, that’s where they come from—an alternate dimension, an alternate universe. Scary, huh?
Okay, let me stop here and add that (for me, at least) the portal which allows the characters to enter from the alternate universe is generally found within music or dreams. They float through as ethereal as fairy dust, perhaps a small speck at first, which gradually morphs into a living, breathing, fully-formed human being. As tangible to me as any flesh and blood person inhabiting my "real" world. Although—confession time—sometimes my fictional worlds are more real to me than this world. I can hear you whispering amongst yourselves, "She IS crazy!" Yeah, probably, but I defy you to name one writer who isn’t.
Anyway, John Colucci, the main character in Cold Comfort, started out as some poor schmuck who was guilty of having committed a horrible crime. He was someone society hated. Hell, even his own brother-in-law couldn’t wait to send him back to the mental institution, and I wasn't feeling too kindly toward him either when he first made his appearance in my head. BUT! (I know, there’s always a “but”, isn’t there?) Somewhere around page 82 of the original manuscript, things changed. I became obsessed with John’s story. I could feel him standing at my right elbow, whispering, “Hear me. Hear me.” I wrote on Cold Comfort every day at lunch, then came home from work in the evening and wrote until 2 or 3 in the morning. John quickly became a sympathetic character with a great story to tell and when it ended some 280 pages later, I was totally smitten with him. I even know what kind of underwear he wears. Calvin Klein boxer briefs, if you must know.
I found William MacPherson, the main character of my historical work-in-progress, on a tour at a local apple orchard. He was running down the path beside a pond as if the devil himself were after him. At the time I had no idea what he was running to or from, but the more I discovered about him, the more interesting his story became to me.
As to Aryan Project: The Final Reich, a dystopian/futuristic work-in-progress co-written with my good friend and great writer, Susanne Larssen, the main character and most of the plot came to me almost fully formed from a bizarre dream about human genetic engineering gone terribly wrong. I had this dream nearly 28 years ago, but it is still as vivid in my mind as the night I dreamed it. It’s taken me a while to work up the nerve to continue writing the story. It’s a dark, disturbing tale with a lot of religious and political overtones. I’m not quite sure what it says about my mental health that this is what I dream about.
Okay, I hear you saying, we get that your main characters and even some of your story ideas come from apple orchards, sweat-soaked nightmares, or some mystical, magical, mythical place deep within your twisted mind, and that they crawl forth from the nebulous miasma sometimes fully formed, but where do your antagonists come from? Where did Randy Kimbell and Peter Barrington come from?
Funny you should ask.
So often in our lives we are forced to work with, live with, or otherwise interact with assholes, often on a daily basis. Now societal mores and indeed the very laws of our great land prohibit the senseless bludgeoning of our fellow man, no matter how sorely they try our patience or how richly they deserve it. This my dear readers, is why fiction was invented. That boss who’s a dick? That co-worker who left the deep fat fryer for you to clean out? That sanctimonious, self-righteous, holier-than-thou sister-in-law? Ha Ha! They all just became antagonists and met their well-deserved fate at the hands of fed-up writers. Just remember that the next time you get ready to rip someone a new one! Do you want to end up as the antagonist who is slowly chewed to pieces by rabid wombats in someone’s novel? I thought not.
Do you have questions about the writing process? Questions about Cold Comfort or its characters? Questions about how long it takes a pack of rabid wombats to chew their way through a corpse? Ask away! Submit them here via the contact page, or contact me on Facebook or Twitter. Susanne will have to do a guest blog to tell you where her characters come from, and that will be a treat in and of itself! Happy writing! Happy reading!
