From the Fiction Desk

As I sit down and begin working on a character for a short story or a novel, I find myself asking if characters are really created. When I think of the term created, I am mentally taken back to my youth of creating characters for role-playing games—roll this dice to find out how strong your character will be, and now this one to learn how much intelligence they have. The method used in such games is truly creating a character. You are using random chance to make a character and give them most of their attributes. Of course, the player’s imagination comes into it afterwards to create the back-story and the personality, based upon all the selections and the random throw of dice. This is not what I do for fiction.

In fiction writing I find that I am not actually creating a character so much as meeting or casting a character. How is it different, other than the roll of dice? Imagine you are planning to write a murder mystery and you have to create your hero. Who is he? Is he even an he? For this example, let’s pretend that I do not have a preconceived character for this role, but I do know he is a professional detective. That leaves a few options open. In my mind I imagine that I am now in a big room with my possible mental detectives divided into categories: investigative reporters, local police detectives, federal agents, private eyes. All the images are as if seen through smeared glasses. I have to decide what kind of detective I want. Let’s pretend I select a local police detective.

Now, the next question is: Do I know any in real life? Why is that my next question? In my writing I like realistically and sadly movies and television often do not display realistic detectives. So I use this as a filter to rid myself of the “Hollywood” stereotypes. With that completed I move on in my “casting” of my detective and come back to the elusive first question “Who is he?” I might play around in my head and “interview” some of the “idea characters” I have—not unlike an imaginary version of a job interview, but with more in depth questions. I ask the character what he wants, why he is here, and where he thinks he is going. We talk about his childhood, his parents and siblings, his adult life. Family is explored in depth as are his dreams, desires, and his motiviation. As I do this, I take notes that would form into the character I write.

Thank you for reading and please visit www.davidalanlucas.com for more information on the stories I write and other events. Please also note that I have changed the schedule of my blogs. The new schedule is on my website.