Get to Know Your Characters from the Inside
A close-up of Joanie, my beloved Brittany.
I’ve been working on a new MG mystery novel for the last couple of months. Instead of diving into drafting, I’m taking my time, using the Blueprint for a Book. It’s an approach I learned in my training from Author Accelerator to become a book coach. I’ve used it for revising, but this is the first time I’ve used it to start a novel from scratch.
As part of the blueprint, I sketched out the plot, which is where I learned more about my kid protagonist. She’s the “main” human character and the one whose perspective I intend to use to tell part of the story.
As a result, I know the most about her, why she’s interested in animals and how she gets sucked into the mystery. In fact, I wasn’t worried about understanding her at all. Her motives seemed quite clear to me. But that wasn’t the case for my other characters.
While the blueprint process has been very helpful in identifying what my story is about and crafting the basic plot, one thing it doesn’t overtly address is character development.
I started by making a list of the characters in my novel and gave each a one-paragraph description to explain their role in the story. I included brief details like name, age, relationship(s) to other characters, and species (there are several animal characters in addition to human characters).
This is all useful information, but mostly external. It doesn’t necessarily help me figure out who these characters are and why they’re doing the things they do.
Since I didn’t know my antagonists as well as my protagonist, I decided to interview them. It’s a technique I’ve suggested to several of my book coaching clients too.
One client interviewed her antagonist, a non-human character that I couldn’t get a good feel for in her manuscript. The interview she did with him was so powerful. He’s a dark, selfish, narcissistic piece of work.
This writer was able to tap into her own dark side. She interrogated her character and at times he resisted her prying, but she was persistent and he ultimately revealed a lot of juicy (and creepy) details. Reading the interview “transcript” felt like I was hearing from two distinctly different people. His motives and actions are so much clearer now.
With the memory of this writer’s success in mind, I decided to delve deeper into my own new characters. I started with Villain 1, who immediately told me her name is Sandra, never Sandy.
This probably sounds bonkers to people who don’t write fiction, or to anyone who’s never had the experience of a character really speaking up or taking over a story.
I learned from Sandra about her past as a science teacher and how she knows Villain 2. She shared an important incident involving Villain 2 that I’d known nothing about when I sat down to write that day.
If interviewing is not something you’ve tried before, think of it as a conversation. In two of my former jobs, I did lots of interviewing for non-fiction stories. I always tried to relate to people on a personal level and help them feel comfortable. I usually had 3 or 4 questions prepared ahead of time, but mostly I followed the conversations where they naturally led.
That’s also how I’ve approached interviewing my characters. With Sandra, I began with “Tell me about yourself” and she told me briefly about where she grew up and how she got interested in animals. Then I asked about teaching and how she got into that, which led to how she knows Villain 2. Ultimately the conversation led to the events of my novel, which I learned more about. Interviewing her helped me uncover the climax and resolution.
By the end of the interview, I had about 3,000 words of content. Some of it may wind up in the novel, but more importantly, I understand Sandra much better from the inside.
Next time I’ll write about interviewing my protagonist and what that’s revealed.
What techniques do you use to get to know your characters better?