http://www.stephanie-osborn.com
Sara Stamey’s extended
travels in out-of-the-way corners of the globe include treasure hunting and
teaching scuba in the Caribbean and Honduras, operating a nuclear reactor, and
owning a farm in Southern Chile. Now resettled in her native Northwest
Washington, she teaches creative writing at Western Washington University and
offers editing services as a “book doctor.” She shares her Squalicum Creek
backyard with wild critters and her cats, dog, and very tall husband Thor.
Her romantic
suspense novel Islands is described by reviewers as “an
intellectual thriller” and "a superior suspense novel….a stomping vivid
ride.” A new eBook edition is available from Book View Café. BVC will also
release her new metaphysical thriller set in Greece, The Ariadne Connection, in October 2014.
~~~
“How do you come up with the characters in your novels? Are
they based on real people? Do you make lists of their work, family, education,
hobbies? Is it better to describe them in detail, or let readers flesh them out
in their minds?”
These are questions novelists hear from readers eager to
understand the mysterious workings of a writer’s mind. I’ve heard all kinds of
advice about how fiction-writers “should” create fully dimensional characters,
but I think every writer finds her own ways.
I confess that I have based several characters on people I
know (or knew), and have found “seeds” in characters in films or even music
videos. It’s a boost to start with appearance, speech, or personality tics you’ve
already observed, then go on to morph that seed into your own character. Most
of the time, my models never recognize themselves in the transformed character,
which is the way it should go.
Take Heinck, the creepy ringleader of a criminal gang in my second
science fiction novel, Win, Lose, Draw.
(I hate that title my publisher chose instead of my original Resistance Coil, but that’s another
story!) He’s whippy, with slicked-back dark hair and a lot of “pain-dure”
tattoos that advertise how tough he is, a sadomasochist who has absolutely no
morals. The man I took as my initial model probably never reads, so I don’t
have to worry that he’ll recognize himself – besides, Heinck is probably
smarter.
Years ago, when I was working as a scuba guide and instructor
in the Bay Islands of Honduras at an isolated inn reachable only by boat or
rough trails, I was pretty much held hostage by the lowlife temporary manager
who was driving away the few tourists and making life miserable for everyone
else. He waved around an arsenal of guns, bragged about his previous scams, and
kept me and the other employees from taking a boat to the only distant town to
radio the absent owner back in the States about the state of crisis at his inn.
When the owner finally arrived to fire the manager, he skulked away to the
relief of everyone. (spoiler alert) And later, I took secret pleasure in
killing him off as my fictional villain. One perk of acting Deity in our own
invented worlds!
Flipping the coin, I created a modest tribute to my original
writing mentor by making him a minor, helpful character in my Caribbean
suspense novel Islands. My mentor was
R.D. Brown, a source of inspiration to his many students at Western Washington
University. He was a very tall man, with a slouch perhaps as the result of
ducking through doorways, a bald head, a jowly face, and an incisive wit
animating his eyes. When I created Captain Wilkes, a native police chief who
aids my archeologist/sleuth Susan Dunne, I called on images of R.D.:
A big native man was unfolding his height from a dusty compact. He slouched over to me in rumpled slacks and a linen dress shirt, dark scalp gleaming above a graying frizz, face drooping in folds like an intelligent basset hound.
You’ll see that I’m in favor of providing appearance details
of my characters. I feel that leaving them a blank slate makes it hard for
readers to invest or even keep track of who’s who. BTW, Captain Wilkes is my only
character-based-on-real where I’ve been caught out: When his partner read the novel,
she immediately recognized R.D. as the model, and we all got a chuckle out of
it.
Of course, there’s a lot of work to do once the original
image and basic personality forms. Voice is perhaps the biggest challenge for
me: What kind of diction would this person use, and does it fit his background
and upbringing? Or deliberately contrast with it, for plausible reasons of
education or choice? Is each character meant to be sympathetic or not? Even if
she’s “the bad gal,” does she embody at least a little ambiguity as a complex
person? When I teach fiction-writing at the university, I point my students
toward good advice from writing guru Janet Burroway: “Give your character a
consistent inconsistency.” In other words, some habit or preference that seems
at odds with the initial presentation or “type,” so he has a realistic
individuality.
I do depart from some writerly advice (including Burroway’s)
to create a detailed summary about every character, including history, family,
hobbies, etc. I feel that it constrains the characters if everything about them
is pinned down at the start, and prevents them from “acting out” to inform me
that they would do this or wouldn’t do that. But I do have to work during
revision to make sure they “add up” to realistic personalities.
#
Because my novels are often set in foreign countries where
I’ve lived or travelled, I face a special challenge in creating characters from
different cultures, working to present them as authentic, with believable
voices that might mirror their different diction or accents from
English/American speech. I usually present these characters through the
observations of an American point-of-view character, hoping to avoid “cultural
appropriation” or just plain blunders in accuracy. The more you experience and observe people in
actual life, the closer you’ll come to capturing the essence of characters,
whether from familiar cultures or foreign. In my travels, I’ve found that there
are definitely cultural variations in beliefs and social interactions, but also
that most humans at heart have much in common and are willing to make a
connection.
One more example from my latest novel set in Greece, The Ariadne Connection, to be released
in October 2014 from Book View Café. My heroine’s uncle Demetrios has retired
to a mountain village on the southern coast of Crete. In real life, I was
backpacking in this region with my former partner, when we found ourselves
stranded in a remote, rocky village without a place to stay during the Easter
holidays when all the busses stopped running.
We were trying to find a level, unrocky spot (not likely!) to pitch our
tent, when we were befriended by a local dignitary, Stelios Mamalakis, who
offered us the famous Greek hospitality of a place to stay and a tour of the
local landscape. Here is a bit I borrowed from him for my character Demetrios:
Wild asparagus. Ariadne touched the slender soft buds Uncle Demetrios had always favored. She could still see him, all those years ago, climbing ahead of her up a narrow ravine beside a rain-swollen stream, pushing through thorn thickets to find the new asparagus shoots, tearing his trousers to get the last one.
“But I can’t resist it! This one is the best, Kri-Kri, just look at it. Tender youthful perfection, the most sublime Platonic ideal of a sprout. Now this is beauty. We will eat it tonight and be strong and beautiful, too.” His white teeth flashed beneath the long pirate mustache.
I will leave you with this thought: We writers have to love
our characters, even the villains. With love, and patience, they will live and
breathe.
~~~
All I can say, Sara, is that you're a woman after my own heart.
-Stephanie Osborn
http://www.stephanie-osborn.com
