Not a complicated blog post today – just simple observations.
Some people require vast amounts of detailed histories on their character profiles, where they went to school in the third grade, etc. Others write a character based upon the needed role in the story, and just know everything about that character immediately.
It’s a good idea – just to nail things down if it works for you or not – to try a different way once or twice. Just once or twice. If you have a system that works (and this is a topic I’m going to write about soon) – keep using it. If your system does not work, don’t.
How detailed do you need to get? Enough that you’re confident you can write your novel.
You can find detailed character sheets in many places – K. M. Weiland’s workbook on character creation, the Novel Factory, any number of books on character creation (I was recommended the book Character Creation by Nancy Kress, but it’s not the way I work).
In my own personal case, I know my characters immediately – who they are, the essence of their character right away. I’ve played with the idea, and tried filling out character creation sheets. In my case, it added no additional insight into the characters, and all it did was use up time. I’ve tried it twice, and I’m likely to try it once more. It’s not, however, how I work. I don’t even proceed from a picture of someone like a lot of people do. The only way I’m likely to know the railroad clerk from “Blazing Glory” is if it gets filmed, and I’m on set while they’re filming it.
The only characters I can say I proceeded from a mental image of them as I wrote it was literally Horace David Schofield from “Blazing Glory” (he’s the voice actor who did the voice of Piglet from the original Winnie The Pooh), Lynch from “Countdown to Armageddon” and Controller (also Countdown).
I had sort of a mental image of Josiah Bratton – literally picturing him as Lee Van Clief. But it wasn’t an image that stayed with me as I wrote every scene. I’ll probably commission an artist to read the novel, and then do a book cover based on their mental image – someday. Maybe I’ll even throw it up here.
Which reminds me – I need to go make a mockup of a book cover for my NaNoWriMo project.
