This week on the Open University FutureLearn Start Writing Fiction course, we’re developing characters. We’re being asked to try ways of doing that which we’re unfamiliar or uncomfortable with.
Letting the character develop from a starting point is the way that normally works for me. I’ve found that, once I’ve established my basic character, whether that’s a tattooed lady, a Hitchcockian gangster or a travelling tyre-fitter, I enjoy imagining the dialogue they’d use and I find out more about the character by virtually ‘listening’ to them. I can always visualise my character quite vividly, so I often make a quick sketch of them.
One rare method, that writer Alex Garland describes in an interview on the course, is of a character coming and tapping you on the shoulder, like a ghost. That’s something that I’d probably find impossible to conjure up. However, I will jot down any ideas that come to me unbidden, just in case a likely character manifests itself.
Getting to know Uncle Joe
As a back up, I’ll try a method that Monique Roffey sometimes uses, of writing a 5-15 page biography. I think that I’d enjoy doing that as it sounds a bit like researching your family tree. However much I know about a character, such as my real life Great, Great, Great Uncle Joe in Victorian times – who survived attempted murder by his wife Mary with a pair of decorating scissors – I want to know more about them:
- Why were the scissors in the house?
- Had he and his wife been drinking at the same pub before the incident?
- Did he ever visit her in prison?
- What happened when she was released 11 years later and was seen heading back to Sheffield?
- And, yes, what did he have for breakfast?
The mundane stuff would fascinate me and this is why it’s so interesting if you do come across a murderer in your family tree. The newspaper reports include information that would otherwise never have been recorded, such as Joe and Mary’s sleeping arrangements and the kind of quarrels they had behind closed doors.
‘Ophelia’
As I was reading through the assignment on my iPad, a woman in her early 30s with long dark hair,in camel-coloured coat and purple silky scarf walked thoughtfully up the road holding a little bouquet. She looked like a character from a television drama serial. I decided that I’d have no difficulty writing about such a striking figure, so I’m using her as the starting point for my imagined character.
Any long-haired, thoughtful, youngish woman holding a posy of herbs is sure to remind me of Ophelia, but hopefully I’ll get beyond that archetype as I go through the suggested checklist we’ve been given and build up a CV for the character.
The kind of character I would struggle to elaborate on would be an ‘ordinary’ everyday person doing nothing in particular and looking blank and expressionless, such as a shopper standing in a queue. But I realise that these ‘ordinary’ characters would probably turn out be the most surprising to explore, when you really get to know them.