How I Create Characters

This week's post is a little bit different, because I thought I'd share with you how I create my characters, right from the very first idea ...

I was happily watching a movie last week and heard a really catchy song in the background. Me, being me, I'd Googled it before the credits even had chance to roll and downloaded it. Before I knew it, I had an idea for a story. (You can read more about how music inspires me here).

This is my favourite part of writing - when an idea smacks you right between the eyes and you know you have to go ahead and write it. Of course in three months time I'm going to be muttering about how much I hate the thing, but right now it's the honeymoon period.

Like onions (and ogres!)* characters
should have layers - is the image
presented to the reader the 'real' one?

So I had this idea for a story, which I'm not going to share (because I'm mean like that), and it's about a girl (my books usually are). I already know what she looks like and the kind of clothes she wears and how she spends her time. I know what she wants from her life - or rather, what she thinks she wants - and that's not the same thing at all. She has to have a problem, which she assumes she can solve by running away from it and, because I'm a writer and a complete sadist, she's just going to run into a whole set of new problems, so that will serve her right (mwah haha).

I don't base my characters on celebrities and I don't write long lists of their funny little quirks and what colour their eyes are and what their favourite food is. Somehow I instinctively know all this. Don't ask me how, I just do. I'd rather get on and write a story than compile a list of lists. For example, in Nemesis I knew Alicia's favourite food was chocolate whereas Natalie would think it was a stupid question - and be likely to tell you so as well! I do plan my books, because otherwise I'd get distracted by a subplot, and I always know how my stories are going to end. Although sometimes the identity of the bad guy might change (Nemesis, Something Wicked), and once I even wrote a whole book backwards (Something Wicked).

This photo of a Lewis Carroll quote
was taken in my favourite
coffee shop!

Because my books have a good chunk of romance in them I also need a hero. (Don't we all!) For my new story I've already decided my action is going to take place over the course of a week so it makes more sense for my heroine to already know him. Someone from her past? But why haven't they kept in touch? Ooh, plot development! Now, do I give him a similar set of problems, so their actions mirror each other throughout the story, or set them against each other, give them conflicting goals - and let sparks fly? And all the time I'm thinking 'What if ... ' and if the answer is too obvious, I'll twist it around on its head. I love twists!

It's usually at this point my characters take up residence inside my head and start talking to me. And that's the very best bit. Because when I hear them telling me their story, refusing to act out in the way I want, arguing about how they want to do things, I know I should start writing. Fast.

And I got all this from hearing one song ...

Related Posts:

I Need a Hero
I Need a Heroine
Keeping it (Un)real

Seeking Inspiration

My Writing Process

Music: Wings to the Mind

*If you didn't rcognise that quote, it came from Shrek!

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Blogging About Not Blogging (Part 3)

So here I am, blogging about not blogging - again.

No new post from me this week but if you read on you'll find links to two guest posts I've written for other people instead.

First up is My Welsh Inspiration, which I wrote for Lavender Likes, Loves, Finds and Dreams, as part of Welsh Week. I moved to Wales way back in 2003 and often use Welsh locations as inspirations for my books, including Something Wicked and Nemesis - even though my fictional villages are supposedly on the south coast of England! Writers are like magpies - we'll steal bits of inspiration from everywhere!

The second post this week is for Roz Morris, as part of her Undercover Soundtrack blog. It's a bit like Desert Island Discs, where writers talk about the music that inspires their books. My post, The Distraction of Silence, talks in depth about a selection of the songs I listened to while writing Nemesis. This was a good exercise for me, because while I know exactly I picked each song, it was hard for me to explain it to other people - particularly when at first glance the lyrics don't necessarily match the scene I was a writing!

Finally, don't forget that Nemesis went into the Kindle Countdown this week, and is 99p/99c until 20th April.

Amazon UK

Amazon USA

Nemesis

Fifteen years ago Natalie found her sister lying dead in a lily pond. Now she’s written a book based on the murder. In every interview she gives she talks about the diary her sister kept, which lists her lovers under code names.

Natalie’s intention is to lure the murderer into the open but, as she’s about to find out, you can’t pick and choose which secrets are revealed - and which ones stay hidden.

Because when the first of her sister’s ex-lovers is killed, it doesn’t take Natalie long to realise she’s not the only one out for revenge.

So who will catch the murderer first? And who will end up being caught?

Read an Extract

Behind the Scenes

Related Posts:

Beyond the Bridge 

Music: Wings to the Mind

Music: Wings to the Mind

'Music gives a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination and life to everything' - Plato

Yes, I know, I'm not usually in the habit of quoting Plato, but he sums up how I feel about music. I love music. My mother once made a comment about how I live my life to a constant soundtrack and she was probably right. (Mothers usually are; mine definitely is). Music follows me everywhere - in the car, at the gym, all around the house - and I always have it playing on the laptop when I'm working. Especially while I'm working.

And this is why:

It's a better class of white noise. You can guarantee that the exact moment I've crafted the perfect sentence, will also be the exact same moment workmen will begin digging up the road or someone's dog will start barking and the sentence is lost forever. Because music is constant, once I get into the story I'm working on even that sound becomes background noise and I don't hear it anymore.

Some people have comfort food, I have comfort music. Writing is my job, so I can't just wait around for some kind of Muse to roll up and inspire me, as appealing as that might be. If the story is going badly and I'm feeling particularly fed up, I'll listen to something loud and kickass to snap me out of it, usually by Pink. Actually, thinking about it, maybe this is why my heroines are usually kickass too ...

Music can help me set the right atmosphere. It's fairly typical (now bordering on traditional) for me to be working on a Christmas story during a heatwave and a summer one after I've been snowed in and the heating's packed up. I've long been in the habit of creating a playlist of about 12 songs for each individual book. What can I say? I'm weird.

The weather was so hot during the writing of Something Wicked, I had to take my laptop out into the garden just to get some fresh air. I was supposed to be writing about a sinister blizzard - while trying not to get sunburnt! I couldn't play Christmas music, because it wasn't a Christmas story, so I dug out some old Halloween tracks instead. People Are Strange (Echo and The Bunnymen) helped me get inside the heroine's head on her arrival in a new village, where the inhabitants, both past and present, are eccentric to say the least. The witchy parts of the story were light-hearted, so another track I had stuck on repeat was Frank Sinatra's Witchcraft - there's definitely no nicer witch than Meg!

Although occasionally the music does creep into the story ... I was listening to a Little Boots album while writing Nemesis. The lyrics to her song Remedy, about dancing with the enemy, was very much how Natalie felt about Bryn. Then, when I was trying to think up a name for the club Natalie visits, it ended up being called Remedy too.

... Randomly ... I was writing a scene for my next book, Trust Me I Lie, when an old Tom Jones track came on the radio and I had one of those lightbulb moments. It would be perfect for the scene - but dare I use it? You'll have to wait and see!

Finally ... Have you noticed how the best songs are, in fact, stories? OK, very short, tiny snippets of someone else's life, but they are proper stories in which you, as the listener, have to do the rest of the work to fill in the blanks and finish it - and perhaps create a whole new story of your own? I can't think of a better way to kickstart the imagination.

Can you?

Related Posts:

Let It Snow
Seeking Inspiration
Keeping It (Un)Real
The Distraction of Silence - a track-by-track list of the songs which helped to inspire Nemesis (a guest post for Roz Morris)