One question that writers often get asked is: “Which do you think of first, your characters or your plot?” I find this hard to answer, because for me they’re pretty much inseparable. A plot idea comes to me with at least one character attached. A character enters my head with a problem that needs to be solved – in other words, a plot driver. When I taught a Masterclass on creating characters last year, alongside two other members of Leicester Writers’ Club, it gave me the chance to really think about how this process works – for me, at least. And this is what I concluded!
- As a thriller writer, a strong ‘hook’ is extremely important. So the first thing I tend to do, when I’m planning a new novel, is come up with an interesting ‘what if?’ kind of scenario. This might be something I’ve adapted from real life, or from a news story, or just from something I’ve overheard in a café and started embellishing in my imagination. In the case of my most recent book, a character is looking through a colleague’s honeymoon pictures when she glimpses a photo of her best friend’s husband, apparently on holiday with another woman. So, from the start, I’ve got an element of the plot – an inciting incident – and I’ve got some potential characters.
- From this, I can develop the idea a little more – how does it escalate? How will I turn it into a twisty thriller? And alongside this, what kind of people need to be involved, to make the story as effective as possible? So I’ll start thinking things like: if I had two couples, close friends with intertwined lives, it would make the uncovering of marital secrets even more tense and devastating.
- At this stage, I’ll think more carefully about whose story it really is, and how many different points of view I want to tell it from. For the main protagonist – in this case, the friend who sees the photo – I’ll think: what would make this scenario more difficult for them, specifically? For example, if her whole world revolved around her friends. I always consider what’s going to be threatened in the story, and make sure it’s one of the most important things about the character.
- This will hopefully lead me to other characteristics, e.g. maybe she’s very sociable, loyal, secretly insecure. Basically, if her friendship network collapsed, she would be lost. I might ramp this up with other factors, e.g. her family living far away. So the character starts to become more rounded, but all of it is driven by the plot.
- And what about supporting characters? Again, it’s back to the plot. What roles do they need to play in the story? How do they intersect? Who am I going to paint as the “villain” and who will actually be the “villain”?
- It’s at this point, usually, that I start to write the first draft. I flesh out the characters further as I shape the plot: What do they want? What will they do to try to achieve their goals? How will they be tested? The characters should be active enough that they are making things happen, rather than things just happening to them. So I suppose I switch back, during this phase: the plot has helped me create the characters, but they’re the ones who have to keep it moving forward.
- Once I’m happy with the overall structure, I examine each character’s behaviour in each scene, quite systematically, and make sure I’m using it to full effect. With the point-of-view characters, I’m looking for opportunities to give them more depth, raise the stakes, and really make the reader care. With other characters, I’m looking at how their actions affect, influence, and hinder the protagonists. In what subtle ways are they betraying their real motivations, and how much of it do I want the reader (and the narrator) to notice? How can I seed in character traits that will later prove important to the story? As I edit and re-draft, I’m trying to add texture and layers to both the characters and the plot.
- Relationships between characters are vital in my genre, especially if they’re going to later fall apart. So I also want the key players interacting as much as possible, in scenes that simultaneously move the plot along. The relationships need to seem real and important so the reader will care when they go wrong. Sometimes I create a diagram to remind me of who feels (and knows) what about whom.
- Characters also often help me to solve problems I’m having with the plot. For example, if I can’t figure out the ending, I’ll draw out a character arc for each of the main protagonists – what they wanted or were grappling with at the start; what turning points and challenges they’ve gone through; and how they should’ve changed by the end. Then the finale will usually become clear, because it should be a result of everything they’ve been through. In my genre, job number one is to reveal the solution to the central mystery by the end. But one big thing I’ve learned, is that the denouement rings hollow if there isn’t an emotional resolution for the characters as well.
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