‘Lord Henry Wootton is who the world thinks I am, Basil Hallward is who I am; Dorian is who I would like to be, in another age perhaps.’ (Oscar Wilde, on the writing of The Picture of Dorian Gray)
In these days of social media and the cult of the personality, it is easy to feel confused about where our personalities end and our fictional characters begin.
But what about those of us who write fiction? How do we create characters that are not just simply our own personalities transcribed onto the page? How do we separate ourselves from the characters we create and does it even matter?
I would argue that it does, because in order to create believable, and relatable characters we need a modicum of objectivity. If our characters are simply us with a different name, we cannot achieve this simply because we aren’t able to see ourselves as others see us. Therefore, when we create characters based on ourselves, we aren’t thinking objectively. If we are not careful, we can slip into self-indulgence, turning our characters into the kind of invincible heroes/heroines that we would like to be to over-compensate for a feeling of lack in our day to day lives and personalities.
Of course, it is perfectly natural to write about ourselves when we make our first forays into creative fiction. This is because we write about what we know, and we start with what is familiar – ourselves.
So how can we monitor this and is there a way to identify the ways in which we may put too much of ourselves into our characters?
There is a simple checklist we can use, and this checklist is the technique of ‘interviewing’ our characters. It is often useful to do this to help us get to know them.
So we can ask things like, ‘what is their favourite colour?’/ ‘What is their favourite band?’ We can present situations to our characters, asking them what they would do, for example, if they witnessed a murder or saw someone being mugged?’
After asking your character these questions, we should then ask ourselves the same questions.
If we find ourselves giving the same answers as our character, we are either falling down the proverbial rabbit hole of writing about ourselves, or worse – writing about ourselves as we would like the world to see us, otherwise known as a ‘Mary Sue trope,’ creating a character who is unrealistically flawless and lacking in human foibles.
The problem with such characters is that they are neither relatable nor believable. The best advice for avoiding this trap is to write down a description of your character in as much detail as you can muster, then ask a few people who know you well to read it. If they immediately point out, ‘ah, that sounds just like you,’ then maybe you need to go back to the drawing board and reconsider your character profiling.
That is not to say your character has to be totally ‘un-you.’ It is okay if there is an overlap in places, in fact it is inevitable and not something to worry too much about. This is what is known as the narrative voice and is often identifiable in authors from book to book, in spite of the shift from one character to another.
For example, in the writing of my fictional character, Jenny Bean, most people would identify her humour as recognisably mine – an observation with which I would concur – but she is not me. When creating this character, I very deliberately went outside myself, as it were, and brought in traits that are not in my own personality. Jenny is calmer than me; she has different taste in music, clothes; she’s more of a people pleaser; she doesn’t have my ambition, and so forth. This was a deliberate move on my part, to avoid being too autobiographical – something which is more of a challenge when writing in the first person, as I do with Jenny Bean.
So, one way to think about this is to imagine a character who is different from you. One part of ourselves we do tend to know well is how we would react in different everyday situations, such as being kept on hold on a call and then getting cut off. Personally, I would throw the phone across the room and yell blue murder. Jenny would probably swear a bit then hit re-dial because she is more patient than I. So, think of a hypothetical everyday situation, imagine what you would do in it and then turn it around and imagine alternative reactions. If it helps, think of someone you know who would react notably differently from you and use that as a starting point.
As writers most of us are aware, characters manifest themselves mainly through action, which brings me to my final point. I am not suggesting things have to be black and white. We all put parts of ourselves into our characters, it’s how we connect with them and bring them to life. It only becomes a problem when we find ourselves imposing too much of our own personalities onto them.
I like to think of being a writer of fiction as similar to being an actor playing a part, only the parts in this case are the characters. Most actors worth their salt would say they have to find something in themselves to bring to the characters they play, something which is harder, for example, when playing a serial killer. But they are still playing a part. Keeping this in mind when creating a new character will help us to maintain a healthy distance from them and ultimately, to present them in a more relatable way. Our characters are both us, and yet also not us. The trick is to find the balance between the two, something which gets easier with experience as we improve our craft.
Contributed by Julia Wood
leicesterwritersclub.com 