Snowballing... Creating Character. The Making of George, Barnaby and Brinnie


 This month, our round robin topic is creating character, which is one of my favourite subjects. Please check out my fellow bloggers below for their take on the subject!

There are lots of different ways to create characters. Mine hasn't changed a lot since I started writing in the 1970s, except that now, as I drift away from those days, I have stopped automatically basing sisters and parents on my own. I also learned, quite soon, that using my own basic personality for a protagonist wouldn't work. Protagonists have to be proactive, and I like a quiet life!

As well as being a writer, I am also an editor and manuscript assessor for Wordkettle, Therefore, I see a lot of characters in their prepublication state. The same stock characters get used and reused and that makes me conscious of two things. One is that I am so tired of seeing the same child... often with the same name... from multiple writers and the other that characters can't venture too far from "givens" or they become unbelievable.

So, over to how *I* produce characters. I don't copy them from life anymore. (I stopped doing that in the early 1980s as I transitioned from seeing child characters through a parent's eyes.) I don't make detailed plans for them. (I plan my plots, not my characters.) I don't interview them. I don't consciously give them attributes. I don't cut out magazine characters or visualise public figures as I write.

This sounds negative, but in trying to say how I do something it seems necessary to explain first how I don't.

I am not a whimsical person. I don't call my beloved dogs "furbabies". I don't like things that I might term "consciously cute". I don't always espouse the politically correct reading of character. 

I have always wanted to believe that nurture is what makes character but alas, from my observation over more decades than I care to consider, I have come to think that nature trumps nurture at every turn. Of course upbringing guides character in some ways, but the basic personality seems to be born in. It persists. I saw it in my mother, whose own mother was catastrophically untidy, and who fought that inborn aspect of her own personality all her life. She managed pretty well, only to see the same tendency emerge in me. 

I inherited my dad's quick temper, but I learned pretty early not to express it because the fallout lasted long after a quick spurt of volcanic sparks. Dad was a good man and a kind one, and his crossness always cooled very quickly. He never hit anyone, and couldn't understand why my sister and I would sulk after a telling off. I decided pretty soon that I wouldn't spark up. It's suppressed... but the urge never goes away. My personality is thus a mix of nature-- the original me--and my own decisions to change and modify along the way. 

No one can make me tidy. I'm as pigheaded as all get out and so peer pressure never had the slightest effect on me. My granny was like that. I might add that these observations have all come to me in later life. I have reasoned backwards...retro-engineered to find the facts.

I often take a character I have mentioned in passing in one book or story to become the protagonist in another. All I have to go on is a name and a one or two line description, often from another character. Let's take Princess Brinnie.... Bryndabellalibertyhildaregina on Sundays... who is the protagonist of my novelette "The Sixth Prince". Brinnie is the second child and only daughter of Edelbird the Rhymer, the former poet prince who is now a scholar king, and his forthright wife Vannda the Shepherd Princess of Chalk and Freeland. Brinnie is of age, and is the proud owner of five High Fay godmothers, after whom she was named because no one wanted to offend any of them. Rather than wait for princes to come calling, Brinnie, a practical girl, gets permission to send out questionnaires to prospective suitors. 

I like Brinnie. She grew organically, but it wasn't until she was fully formed that I realised she had inherited her personality from both parents... who hadn't even been written until the plot demanded them. I didn't consciously decide to give her Eddie's imagination and Vannda's practicality, but there they were.

Brinnie is not trying to overthrow the system. She intends to be married, but she wants to avoid a lot of protocol and she holds out to choose a prince whose nature will coexist with hers. Her method of dealing with the six princes whom she interviews after her godmothers have helped to winnow out the applicants is novel. 

In the longlist her godmothers gave her, was an oddity who signed with the name Prince(ss) George(ina) of the Blitching Heights, who proposed rescuing Brinnie from forced marriage and taking her adventuring, posing as her page. Brinnie had no need of rescue, but she put the inventive Georgina on the small "gift pile"- princes she didn't want herself, but who she thought would match with some of her distant cousins. 

Here is what Brinnie says about Georgina.

I put Prince(ss) George(ina) of the Blitching Heights on the gift pile. I thought my cousin Barnaby the Luter of Chalk might like her. He’s not a princess, but he might as well be.

That is all we learn about Georgina and Barnaby. Brinnie's rather careless summation of Barnaby just happened, so I decided to write his story next. With only that to go on, he emerged fully featured as a young man living with his widowed father. Now he is of age, the king has given up hinting and demanded that Barnaby stop playing his lute and start doing princely things. As a chalk/cheese father/son pairing, Basil and Barnaby love one another but don't ever see eye to eye. Barnaby's story, "The Luter and the Adventurer", explores the small but strong-minded household at Chalk Palace. 

Basil is a bluffly active man. He doesn't keep live-in servants because he can't abide having them hanging about. His old friend and distant cousin Feingold the wizard - Barnaby's godfather- cooks for him. Feingold's lady, the High Fay Theodora of the Violet Grotto, is often away. Basil sincerely mourns his queen, who died when Barnaby was a toddler, but he's had a succession of King's Favourites. His latest, Lady Eliandra, has lasted much longer than most. She is of the exact social status than means Basil can associate with her but not so high that she would hold out for marriage. In any case, she can't- her husband ran off on their wedding day. Ellie and Barnaby are good friends.

Into this eclectic household, in which almost all the chambers are mothballed, comes George, the wouldbe squire who has walked from the Blitching Heights... George has come on the recommendation of Princess Brinnie, but has rethought her method of approach...

George's personality is romantic, adventurous and loquacious. She (or he, to Barnaby) wants to help, and sees Barnaby as a poor lonely lad in need of cheering and backboning up.

The characters of all these people simply built as I wrote. They all have virtues and faults. Most of them have secrets. The personalities have to blend well enough to live in the same small "found family", while differing enough to make sacrifices and allowances necessary.

Also necessary is a sense of culture and period. The world of Brinnie, George and Barnaby is a made-up one. It has aspects of fairy tale, aspects of mediaeval England and a touch of the Regency. The people think, act and react according to their culture. One of my pet hates in historical stories (and in fantasy set in a fictional period which is still clearly "not now") is characters whose motivations and sensitivities plainly come from the 21st Century. No. People are of their place and their time, and should behave as such. They might kick the traces--George would rather adventure than behave like a princess, Brinnie wants to cut out the whole long-drawn cerimonial courting thing and Barnaby just wants to play his lute--but they have to find a way to be true to themselves AND to their setting.

Just as an example... I "discovered" that Barnaby is devoted to his lute, Queenie, because it belonged to his dead mother. This also explains partially why his father is worried about his dependence of it. Does Barnaby know why he clings to Queenie? No. Yet this devotion is part of his character. Why does George run off dressed as a young man? She was born in a rare example of the queendom. Her mother is the ruler. The heir apparent is her elder sister. what is the "spare" to do? 

These motivations, though not necessarily understood by the characters, help to make them seem real. It's the snowball effect. I don't plan them but I learn more about them as the layers build up. 

To reiterate: As I build characters I don't put in aspects consciously. They form as snowballs, from the core character up, but when I have written them... there they are. I can explain them retroactively. Weird, eh?

 Please check out my friends for their individual ways of creating characters that leap from the page.

Bob Rich https://wp.me/p3Xihq-3HE

Sally Odgers https://behindsallysbooksmark2.blogspot.com

Connie Vines http://mizging.blogspot.com

Anne Stenhouse http://annestenhousenovelist.wordpress.com

Helena Fairfax http://www.helenafairfax.com/blog

Diane Bator https://escapewithawriter.wordpress.com/

Skye Taylor http://www.skye-writer.com/blogging_by_the_sea

 

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