Character is how you develop through your life experiences. The dictionary
definition is the mental and moral qualities distinctive to an individual.
A character is also a person in a novel or play or film.
The one impacts on the other.
When you create the characters in your crime novel, obviously, the
ones who will occupy most of your interest are your main character
(Protagonist) and the killer (Antagonist).
These two characters may often be very similar in character. In other
words, they may be aiming for the same prize but what that prize is, will be
altered by their mental and moral qualities.
Your protagonist will not be all good, just as your antagonist will not
be all bad. Everybody, even serial killers, have good and bad qualities and
your writing will be much richer is you exploit this.
Your protagonist wants to catch the killer. The killer does not want to
be caught. Killers in crime novels are frequently portrayed as being
so arrogant they think they will never be caught, but just as your killer is a
human being, he or she will have doubts and be indecisive just as we all are.
Your protagonist may also be arrogant enough to think he or she will
catch the killer, but, unless they are the boring stereotypical flawed drunk
with inner demons and everyone’s hand turned against them — how boring that
trope has become — the one difference will be that your protagonist will have
an ally who supports them. That could be a murder squad if you are writing a
police procedural or a close friend/partner who acts as a sounding board for
your amateur sleuth and helps them clarify their thinking.
By contrast, unless the murder(s) are a joint enterprise, your killer
will only have him or herself to talk to and that may well increase their
arrogance and certainty.
But what about the other characters? You must have a big enough ‘stable’
of characters in your novel to make the mystery a mystery. And remember that one
of Agatha Christie’s main strengths was that all her books have a huge range of
characters. That gave her so much leeway to seed clues and red herrings aplenty
and lead us down a usually very winding garden path.
Think of five friends. They will all have differing characteristics
because they will all have had differing life experiences.
Joanna might have been raped by her stepfather, was too frightened to
tell anyone, so never gained justice. That experience will have coloured her
view of men. She may shun relationships or, worse, she may have a behavioural
habit of choosing controlling, abusive men because her self-worth is under the
floorboards - like her husband might be if she suddenly snaps.
Now compare Joanna to Rebecca, whose upbringing was sunny and secure and
whose parents encouraged her to be happy. Rebecca will be as different in
character as chalk is to cheese, because she has not had Joanna’s experiences.
But does that make Rebecca ripe for being a victim because she will
automatically be more trusting?
What about Tom? He’s working for his dad in the family firm of builders.
Tom was brought up to think there was no alternative, but his one desire is to
go to art school and paint. He earns good money but spends it to compensate for
not being what he wants to be.
Compare Tom to Ian, whose father walked out when Ian was three and
his baby sister was just turned one. Dad told Ian that he must now be the man
of the family.
Tom might be resentful but unable to break away from the security of a
good family and a steady income. Ian has been hustling to help his mother since
before he went to school. He worked three jobs. A paper round, helping people
with their gardens and walking neighbours’ dogs. You might presume Ian is more
likely to succumb to the lure of earning easy money by working for the local
drug lord
And then we throw in the what-if? How would knowing Tom and
Ian's characters affect your novel if you turned that presumption on its head
and made Tom the drug runner because he wants to salt enough money away to go
to art school while not giving up being able to spend his earnings?
I would counsel not creating your characters to fit your plot. There will
always be something off kilter with the resulting book. There are hundreds, if
not thousands, of crib sheets for creating characters, some of which go to
ridiculous lengths in terms of what your character eats, hates etc.
Why do I think that is overkill? Because, in truth, our likes and
dislikes in terms of colours won’t affect the story one iota - unless the
character is colour-blind. All it will do is confuse you, the writer, because
you will have spent so much time making everyone completely different, you will
feel a need to include all of it in the book.
If you decide one of your characters is allergic to shellfish, that food
preference may be relevant as a clue or a red herring. But knowing that Greg
likes steak but hates lamb is meaningless unless it has a purpose in the book.
Don’t bog yourself down.
Think of the 2 most popular detectives in the last 140 years. Christie’s
Poirot and Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes. What do we know and what do
we need to know about each?
We know Poirot is egg-shaped, vain, fussy, and meticulous. We have no
idea what colours he likes or dislikes or even his food choices because those
are irrelevant to the stories.
There is nowhere in the Poirot stories where he says ‘Look at that woman
in the red dress, Hastings. She must be guilty because I abhor red.’ No. He
might say ‘Look at that woman in the red dress, Hastings. See how she looks
around. I wonder why her hand is in her pocket.’
Similarly, we know that Holmes is tall, fit, vain and smokes a lot. Conan
Doyle sees Holmes as a machine so the reader couldn’t give a Flying Fortress
whether he likes dogs or cats. We don’t need to know it.
I am a visual writer so like to find pictures that fit the character in
my mind’s eye. For example, in The Tudor Enigma books, my
protagonist, apothecary, Luke Ballard, looks like a younger William Petersen,
who played Grissom in CSI. The minute I saw one particular picture, I
knew just what Luke Ballard was like as a person.
Try it. Let’s say you want a man in his 20s who is a bit of a flirt, a
charmer, but who has a look in his eye that says he uses it for his own ends.
Keep those characteristics in mind. A charmer with a nasty edge. Now go into
your preferred search engine and check out images of men in their 20s. It may
take some time but one may well just pop off the screen. That’s what your
character looks like.
Look again. What can you imagine him doing? Would he kill someone without
a second thought? Would he go to Africa and build schools for children? Could
he be one of twins? Plenty of playing room for creating havoc in your story
with that one.
Once you know the essence of your character, you have something
to build on. What does it matter what he wears or what toothpaste he uses
unless the events in your story demand we know he would never use whitening
toothpaste? And if he is the victim, why was whitening toothpaste found in his
hotel bathroom?
When you have enough characters to people your story, start thinking
about how their characteristics will impact on your basic plot. You will find
that they affect it greatly and sometimes they can send you in a totally
different direction. In Long Shadows, I have one character who made an
unplanned declaration of love. Not only had he not planned it, neither had I.
But, knowing what he was like—his characteristics—I knew exactly what new path
I could make him tread and it strengthened the book. Long Shadows is
due out shortly.
Last words. Don’t hurry your characters into the world. Let them stay by
your side as you walk the dog, cook dinner or cut the lawn. Let them talk to
you as you wander around the supermarket. When you know them and you know the
bones of your plot, you can create a compelling story.
