character development

My mom and dad divorced before my 2nd birthday. Within a few months, Mom moved to another state and remarried. She’d known my step-dad since their childhood in northern Minnesota. My older brother and I grew up in a household with Mom, our step-dad, and ultimately five other siblings. Our younger brother, Tim, died in an accident when he was four and I was eight. His death forever touched our lives.

My Great-Grandparents, Godiace & Alphonsine - With their children about 1910

Both my real dad and step-dad were working men who started and ran their own businesses. Through the years Mom tended house, raised her children, baked, read, and sold Avon. Nearby lived our aunts and uncles and many, many cousins. We visited a lot. One of our uncles was an elementary school teacher with a passion for knowledge, a true Renaissance man who, among other pursuits, played guitar, carved Nordic tree sculptures, and boiled down road kill for the skulls.

Who we all became as adults was a direct result of the childhood we lived through together.

The Maher Siblings, around 1920

George Santayana called the family “one of nature’s masterpieces.” For all its faults and even dis-functionality at times, I view my family as such. Somehow, despite familial squabbles, when things matter we band together. My siblings, my cousins, and I share much more than blood kinship, much more than common strands of DNA. We share the common bond of memories from growing up together. And I love them all.

When developing the protagonists for my books, even before I write about them, I must create and come to understand their family lives. Did they grow up wealthy or poor? How many siblings? What was their education? Where did they live? Rural, urban, apartment, mansion, log cabin? What part of the country, and when? What was their family heritage – Irish or English? American or French? Norwegian or German? Did they or their parents fight in a war? What is their religion? What was their role in the family – big brother, pacifist, troublemaker, caretaker? Are their parents still living? What was their relationship with them? Who was most important in their lives – a parent, a sibling, a pet, a favored aunt? Why?

The Ueland Siblings - 1973

I cannot paint my hero’s, my heroine’s, or even my villain’s personality without first developing then understanding their families. Not every aspect of this information must be written directly into the book; in fact, it’s generally better if it isn’t. But I need to know it, and I need to understand it. Their family life is part of their background. It shapes who my characters are. Equally as important, it shapes their motivation in the story. It makes them come alive.

Creating family backgrounds is also essential in creating the book’s core conflict. But I guess that’s for another blog. 🙂 ∞

In writing a novel, there are many ways to enrich the characters. Some writers fill notebooks with complete details. They include every aspect: height, weight, hair and eye color, college attended, hobbies, astrology sign, mother’s maiden name, father’s occupation. The writer plans carefully and leaves nothing to chance. All this detail, whether or not it is eventually spelled out in the book, helps to make the character real, both to the writer, and subsequently to the reader.

A few years back at a conference workshop, I heard a statement about character development that I found far more helpful than creating long lists of detail. “Give your hero a secret,” the speaker said. “What does he not want anyone to know?” A secret adds rich layers to a novel.

On Sunday my husband and I took a bus into New York City to meet up with our oldest son. We enjoyed the day, walking around together, stopping into shops and cafés, seeing the sites. As we paused for several minutes to look out over a snow-covered Central Park, a thought occurred to me. Cities, like characters in a novel, have secrets. These secrets can be anywhere.

Who sleeps in a snow-covered maintenance shed in Central Park? What lies buried under mounds of uncollected garbage? What crime was just committed backstage of a Broadway play, or in the halls of justice? Essential to the plot, these are all secrets in setting. They are simply waiting to be revealed.

On our ride home, I mused over the term “setting secrets.” I realized that I had several ingrained in my own stories. A construction site hides a murder victim. A farmhouse conceals a kidnapped child. A small town denies its guilt over an injustice. In each of these stories, I believe my description of the setting became deeper, and darker, because the setting hid a secret.

I’ve heard it said that thinking of your setting as a character will add richness to your story. Take it a step beyond that. As you do for your characters, give your setting a secret, too. See what happens. ∞