Letting your characters speak to you

[John Dean]

I have written before about my fascination with the way that characters evolve during the writing process. For me, when they are revealing things about themselves which you as the writer had not planned, that is when you know that writing is truly working. That your characters have made the transition from cardboard cut-out to real human being.

I am being given a striking example of that the more I work on the latest DCI John Blizzard novel for The Book Folks.

Major characters tend to fall into two categories – rounded (also known as changing or dynamic) who change throughout the story, and static (flat) characters who don’t – and Blizzard definitely falls into the first category.

He is constantly surprising me as I write, developing as a human being as we all do when we are exposed to life’s events, a process which not only deepens the character for the reader but which also throws up potential new plot lines and gives fresh energy to the story.

I believe that the key, as the writer, is to let your characters speak to you, let them reveal themselves, let the process develop organically.

Once you have done that then is the time to sit back and review what you have accrued. To decide which pieces of information are relevant to the book on which you are working and which ones don’t quite fit but can be stored away for future novels.