Listening to your characters

[John Dean]

Characters are our major tools as writers. They drive narratives and reveal things to the reader and what particularly fascinates me is the way that they assume lives of their own.

Take the DCI Jack Harris novel on which I am working (33,000 words and counting). It has been progressing ‘OK’, good plot, strong characters etc and I have mapped out where the story is going but I could not help feeling that something was missing and the story was losing momentum and direction as a result. ‘OK’ is not enough.

I tend to listen to my characters (it sounds a bit odd given that I created them but they do assume identities of their own) and suddenly Harris was revealing things I did not know about his past.

Or rather knew but did not recognise as important. I have always believed that ideas float around like molecules until they find another idea to latch on to and this is what happened here.

Something I had written in a previous novel suddenly revealed itself as part of a bigger picture, something relevant to the theme of the new novel (I won’t give details, it will ruin it for readers who buy the new book when it comes out).

The result? Added depth to the character, a new storyline and an enthused writer believing in his novel again.

The moral of the story? Let your characters have the opportunity to speak to you.