July 2015 - Stavros Halvatzis Ph.D.

People often ask writers: Where do your characters come from? Where do you look for them? How do you select them?

The truth is that characters are most often stitched together from bits and pieces inspired by the people we have met, united by a common premise and animated by the necessities of plot.

And, like Dr. Frankenstein, writers pour themselves into their creation. We infuse our characters with our spirit and have them play out our hopes and fears.

But like Frankenstein’s monster, our creations sometimes rebel. They take on a life of their own. The result is no longer the sum of its parts. This is when our voice takes over, shaping the narrative. Some call this the muse. For me, this voice is a phantom conductor molding the numerous notes into a seamless symphony.

In my forthcoming novel, The Nostalgia of Time Travel, Benjamin Vlahos, is a man struggling to marry Quantum Theory with General Relativity. At the same time, he is haunted by the death of his wife, a tragedy that occurred years previously – something he never got over.

My protagonist is drawn from many sources. A beloved math teacher in high school, a cousin in Greece, friends and neighbours in South Africa, England and Australia, several famous physicists whose biographies I have studied. There are even elements of myself in him. My love for mathematics, relativity theory, and quantum mechanics is no secret.

But ultimately, the character will remain a corpse unless I breathe life into him. This breath typically takes the form of bestowing him with human purpose.

In The Nostalgia of Time Travel, Benjamin Vlahos has one impossible goal. To travel back to the past and prevent his wife from dying. It is this inner obsession that brings the disparate aspects of his personality together and drives the story forward. Without it Benjamin is a mere assemblage of traits serving the plot.

Summary

Assemble your characters from a variety of sources, but infuse them with life by providing them with a powerful purpose.

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Most novels or screenplays focus on one specific story. Linda Seger, in her book, Creating a unforgettable Characters, calls this the front story. This is the actual story the writer wants to tell.

But in order to successfully tell this story we need to understand the reasons the characters act in the way they do. We need to understand the traumas, delights, and crisis of their childhood, the challenges of their adult life — we need to understand their past.

The backstory grants us two types of information leading to such an understanding.

One is of past occurrences that impact the construction of the story. Hamlet and Citizen Kane have backstories we need to understand to make sense of the tale.

Other information forms part of the character biography. This information is never directly given to us, but understanding the attitudes and values of a character through action or dialogue, allows us to predict and understand their motivation.

In Unforgiven, a deputy discusses the Sheriff’s toughness in a conversation with other deputies: “Little Bill Scared? Little Brill grew up in the streets of Kansas. Little Bill ain’t scared. He’s just no carpenter.”

Little Bill Daggett’s obsession with his roof and lack of carpentry skill reflects his failure to prevent the rain from getting into his house. It speaks to a deeper flaw — his failure to keep other elements from entering into his life; it hints at his forthcoming death, resulting from his inability to keep Will Manny out of his town.

Both types of information flows, then, serve an important function – supporting the forward story through essential details that explain character behavior.

Summary

Use backstory techniques to motivate and explain character actions.