Sketching Characters for “In Plutonian Seas”

Whether you’re writing a novel or a short story, somewhere along the line, you’ll have to sit down and think about your characters.  How much detail do I go into?  Should I do a complete biography?  Should I throw everything I’ve developed into the story?

The answers depend on you, the writer.  Basically, I let the story and the situation dictate what to include from my character background.  Because I’m anal and over-prepare for everything, I often do a full chronological biography for major characters.  What it comes down to is this: you want to know your characters (main characters) well enough to be able to describe what they would do and say in any plot situation.  If it takes a full written bio ahead of time to do that, then do that.  Some writers prefer to wing it and let their characters surprise them.  Whatever works.

Here’s an excerpt from the bio of the main character in my upcoming sf short story “In Plutonian Seas.”  The fellow’s name is Joe Skellen.

A Short Biography:  (story takes place in 2144 AD)

1. Joe Skellen was born on 1 May 2106, second child and only son to Art and Marcy Skellen, of Wichita, KS.  Joe has one sibling, older sister Taylor, who (at the time of the story) is a pediatrician in Dallas, TX. Father Art was an aerospace engineer with Concord Aviation Services, Wichita.
2. Earliest childhood memory: being locked in a closet by Taylor over some dispute, and nearly suffocating among the musty clothes and jackets.  Joe has a now semi-well controlled fear of confined spaces.  This occurred in March 2111 at the Skellen home in Wichita.
3. Joe followed Taylor to Midland High School in Sept 2118.  As a boy, Joe had always loved sports, especially water sports.  By the time of entering Midland, he was already an accomplished swimmer and quickly joined the MHS swim team, specializing in back and breast stroke. 
4. When he was 14 (year 2120), the Skellen family took a trip to Cancun, MX, where father Art and Joe engaged in learning some basic scuba lessons.  Joe took to scuba diving, snorkeling and related activities and thereafter, trips to various Gulf beaches and vacation spots were usually accompanied by diving trips.
5. By the time he was 17 (yr 2123), Joe had earned a certificate as an open-water diver and also PADI certification.  He worked various summer jobs (grocery store bagger, construction site laborer, lumber yard helper) to pay for trips once a month through a local Wichita diving club to diving sites along the Texas Gulf Coast. 
6. Joe had many friends at MHS.  His best friend became a fellow swimmer and diver.  His name was Cory Haley.  They had many classes together, both did well in Math and Physics and had a particular distaste for Mr. Winans’ and his Geometry class. Cory often accompanied Joe and his father Art on trips to the Gulf.
7. On one trip, in July 2124, Joe and Cory encountered dive instructor Rufus Purdue at a club near Matagordo Island on the Texas Gulf coast.  Rufus, with permission from Mr. Skellen, chaperoned Joe and Cory on their first wreck dive, off the coast.  The wreck was a late 19^th century coal lighter, called the Caracas Queen.  Joe immediately became hooked on wreck diving and exploring. 
8. Joe graduated MHS in 2124.  Dad Art wanted Joe to go to college and Joe did spend about a year at Texas-Austin, through spring 2125.  But college was not for Joe.  He had trouble focusing on delayed gratification and planning for the future.  All he wanted to do was swim and dive.  In this Cory Haley and Joe had similar desires.
9. Joe left UT and returned to Wichita for awhile, much to his parents’ displeasure.  For a year, he worked in construction, as an apprentice carpenter and plumber.  He never made journeyman however and found he was too filled with nervous energy to settle down to a trade. 
10. It was during his time as a carpenter and plumber (mostly for Hewitt Mitchell Industries) that he met Kristen Kearns, also working as an electrician on many jobs with Joe.  Joe took an immediate liking to Kristen.

 You can see that I’ve described Joe’s background in some chronological detail.  This gives me the ability, as plot situations dictate, to insert ready-made events and experiences into my description of Skellen when I need to.  Or better yet: be able to describe what Skellen would do in a given situation, or remember something that reminds him of the current situation.  This just adds realism to my depiction of this person.

It’s just a way of being consistent and staying on top of things.  You don’t want your major characters to be blond beach bums in Chapter 1 and dark-haired detectives in Chapter 10.  Readers notice that and they tend not to like it.

My theory is that readers read stories to be entertained and to vicariously experience through your story things, places and events they couldn’t experience otherwise.  To make that happen, your characters have to sound and act real, which means they have to be real to you.  If Joe Skellen is as real to me as my next-door neighbor, when I write what happens to him, he should seem as real to you.

The next post to The Word Shed comes on May 29, 2017.  In this post, I’ll return to another aspect of story-telling that is sometimes overlooked, though not often by sf writers: setting and a sense of place and how it can help or hurt a story.

See you then.

Phil B.