Part II: The People in Your Novel

Well, now that we’ve got a detailed outline for our proposed novel, it’s time get to know the people. Some writers call them characters but I like to call them people.  Seems friendlier.  When I think of characters, I think of some of my aunts and uncles… now they are real characters.

List of Major Players

Anyway, one of the first steps I do, as I am developing the Chapter and Scene Details (my detailed outline) is to keep a list of primary people who appear and have roles in the story.  I call this list my List of Major Players.  It is exactly what it sounds like: a list of names and what they do.

A note about names:  Every author has his or her own way of giving his fictional people names.  I found a little trick long ago that helps me.  Don’t look at the phone book, if there are even any such things around anymore.  Look at a map, or an atlas.  A lot of place names, all over the world, are named for actual people.  Take two cities and put the words together.  Massage it a little.  Voila…a unique name.  As for my newest novel, The Farpool, that I just started writing last week, the Seomish had to have names that would be appropriate for a marine people, basically they’re fish, but intelligent.  Sounds travel well underwater and certain sounds travel better than others.  Since I had already developed a proto-language for my fictional marine people (more on that later), my people names have to be consistent with that.  So, one main character (whoops, I used that word again) is named Pakma tek kel’Om’t.    She’s female, and she’s a citizen of a great water-nation or family called Omt’or.  The families are generally called kels.  So Pakma is a citizen of the kel of Omt’or, which I shortened somewhat. 

That’s how I come up with names of extraterrestrials.  Humans…use maps or your next-door neighbors or whatever works. 

Once I have my List of Major Players, I identify those who really are major players, key characters upon whom the story really depends.  These people are in for detailed treatment.

A Brief Biography

That detailed treatment involves doing a reasonably brief biography of each one.  If this sounds like a lot of work, it is.  But trust me: you’ll know these people a lot better after you’ve done this.  Moreover, you’ll have a better chance of being consistent with their backgrounds, personalities and motivations, etc if you do this.  It works.

Each person who gets a detailed treatment gets anywhere from 3or 4 to maybe 10 written pages of the following: a physical description (height, weight, age, face, distinguishing features, etc), a biography that is chronological (John Smith was born in 1 million B.C., second son of Og and Grog and lived for a few years in a cave in France…that sort of thing). 

Personality and Character

After detailing John Smith’s chronological background, including certain key things that happened to John at various points in his life and how he responded and reacted to them, I delve more directly into personality and character.  This is my third section.  I’m no psychologist.  But I can imagine things and I can write.  And I’ve found that going through this exercise gives me pretty detailed insight into why John Smith turned out to be the way he is, why he’s more like Og than Grog and why he often tries to imitate Uncle Klog. 

Incidentally, in preparing for The Farpool and developing the major players, I’ve started to search the Internet for faces that look like I imagine these people look like.  That’s not hard to do with Google now.  I found that putting a face to my imaginary friends adds to the realism with which I can describe them. 

If you’re writing sf or fantasy, developing details of the major people is especially important.  Often you’re dealing with people or creatures or beings who aren’t like you and me at all.  The details of how Tralfamadoreans eat lunch may or may not be germane to the story, but you really ought to have an idea, since that detail will percolate in your head and show up, for good or ill, somewhere in your writing.  Writing teachers say “write what you know.”  Since no one (but Kurt Vonnegut) has been to Tralfamodor, you have to imagine it and create it before you can know it. Details matter and more and more detail helps. Be specific in your details too.

One final word: about jargon.  Decades ago, I wrote an earlier version of the same basic story as The Farpool.  The language, planet details, culture, history, has all been developed.  But one of the mistakes I made and why it was never published (and shouldn’t be) is that I used too much jargon, too many language terms from the fictitious language, in the story.  That made it hard to read…it got in the way of the story. 

The real art to doing this is to give a sense, a flavor, of a fictitious world without bogging down or boring the reader with an anthropological treatise.  Regardless of where your people are from and what they look like, your readers are human.  They’ll relate better to your people if they can understand what they’re saying and understand what motivates them.  Your fictitious people aren’t just humans in funny-looking suits.  They should be consistent with their world and their culture.  But remember who your readers are.  The art is striking a balance.

That’s all for now. Next post will be details of place and setting and how I typically go about developing those critical items, and they are critical in science fiction and fantasy.

See you next week.

Phil B.