Do It Write!
Meet Your Characters

Any writer will tell you that, for any story to succeed, the characters must be believable. They must have depth. More than three-dimensional, they must be people with layers of history, personality, preferences, tastes, quirks, political inclinations, cultural and religious beliefs, and all those things that you enjoy as a sentient human being. They must be, in other words, real people. Just like you and me.

You really have to understand your characters better than anyone. You have to dig deep into their motives, and find out what makes them tick exactly. When I was rewriting Solstice, my editor was quick to point out that my main character, Io, was clearly very angry, but that there wasn’t as much written about why she was so angry, and why the audience should care about her. My editor told me that her sense of loss wasn’t as clearly defined: in other words, what happened to her that made her into such a monster? Why hasn’t she been able to overcome her trauma? What memories or artifacts does she hold on to as reminders to herself, and to us, of her loss?

These comments led to some soul-searching with Io. Together, Io and I found out a few things about herself. We discovered, for example, that she carried around a novel—The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros—that was given to her by her dead mother but that she never read. We discovered that she never wanted to read it because it would serve as a reminder of the normalcy she once enjoyed but that she could never have again. We found out that normalcy was the only thing Io ever wanted, and it was something that would never return. This sense of longing and mourning helped flesh out Io’s tragic side and define her inner conflict. Her mourning, as the novel progresses, weighs more and more heavily against the irrational hatred (and self-hatred) that fuels her vigilantism.

You’ll notice that I said, “Io and I.” That’s because one of the things that helped me as a writer was to get to know my characters, treating them as if they were real people with whom I could sit down and chat. One of my favorite exercises when conceiving Solstice was writing down a “chat” or an “interview” with my characters. Picturing myself in my favorite café, sitting across from Io or Jai Lin or Yuniko, I proceeded to ask questions, and wrote down whatever came to mind as a response. It’s a sort of controlled free writing exercise, where you know, more or less, what your characters “are going to say,” but where you also allow yourself to free associate and see what comes out. In this fashion, for example, I found out that Io loves eating out (probably because she has such a nomadic lifestyle anyway), that she wishes she could own a Golden Retriever (again, something her profession wouldn’t allow), and that she hates chatty people. Small personality quirks that didn’t quite make it into the novel, but that nonetheless helped me envision who she was as a person.

Conducting an interview with a character is as simple as writing down some questions, and seeing what comes out as an answer. Some of the things I asked my characters included:

• What do you like to do when you’re not working?
• How would you say your relationship with your parents was?
• What’s one thing about yourself that you like? That you hate?
• What was it like for you growing up? Was it a happy childhood? An unhappy one?
• What’s your most embarrassing memory?
• What kind of people do you typically befriend?

At some point, you just have to be willing to get into the heads of your characters. Some of my friends poke fun at me when I talk about my characters as if they were real people, and to a large extent, I like joking back. But the truth is, I’ve found it helpful to extract myself from my reality, and place myself in the realities of my characters. To see the world through their eyes, and envision any number of life memories that may have shaped their behavioral tendencies. That, I think, is a skill already present in most writers. We’re already willing to use our skills to imagine different possibilities and scenarios, but taking that further and imagining yourself as a different person can help you develop your characters more fully.

The short of this pointer is that you have to believe in your characters as real people. And as real people, it’ll be to your writing’s benefit if you learn more about them, the same way you would get to know a new co-worker or a new neighbor.