Character Development

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Today, our guest is my friend and fellow South Florida writer Nancy Cohen. Nancy is the author of 15 novels including futuristic romance and mysteries. For many years, Nancy and I have served as beta readers for each other’s work.

nancy-cohen I like to discuss story development because despite all the advance plotting we do, fiction writing still remains a magical process.  My agent is marketing a new mystery series proposal of mine.  Here are some insights on how the story developed.  It may help you with your own mystery.

I’d written the first 20 pages but then I came to a halt.  I was nearly to the point where I had to introduce the suspects, but I needed to know them better first.  I’d made a list of the people who were family or acquaintances of the victim.  Next, I gave them each a dirty secret so they all appeared to have a motive for murder.  The next step, and one at which my subconscious came into play, was to connect the suspects to each other.  This is when the story really starts to get more defined.  Think of the Milky Way and how the planets swirl in a big sweeping motion around the central core of our sun.  They start to condense, tighten, draw together.  That’s what happens in my head.  The story comes into focus. 

Here is where personal experiences come into play as well.  An acquaintance told me she sells an anti-aging product, and she handed me a flyer.  Cool.  One of my characters, a pharmacist, will be a snake oil salesman who markets a false product he claims is derived from water beneath the Fountain of Youth in St. Augustine.  That’s where he lives, and I’d already planned to go there on a research trip.

Then I overheard a conversation in our beauty salon.  Marla Shore, heroine/sleuth of my Bad Hair Day series, would have been proud of me.  One lady spoke about how someone was running down ducks in her neighborhood and the cops were trying to catch him.  The police would arrest him on charges of animal abuse. I gave this nasty act to another one of my suspects.  It shows his perverted character.

For my people’s occupations, I used a book called The Fiction Writer’s Silent Partner by Martin Roth.  This reference is a great source of inspiration. It lists all kinds of things related to character background, plotting, slang, genre conventions, and more.

Once I had the bare bones of my suspects, I searched for pictures to represent them.  Here I plowed through my character file, where I keep photos I’ve cut out from magazines.  I wait for that “Ah ha!” moment when the person’s face matches my character.  This inspires the physical description and maybe adds more background on the individual’s personality. 

Each suspect gets a page in my notebook with their picture and a brief description.  The heroine/sleuth gets a full page with what I call my Character Development Tool. This includes physical traits, strengths and weaknesses, short and long term goals, dark secret, etc.  See Debra Dixon’s book: GMC: Goal, Motivation, & Conflict for excellent advice on this topic.  Besides the suspects and victim, then I have to develop the recurrent characters: the sleuth’s friends, family, colleagues, and love interest.  Book one requires laying the groundwork for the entire series.

Once the character development is done and the relationships defined, the plot takes shape.  Then I can write the synopsis.  At this point, the words are ready to spill out on paper.

Do you develop your characters before plotting the story or vice versa? Or are you a pantser rather than a plotter?

SilverSerenade Nancy J. Cohen is a multi-published author who writes romance and mysteries.  She began her career writing futuristic romances. Her first title, CIRCLE OF LIGHT, won the HOLT Medallion Award.  After four books in this genre, she switched to mysteries to write the popular Bad Hair Day series featuring hairdresser Marla Shore, who solves crimes with wit and style under the sultry Florida sun.  Several of these titles made the IMBA bestseller list. PERISH BY PEDICURE and KILLER KNOTS are the latest books in this humorous series. Active in the writing community and a featured speaker at libraries and conferences, Nancy is listed in Contemporary Authors, Poets & Writers, and Who’s Who in U.S. Writers, Editors & Poets. Nancy’s new release, SILVER SERENADE, is a sexy space adventure and her fifteenth title.

27 thoughts on “Character Development”

  2. I am pleased to be here today. Thanks, Joe, for the opportunity. BK, sometimes I’ll start with a premise too. In a murder mystery, it’s usually who the victim is and where the body is found. Then I develop the suspects next. For a romance, the characters have to come first unless it’s a spin-off series in the same universe.

  3. My stories usually start out as a big jumbled ball of twine. After I start tugging on it, sometimes a character comes out and sometimes a scene comes out. I find that the plot defines some aspects of the characters and the natures of the characters define some aspects of the plot. It just seems to work better for me to work them out in parallel.

    As for plotter or pantser, I’m most definitely a plotter.

  4. Great way to develop characters. I find myself using personal incidents/people I know as well. I am a pantser-with some plotter mixed in.

  5. Even if you’re a plotter, often the story takes a direction you didn’t anticipate. That’s where the story magic comes in. I love it when that happens. Have you ever changed the killer after you started writing the story?

  6. Hi Nancy, thanks for the insight. Those are some good tips!

    To your question about changing the killer: as I wrote my first mystery, I wasn’t sure who the killer was until I got near the end (I had about three possibilities). That was kind of fun. But I think I’m going to need to plot more than “pants” for the next one.

  7. I haven’t needed to change the killer, but in my current WIP, I did need some last minute refinements to the antagonist’s motivations, reactions, and background.

    I’m definitely a plotter – sort of. LOL

    I tend to develop my characters and plot at the same time, letting both aspects influence each other. I work out a base (one paragraph) plot then do the same for each major character. Then I see how those characters and plot elements fit together and rewrite each as a full page. I reevaluate how they influence one another, and expand again. My current WIP had about 30 pages of pre-writing by the time it was done.

    Ironically, as I moved through the story, things still didn’t happen when I had them planned. Usually this happens when character development or plot elements feel contrived – forced too soon (e.g. when a character has not had sufficient time to develop the glorious epiphany I had planned).

  8. Thanks for dropping by, Nancy. Some nice tips here.

    Very early on, like you, I want to see the character. I use Google Images to find a head shot that resonates with me. Then I need to hear the character, so I use a “voice journal” to do stream-of-consciousness talking by the character. I listen until I begin to hear a unique voice. That’s when I start to fill in bits about their background.

    The more my “boys in the basement” work on these matters, the better.

  9. Welcome, Nancy! I love your idea of keeping pictures in the character file. I’m going to start doing that immediately. In my mysteries, I almost always start with the the story idea, the protagonist and a few continuing characters, but the story itself (usually) suggests the killer. Then, like you, I have to surround these characters with the constellation of other suspects and supporting actors. This is the way I started working back when I was writing Nancy Drews under contract. The hardest challenge for me is to keep the reader from figuring out who the real killer is before my protag Kate Gallagher does.

    Now that I’ve switched genres and am writing a thriller, I’m working more from the character up. I have the original idea for the the story, and I’m finding that the “villain” is, in his own mind, a hero (which I’m sure is the case in many instances in real life. For example, think of a terrorist who thinks he’s saving the world for his religion). By developing the book this way, I find that my characters are becoming much more complex, and I love it!

  10. Nancy, thanks for a great post. I’m usually a plotter whereas my co-writer Lynn Sholes is a panster. Together, we become a prankster.

    But seriously, when collaborating on fiction, we absolutely have to know where we’re going. Naturally, we’re always learning new stuff about our main characters with every chapter, but it’s hard to leave things totally to chance when two writers are going down the same road. We spend a great deal of time discussing motivation and relevant backstory, not only on a global level but before each chapter or scene. The more we know about our characters, the more believable their actions and reactions will be. And we have the added chore of blending our voices into one.

  11. yeah good post. that is a good idea about the pictures. i changed the plot of my novel so much during the first draft that I actually turned an antagonist into a protagonist. That is making the rewrite very tedious though.

  12. These are all great ideas, guys. I never thought of using Google images to find pix of characters. Thanks, James, for that idea. And speaking of a voice journal reminds me that I usually interview the killer and have him confess why he committed the crime. I’ll do this in the beginning of the story so I have his motive recorded for the final scenes. Joe, working with a partner, you’d have to confer on each scene ahead of time. But it’s a great way to know where you’re going with the story. Gosh, Kathryn, you wrote Nancy Drews? I’m impressed! As for changing killers, I once turned my killer into the red herring because I decided he was too obvious.

  15. I am a panster who seriously wants to learn to plot. I think after all I have heard and read it would help my writin tremendously! Great post Nancy.

  17. This is a great post Nancy 🙂

    I usually have my characters more or less in my head, then I plot. But I am a hard core seat of the pants writer- so ya never know where things will go (within reason ;))

  18. Nancy, I’m a plotter and like to have a clear idea of where I’m going and who’s going with me. I do something like you described, but without the photos. I’m happy to know about the Roth book. I have Deb Dixon’s book and refer to it when I’m stuck.

    Great post!

  19. Thanks, Marie and Caroline, for coming by. It sure is fascinating to hear how other writers work their craft. We’re all different in our approaches, and yet we end up in the same zone where the story comes together. Only other writers can understand.

  20. I’m a plotting pantster. With a general idea of the plot and the basic ending in mind I will write around one character I know well and the rest is definitely seat of the pants. Although sometimes I give myself a wedgie doing it that way.

  21. Thank you for this very interesting post.
    I can relate to Timothy’s comment as I have often described writing as knitting – sometimes I find myself having to do a bit of unraveling or adjust the pattern to fit the characters’ development.

    Cherie Le Clare
    http://www.cherieleclare.com

  22. Wish I could write seat of the pants like some of you, but even going into a scene I have to know what’s going to happen. However, going in at Point A and knowing that I come out at Point B doesn’t tell me what happens in between. That’s where the story unravels on its own.

  27. I usually like to get something on paper (or the screen) before I do any real plotting or character development. I’ll do a couple chapters right away. It’s how I “get to know” my characters. Find their voice, their little character quirks, the thing that makes them sparkle. That’s when I “fall in love” with them. I need that before I get the grind of plotting, otherwise my enthusiasm can wane. I don’t usually look for “pictures” of my characters, but I will do a character profile and their GMC. I’ve also used Cindy Dees’ character template. It’s like 10 pages, pretty intense, but I usually uncover some gems about my character while doing it.

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