On Fiction: Knowing your characters is key to a writing an insightful novel or short story. 

It’s true, the more we know the protagonist, the side characters, everyone mentioned, the fuller the sense of story we take the reader into. We’re less like to have pawns, stereotypes, and more likely to have believable people reacting to the world we’ve stuck them into.

Alexander Chee came to VCFA in 2017 and talked to us in the MFA program about developing his own characters and how much research he would invest in each one. He inspired much of this list, some are his ideas and others are mine that came from the inspiration of listening to him talk.

The list is in no specific order. It’s a collection of random questions and suggestions that help me when I’m writing fiction. It helps me in revision too, I can go back to each character once the story is finished in my case, and look more carefully into their backgrounds and make sure it rings true or if more information is needed for the reader to understand their actions and reactions.
It helps me. I hope it helps some of you too.

• Trust the magic
• Let the story out
• Trust the characters
• Write everyday
• Get it out, remember?
• Drop in deep
• Fall into the spell
• Trust your intuition
• What’s the reason for living that lfie?
• Who’s in control in the story? The protagonist’s life?
• Ask questions of your characters
• Follow those questions in each chapter
• Access the urgency
• Create a playlist
• What do you have to say?
• See the world through their eyes
• Trust intuitive structure
• Write what you should write, what you know
• Don’t worry about externals
• Don’t be in good taste
• Let the characters act true to themselves
• Don’t censor them
• Or yourself!
• Find the details that are so telling, a gesture, word, action
• Poignancy, find it in each character
• The story is its own editor
• Do you know enough to tell this story?
• Commit to writing two hours per day
• Dive in, swim, float, paddle in that story every day
• Write out all the sories and later work on how it fits together
• What are you interested in?
• Who do you want to hang out? You’ll be spending a lot of time with these characters
• Research the context, era
• Find those odd details
• Clothes, politics, food, houses, music, transport, hairstyles, shoes
• Don’t control the voice of each character, they are unique
• What is the social place your character lives in? class, access, education, goals, lifestyles
• What is the story that can only happen to them?
• Know them so well that you can deeply know the motivations at all times
• Find the intimacy of character details, the gestures, walk, look specific to that person
• How do they rationalise their actions to themselves? To others?

If you have more ideas, then add to the comments below and we can share the info. Thanks again. Be well. Be creative.