More on characters – character clinic part two
Last week’s post asking for your character dilemmas is still open, if you’d like to put forward any problems you’re having. I was looking mainly at the balance between likeable, realistic, and interesting.
This week I’ve read two novels, THE FALL by Claire McGowan and HOUSE OF SILK by Anthony Horowitz.
THE FALL is by a debut author (who came to my submissions masterclass a couple of years ago) and tackles two very different women. Charlotte is a wealthy, engaged, pampered young woman, and Keisha is on the margins of society, her daughter has been taken away from her, and her boyfriend treats her appallingly. Their lives intersect in one dramatic moment.
I won’t give away any more of the plot, but the author has given herself a difficult job here, because both the women she writes about are somewhat cliched. We think we know all there is to know about spoilt bridezillas, and we think we don’t need to know about disenfranchised women that excuse violent behaviour in their boyfriends. Claire McGowan proves us wrong – and goes on to give us an insight into two very interesting people whose motivations drive forward a good plot.
Anthony Horowitz has a different problem – he’s writing about characters that we know so well – Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson – that we can’t believe he can do anything new with them. Again he proves us wrong, with a gripping addition to the Holmes canon that builds on but doesn’t duplicate Conan Doyle’s work.
Louis de Bernieres‘s Captain Corelli made a brief updated appearance on Radio 4’s Broadcasting House this Sunday – reacting to the modern-day Greek crisis. This results in a fantastic example of what authors are often told to do – place their characters in different situations and work out how they’d behave – well worth a listen (it’s towards the end).
And ending on a visual note – this website of character composites takes well-known characters and puts their descriptions into police software to show what they’d look like. This only works if the author has given some description – the blog’s author says there will be no Holden Caulfield as his amounts to ‘I have a crew cut’…
Have you read any good characters recently? What problems do you have in your writing with characters?
February 20, 2012
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