Favourite Questions From Recent Interviews: Alex Davis Asks About Creating Characters
Recently, The Gathering Of The Lost was shortlisted for the David Gemmell Legend Award, and as a finalist I was interviewed on a number of fora around the traps.
I was asked a number of great questions so thought I’d share a few of them—plus my answers, of course!—here on the blog over a number of weeks.
Alex Davis conducted my official Gemmell Legend Award finalist’s interview, which appeared on the Awards’ site, and one of his questions was about developing characters.
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“Alex: Your books to date have made a real impact, with your characters in particular being praised. How do you go about creating and developing your characters?
Helen: That is an interesting question, because I’m not sure it’s a “how” I’ve ever consciously thought about! Usually the characters come to me in one of two ways: they either spring forth fully formed, Athena style, or they evolve. Usually though, even with the evolving characters who have been with me for a number of years, there’s a flashpoint moment – usually an image of the character in a place or situation where their identity becomes ‘concrete’, although sometimes it can be the ‘voice’ of the character I hear first. Usually the flashpoint comes with with far more backstory around what the character’s life is, and the challenges ahead, which is when the writing begins.
In the case of Malian, in the The Wall Of Night series, the flashpoint was a vision of her scaling the interior wall of an ancient, ruined castle that was imbued with shadows and a bloody history. Even that image though, was still only the end of the beginning in terms of the development of her character, which has continued to grow and evolve in relation to both events and changes in the characters around her. It’s important to me that should happen, as I feel it’s a vital part of making characters real. I also feel strongly that character continuity is vital to the authenticity of the story—which means that a character cannot just go and do something against her or his nature, as established in the story thus far, simply to advance the next element in the plot. Not if I’m “keeping it real” as a writer.
Malian is a major character and so obviously gets a lot of attention. But a telling measure of writing quality for me is whether the minor characters, for whatever brief time they are on the stage of the story are also real. One way I like to think about this in my own writing is that even if a character is not important to the story being told, he or she (or it, in the case of certain speculative entities) will be important to him or herself. Even the most minor of characters will have a history and a life that matters to them, and as the writer I have to convey a sense of that, even if the reader will only ever catch the most fleeting glimpse of the character on the page.
When a writer does this successfully, I believe it adds depth and texture, as well as conviction, to the story. I know it adds greatly to my enjoyment of a book when I don my reader’s hat.”