Gold13:

Golden Rule No 13

Get to know your characters

If you are going down the fiction road as a novelist, it is important that you know exactly who your leading characters are. Get a picture of them in your head, and then make notes for yourself. Let us suppose the main character is a private detective. Before you start writing your book you should know him as well as you know yourself.

When and where was he born? What sort of clothes does he wear? What sort of physique has he got? Is he well educated, or street wise? Write a word sketch describing him, his features, his accent, his walk, his habits. Does he smoke? Is he married? Any children? What were his parents? What sort of car does he drive? You may even want to draw a family tree so that you have a full understanding of where your main character has come from.

Write about him in the Postcard Challenge. See if you can put flesh on him in a maximum 75 words.

Characterisations can be more important than the plot. When your readers start on the first chapter of the book your characters are skeletal to them. Gradually put flesh on them so that they come off the page as real people. You might choose to base your characters on somebody you know, or on people you may have read about in newspapers or magazines. They then come to you with ready-made backgrounds, personalities and appearances. Just be careful to disguise them so that they meet the legal protection clause at the start of most novels, along the lines of:

All the characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author, and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all the incidents are pure invention.

As you introduce your characters in the book remember that your reader is meeting them for the first time. The objective is to make your reader embrace the hero of your book like a friend, and to care about what happens to him/her. Even anti-hero characters need some kind of charisma to hold the reader's interest.

You do not need to reveal all about your character in one go. Patricia Highsmith's beautifully crafted The Talented Mr. Ripley is worth reading to see how she very slowly puts flesh on to the bones of her main character. It is like a striptease in reserve. You slowly dress them and almost tantalise your reader before disclosing vital facts.

A major decision before you start writing is whether you are going to tell the story in the first or third person. I have ghosted so many books that I feel comfortable writing in the first-person. However, I find there is more satisfaction writing in the third person because there is greater freedom and you can be more flexible with the scene setting and descriptive passages.

It is rare but possible to use the 'second' person, "you". Read Jay McInerney's Bright Lights, Big City for a good example of this style of writing.

No matter what, ensure that your reader, who is doing you the privilege of reading your book, finds it easy and enjoyable following the narrative.

Eric Ambler, a prolific British thriller writer, once advised: "Don't go too much in for planning a novel. Just have a loose idea of what it's about. Let the plot develop as you go along, and if you find that it is entertaining you then it will also entertain your reader. It's good to write not knowing what's going to happen on the next page. If you want to know what's going to happen next then sure as eggs is eggs so will your reader. But if you don't care why should he?"

It made sense when he said it in 1956. It makes sense today.

Ambler wrote dozens of best sellers including The Mask of Dimitrios and Journey into Fear, and he got an Ocar nomination for his magnificent Cruel Sea screenplay. So he knew what he was talking about.

Now on to Golden Rule No 14, and the importance of believable dialogue.

Golden Rule No 13 is to get to know your characters well before you start writing.