It is self-evident that a novel needs a cast. It doesn’t matter if a book is a plot or character-driven story, there still needs to be those around whom the story revolves and evolves. Depth of character is paramount in the modern reader’s perspective. Having read hundreds of one-star reviews of books, a common theme has been characters who lack depth.

So, how do I add depth of character? Before getting into how I created the characters in TAM, I think I should outline what I feel makes a good character.

Good Character Profile

Many will tell you that you need to know what you are writing about, which is, of course, utter nonsense. How can writers of sci-fi or fantasy really know their subject? They can’t. They invent it. Still, others believe in the method acting approach: living as your character. I read “be your character” in one of the many articles I devour. It seems a little blasé and unrealistic. How can I be my character when I write pre-Christian Irish historical fantasy and Mafia-based murder mysteries? My characters spend their time chopping off heads, stealing and raping, drinking and debauching or shooting people who don’t pay their protection money. If I took a method acting approach to being my character — as the article author seems to be suggesting — I would not last too long this side of high walls with razor wire on top. But what did the author really mean? I am sure it wasn’t that I had to put on some plaid trouse, get out my longsword, and head into the hills of Ireland looking for a settlement to rob. 

So, let me take a logical look at the theory you need to have experienced something to be able to write about it. No one has ever flown a dragon or a broomstick in a Quidditch match. I am also sure that most crime fiction writers have never committed a crime, at least not a crime that would make for an engaging novel. Personally, I think the key is different. I believe a good novelist requires a vivid imagination and extensive research. I am sure that Thomas Harris had no first-hand experience of sociopathic killers when he wrote the Hannibal books, but the depth of research in the character he created is patent. So much so, that Anthony Hopkins portrayed Hannibal so well, he got an Oscar after only sixteen minutes of screen time. 

So, what does that mean in terms of character? In the end, it comes down to what, I think, is a simple list. Give characters realism; make them relatable; make them individual; give them conflict.

Realism

Characters must be realistic. Readers need to invest in them and believe in them. So how do we writers achieve that? There are several ways to make characters realistic. Not least would be giving them fallibility. Let them make mistakes. There is nothing more real than falling over occasionally. No one goes through life error-free. Take Gandalf, he went off and left Frodo alone with the ring, when he should have run for the hills, Frodo in tow, as soon as he suspected what it was. Then he led them into the mines of Moria, knowing there was something dreadful in them, but being too fallible to go against the wishes of the fellowship.

Make them complex. There is nothing less real than a one-dimensional character. There need to be layers that the reader can discover through the journey the character is making: their arc. Even the villains need the layers. Take Sergeant Troy in Far From the Madding Crowd; pure villain, but multi-layered, evidenced by his attempted suicide after discovering the death of his one true love.

Relatable

The reader needs to feel a connection to the characters. Even the bad ones need to garner a little sympathy or some understanding. To immerse themselves in the stories, our readers need to be able to say, “yes, that is an understandable reaction”, even when it is not something they would condone. This gives characters their humanity: the old Alexander Pope-ism about erring being a trait of humanity. Angus Thermopyle from Donaldson’s Gap series is a good example. The way he treats Morn Hyland is despicable, evil incarnate, for want of a better cliché. But the reader is given the backstory to Thermopyle’s evil, which, although it doesn’t excuse his actions, does go some way towards explaining them.

Individuality

Each character needs to be their own person. They need to have their quirks and their habits: a certain nuance in speech; a particular tic; a quaint turn of phrase: something that is unique to them. Henry Treece’s Heracles in Jason is a good example. Treece made Heracles a homosexual eunuch, which was a particularly unique take on the character, giving the story of Jason and the Argonauts another dimension. A slightly less well-known character, at least for now, is Inspector Laconto from the Time to Say Goodnight series: Laconto smokes Gauloises at murder scenes because he can’t stand the smell of death, a unique trait for a copper.

Conflict

Characters need to have troubles to overcome to generate interest in them. If they move from scene to scene without defeating any demons, then the story will be flat. It does not matter what those demons are, the inner demons of a character of literary fiction — such as Boccone’s alcoholism — or the fire breathing type from epic fantasy, conflict keeps the interest of the reader and, therefore, the pages turning.

So, How do I Create Characters?

As I describe in Corkboard I first add a list of characters to my corkboard. At this stage, they are nothing more than a vague idea of a name and, maybe, a little backstory. Take the Alcoholic Mercenary, originally, his name was going to be Brando, but as the plot developed I found his brother’s name was Beni (short for Benito) and the names were too similar, so Nicolo was born.

Bio

When I have a list of characters, I create a bio for each of them. For bit-part characters, their bio is less detailed, but I do create one. The following are bios for TAM’s main protagonist, Rachel Welch and the main antagonist, Nicolo Di Cuma.

Rachel

She was born in Poughkeepsie in the mid-fifties. She had a turbulent time in high school, which impacts her day-to-day life quite significantly. She is driven because she will never allow herself to be forced back into her shell. She feels her husband let her down. She is a good-looking woman. When writing Rachel’s scenes, I envisaged Angelina Jolie in The Bone Collector, who was driven but unsure of herself.

At the beginning of the story, Rachel raises a barrier and comes across as hard and unforgiving. As the story proceeds the reader begins to realise it is a facade.

I do find that my characters change while I am writing them. I don’t mean the change that is required as part of a story, but my ideas about them, their character, backstory, and so on.

Boccone

Boccone was born in Pozzuoli in the late forties. In 1979, when the story is set, he is thirty (ten years older than his brother, Beni). His father was murdered in a clan war in the early sixties. When his father was murdered, his mother became an alcoholic, unable to cope with the struggle of bringing up two young sons. Driven by drunkenness, she became violent towards Boccone, eventually driving him to leave home and join the army.

When writing Boccone’s scenes, I envisaged Keifer Sutherland in 24 Season 8, when he became psychopathic after his love interest was murdered. Boccone has dark hair and complexion but is otherwise Jack Bauer in my imagination.

When I have finished my corkboard — not forgetting that I am already writing — I create a Scene-Plan spreadsheet.

The document comprises the post-it notes that survived my first cull transcribed into a spreadsheet with a little more detail. I use the spreadsheet throughout the book’s pre-publication lifecycle. For instance, I rely on it during the editing phase, which I will document in a later blog.

I don’t use the Does it work and What to do columns until the full draft is complete and I am editing the book.

Scene — A high-level pro-memoria to what the scene involves. This doesn’t need any detail, just enough to keep me apprised of the scene’s purpose.

Points — Main plot points of the scene. Some schools maintain a scene requires a minimum of three. I don’t agree. As long as the scene moves the story along, I don’t think it matters. In fact, I would go so far as stating a chapter with only one scene and only one point, can, if used sparingly, have a great dramatic effect.

POV — I find it useful to have a reminder of the point of view. Modern story theory maintains that in a third-person limited novel, each scene should only contain one POV. Obviously, with first-person or third-person omniscient, the theory is not relevant.

While I am creating the spreadsheet if I notice any holes, incongruencies, or surviving redundancy from the first cull, I cull again.

When I am happy with the spreadsheet, I create the Document Skeleton.

After the spreadsheet is completed and once again culled, I create a skeleton document. This document will eventually become the manuscript.

The numbers represent the scene number in the spreadsheet and are removed prior to publication. Although the graphic shows the document with chapter divisions and titles, they do not come in until much later in the writing process, which I will document in the next blog.

Although not a sequential process (I begin writing before the skeleton is complete), the next stage of my journey is That Writing Thing.

Before I became a novelist, I spent more than thirty years as a technical writer and editor, the last ten of which I was the Documentation Manager in a Multinational Software Company. During those thirty plus years — and especially the last ten — I designed libraries of supporting documentation for enterprise-level software applications. There was no room in that environment for meandering. But the world of creative writing is different. Or is it? Fundamentally, I would argue that it’s not. Whether you are writing a novel or a programming guide for a platform API, the key is accurate communication. Getting the message across. In the world of technical documentation failing to get the message across can be devastating.

While working for a well known Global Software company, a colleague badly worded an instruction for network administrators running a financial platform. The misinformation caused a global crash of a credit card company’s network, and ultimately cost the mother company millions in reparations. Not getting the message across in a novel would be far less devastating, but is still important. Why write if not to convey something accurately?

A key aspect of getting a message across is good structure and a key element of good structure is plotting. I like to use the analogy of driving on a country road at night with the headlights on. Driving with the headlights on means everything can be seen and crashing is less likely. I read a similar analogy in favour of pantsing, where driving without a map or GPS creates a much better adventure, but, of course, it also increases the chance of getting lost, or ending up in the backend of nowhere.

To Pants or not to Pants

Pantsers would say they prefer writing by the seat of their pants because it gives them more creative freedom than plotting allows. If a pantser has no idea where the story is going, they claim, then there is nothing holding them back. They can go where their creativity takes them. As far as it goes, this theory might be valid but for me, it has some serious flaws. Looking at Stephen King’s method of writing, that is, responding to “what if situations”, and following the pantsing logic, characters will end up breaking their own character traits, the plot will meander without a clear direction, and there is a very high risk of the author getting bogged down in writer’s block because they can’t work out where to go next: driving round and round spaghetti junction looking for the correct exit. Stephen King admits as much in On Writing, where he was blocked from writing The Stand (for several months) because he didn’t know how to go on.

As far as I am concerned, there is no such thing as pantsing. What I mean is, if someone starts to write in response to, for instance, what if a town is full of secret vampires, and then writes a series of scenes, the first draft becomes the plan. This is simply because all the issues an initial plan would have avoided, need to be fixed as part of the first rewrite, which in turn leads to at least another rewrite. Besides, what if a town is full of secret vampires, is already a plot, if at a very high level.

From What If to Plot

Using the example of The Alcoholic Mercenary (TAM) the “what if” situation came about because of an earlier novel — The Reticent Detective (2019) — where two of the main characters met in the backstory, that is, when investigating the murder of an American sailor. So, I developed that backstory into a novel: what if an American sailor was gunned down in Baia. I based the character of the sailor on a Petty Officer I knew who was directly involved with the Mafia, selling smoke rations to his local clan in Baia. He was not a nice person, so it was easy to imagine him with what was left of his face resting in a puddle of beer and blood. I had the premise and two of the main characters, all I needed was to pull together the elements of a story in a series of events that rise to a climax and then return to the original context.

Because I have adopted a technical approach to novel writing, I use a hybrid method, which is similar to the so-called Agile Development Process. Agile requires planning but only loosely. It is not the same as the old-fashioned waterfall development process, where everything is planned finitely before development begins. In agile development, a goal is set and then a series of Epics (requirements) are designed. In response to the epics, stories are developed, basically breaking each epic into bite-size chunks. Development can begin before planning is finished.

What crosses my mind after any “what if” moment — apart from story scene ideas — is what comprises a story and how each of my scenes might fit. In TAM, the first scene to mind was that of the sailor, shot dead outside a bar. It was not the beginning, so how did the story get to that point? This is where Stephen King would start to write. And this is where my bone of contention really lies, because this too is the point at which I start to write, only I write high-level scene reminders rather than a first draft. That is still a creative process. Basically, I write the first draft (the plan) in a few hours, which is far easier to correct and — for me — saves time in the overall writing process. Pantsers also write a plan, in much more detail, and over a much longer period, they just call it the first draft.

So, what does it entail:

• Corkboard
• Spreadsheet
• Skeleton Document
• Characters

It might seem a little strange, outdated even, but I like to build my stories on a good old-fashioned corkboard. I use post-it notes to develop my what-if situation into a structure that includes all the elements of my story.

I have tried apps to replace my board, like Scrivener, but I always come back to the physical corkboard. It might be my version of a security blanket, or a soccer player wearing the same underpants for each match — I am not really sure.

Creating My Board

I have a desktop easel with a cork board mounted on it. The board is divided into the following columns:

• Characters — As the story grows, so the list of characters grows with it. (See Characters).
• Events — As possible events come to mind, I write out a post-it and add them to the board. I don’t add them in any order. When I think an event might have some weight I use a different colour.
• Notes — Anything that comes to mind as I develop the story.
• Themes — I don’t write with a theme in mind. If a theme presents itself while I build my board, I add it.

Ordering Scenes

When my board is covered with about 120 post-its, I start to think about the order of the events, or, the story structure. Up to this point in my process, the possible events have just been my brainstorming of what I think the story needs: how it might progress. Now, I begin to add structure to it, as well as start to consider the elements of a story arc.

The following are the things I consider while ordering the scenes on my board:

Context — The setting — or time and place — and the context of a story. The context is normal life before the action begins. For Harry Potter it is living with his aunt and uncle, for Boccone (TAM), it is being drummed out of the regiment he loves. For Rachel, it is graduating from the academy in Glynco as valedictorian.

Catalyst — This is often referred to as a trigger or inciting incident. I call it catalyst so it fits into my c-list (doing what I accused others of in the introduction). For Bilbo Baggins it was Gandalf scratching his rune on the front door of Bagend, for Boccone it was the colonel giving him an undercover assignment. For Rachel, it was being sent to Naples in 1979.

Cast — Perhaps the most obvious ingredient of a story is its cast. Without a group of characters, there can be no story. I develop a cast simultaneously with the rest of the story arc. 

Conflict — A story is driven by conflict. Whether internal conflict — such as Rachel’s self-esteem issues in TAM — or external conflict — such as Boccone’s battle with the Scortese — it is what keeps a reader turning the pages. As I order my board I look for areas of conflict.

Causality — Having studied Amazon reviews, the thing modern readers dislike the most is coincidental occurrences. Take The Killing Floor: Jack Reacher, a loner out in the boondocks of rural USA is arrested for murder, the victim of which just happens to be his brother, a man he hasn’t seen or spoken to for years. A very lame deus ex machina picked up on by the accurate reviews posted to Amazon. I don’t think it’s by accident that the Jack Reacher movies skipped the first book. 

Choice — The characters in a story need to make choices, which then cause events to happen. In The Hobbit, Bilbo chose to follow the dwarfs, which led him toward the Lonely Mountain. In The Lord of the Rings, Gandalf chose to visit Saruman, which led to Frodo being exposed to The Nazgul. Frodo spent the most part of The Fellowship of the Ring trying to decide on a choice, which — when made — signalled the end of the first book. Character choice is linked to causality, the choices made lead to events requiring further choices, and so on.

Climax — The point in the story of the highest stress that resolves the main conflict. The climax is present for the main plot and any subplots that might exist. In The Lord of The Rings, it is Frodo throwing the ring into the lava. In The Alcoholic Mercenary, a subplot climax is a confrontation between Rachel and her ex in her hotel room.

I don’t wait for my corkboard to be completed and reordered before I start to write. For instance, when plotting TAM, I already knew the murder scene in Baia, the characters, the setting, the when and where, so wrote it immediately. In my current WIP, Hammer, I wrote the opening scene in Gauis Suetonius Paulinus’s command tent in East Wales, where Agricola and Paulinus were discussing the invasion of Wales before I started my corkboard.

This is the first instance when I am brutal with my babies, cutting anything that doesn’t fit.

I don’t order the contents of the board based on conventional story arc theory, but rather keep an eye on the various elements and where they might be represented. When I come across something that represents an element of the story, I label a green post-it and slap it on the board.

When the reordering phase is complete, my corkboard should have several green post-its with all the elements of story arc theory covered. If there are any missing, then I need to rethink something.

With the board full of post-its in the right order and with all the elements of a story, I then move to a Spreadsheet.

The harbour where The Alcoholic Mercenary broke his wrist as a teenager — charcoal sketch.

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Do what you like with it, bitch. A hissed statement punctuated by vibration. Everything rattling making her teeth hurt.

Your call, butt munch. What?

Jake laughed. You think I give a crap, ma’am? Ma’am?

She felt confused. Something did not fit. Dream. Dream. You chose your career over your husband. Ma’am? Career over me. I was always better than you. She saw his face in a kaleidoscope of dotted lights as he uttered his nonsense. Ma’am?

‘We’re here, ma’am. Italy. Herc’s about to touch down. Capodichino. Ass end of nowhere.’

Rachel opened her eyes. The vibration had felt like a dream, but it was real, causing her teeth to chatter. Four huge propellers whistling and buzzing like a swarm of gigantic bees.

‘We’ll be on the deck in ten,’ the sergeant said, before retreating and leaving her to compose herself and boy did she need composing. It all seemed so unreal. The transition from office worker to field agent left her dizzy.

Twenty minutes after waking, Rachel stopped at the top of the ramp and dropped her kitbag. A shimmering heat haze turned the terminal building into a floating palace. A wall of heat seemed to be rejecting her arrival. She could smell it as well as feel it. Joined with the paraffin stink of aviation fuel, it caught her in the back of the throat. The heat also seemed to be muting the usual noise of a military airbase. She didn’t know if it was even possible for sound to be dampened in that way. Maybe it was too hot to work, and the personnel were hiding somewhere.

‘See Naples and then die,’ she repeated the saying someone had thrown out in the Officer’s Club during her leaving presentation. Considered it a gag, apparently. Feeling the heat, she thought maybe she had died, and this was Hell.

She thought the British poet, Keats, coined the saying. Someone like that. He died around here if she remembered her high school Eng Lit. But, died from what? The heat? Did heat kill Keats? Sunstroke? Could she even get sunstroke without any visible sun, the smog being so dense?

‘Terminal’s straight ahead, ma’am,’ the sergeant said, nodding for emphasis.

Rachel looked at him in his uniform whites, sure he’d been in blues when they took off from the States, all those lifetimes before. She wanted to snap and tell him she wasn’t blind. Instead, she nodded back, hefted her kit and walked down the ramp.

When she hit the concrete apron, she could feel the heat through the soles of her flats. It’s May, her mind screamed at her. She was New York State — a small city called Poughkeepsie — Northern Hemisphere. Such heat in May was unheard of.

With a sigh, she looked at the terminal building. Welcome to Capodichino appeared to be belly dancing in the haze. She could see the volcano brooding over it and was surprised by its vicinity. She felt she could touch it by stretching out a hand. The shimmering appeared exaggerated above the peak, just her imagination, she knew.

Not that there was a peak. It was more of a broken tooth. Rachel had looked it up after Hubble dismissed her. The volcano blew its top into oblivion the same century Christ hit the hay in his manger. The vaporized rock and earth smothered the Roman settlements on or near the slopes, Pompeii being the most famous. There were others. Damned if she could remember their names. Damned if she cared. Two thousand years. Who would care except old men smoking corn cobs, when their heads weren’t buried in the dirt looking for a lost past?

‘Can I take your bag, ma’am?’ a dapper — judging by his accent — Bostonian asked. NIS, for sure. His badge was hanging from his belt above khaki chinos. His hands were on his hips, making the sweat stains in the pits of his blue short-sleeved shirt noticeable. White would have been a better choice.

‘You are?’

‘Junior Field Agent Robbs, ma’am. I’m your welcome-buddy.’

‘Welcome-buddy,’ she said, raising her eyebrows to make it into a question.

‘Gotta show you the ropes. Get you settled in the Officers’ Club on base. Answer any questions. Bring you to the admiral’s office in the A and M.’

Rachel nodded. ‘Answer all my questions. Here’s one. What’s with all the Alitalia planes on the apron? Isn’t Capodichino a military base?’

‘It is. Military share the runway with commercials. Gets real hectic in the summer with the holiday flights.’

‘Summer? You tellin’ me this ain’t summer?’

‘No, ma’am. Officially spring. You’ll know when it’s summer. Gets up to a hundred, hundred and five. The real bitch though is the humidity. Seen relative at seventy… even eighty percent. You can see the droplets in the air. Gives new meaning to duck butter.’

‘Eighty percent?’ Rachel knew she wasn’t doing much of a job hiding her scepticism.

‘Yes, ma’am. As God’s my witness. The only thing to do is sit still and neck an ice-cold.’

‘I bet. We gonna stand here all day shootin’ the breeze, Robbs?’

‘No, ma’am.’

Rachel smiled as his face flushed. She threw her kitbag at him and said, ‘Lead on MacDuff,’ shaking her head at his confused look.

She expected him to make for the terminal and passport control, but he headed in the direction of the tower.

‘Jeep’s in the lot beside the tower,’ he explained. ‘Air Force and Navy have personnel on base. Weather guys and gals mostly. Our flyboys are over in Foggia. Eyeties don’t want us cramping their style.’

‘Don’t I need to do immigration?’

‘Naw. There’s some forms to fill. You can do that at your leisure. I’ll help. You’ll need to put your sidearm in the gunbox in back. Against regs to carry it off base.’

By the time they reached the car park beside the tower, Rachel could feel drops running down her sides and moisture soaking her blouse by her lower back. She couldn’t be sure if the wetness was hers or the humidity Robbs told her was visible in the air.

‘Okay, Robbs. Let’s hit the road.’

Riding shotgun through the mad traffic of Naples caused Rachel’s heart to palpitate. She thought the New Yorkers were bad drivers. They were nothing compared to the drivers in the city of Naples. Were they even in the city? She thought not. They seemed to be on some sort of highway. Her musings were cut short when the Jeep rounded a bend. She caught her breath at the sight of Naples, laid out before them, like one of those models architects build.

‘So, this is what Keats meant,’ she said.

‘Ma’am?’

‘Nothing, Robbs. How long until we get to the Officers’ Club.’

‘Not long. We should be there by quarter after.’

True to his word, they were in the club with Rachel checked in by half-past. ‘You wait here,’ she said.

‘Wait? I’m not following, ma’am.’

‘I’ll be fifteen minutes, then you can bring me to meet the admiral.’

‘Don’t you want a few hours to get over your flight?’

‘Do I look like a slacker to you, JFA Robbs?’

‘No, ma’am.’

‘And don’t call me ma’am. I’m not your mother.’

‘No, ma’am.’

‘Look, Robbs, you’re obviously troubled by it. Just call me Welsh, and we’ll get along like a doozy.’

Coming April 30th 2022.

The thrill of the sea spray, the wind, the bouncing and jostling of the Zodiac always excited him. He could think of nothing he would prefer at three…

Prolog — Part 2