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[This is the first installment of back-to-back interviews with Robert Fate and Bruce Cook on working with characters. See 2nd, Cook]

Cheryl: What can you tell a novice writer like myself about creating your characters?

Robert: Your question makes me wonder how I do that. I suppose, since I want to tell a story, that desire causes the creation of characters. I begin thinking of the idea, or event, or incident that feels as if it could be a story, and that thinking leads to the “actors” that are needed to tell the story. I’m sure it’s the same for you.

As the story idea develops, so do the characters. How bad does the antagonist have to be? It depends on the story, doesn’t it? Maybe not so bad if it’s a children’s story. But if the story is hardboiled crime, perhaps the evil the bad guy is capable of is limitless.

It must be like painting a picture. If the red is too vivid, tone it down until it works within the overall goal of the picture. So, it looks as if the answer to your question is this - I block in the character in a gross manner and allow the demands of the story to provide the finer qualities as it goes along.

Cheryl: Did you write bios for each? Like backstories, etc.?

Robert: Not really. The bios come later after I’ve gotten to know the characters. They’re strangers at first - again, the story that is being told will require certain thoughts, actions, reactions from the characters. We may surprise ourselves from time to time, but mostly we can predict what we will do or say given this or that provocation, because we are who we are - raised the way we were raised - influenced by this or that or this person or that.

Well - reverse that. I need a woman who would do this or that and not blink an eye. I want a young man to do this or that and have great misgivings about his actions. What made them be the persons I require for my story? How can I justify their actions? So, that construction would be their bios, I suppose; but totally arbitrary.

The important thing for me is to tell the story in a believable way no matter how wild the situation may become. That calls for believable characters who breathe hard when they climb stairs fast, get blisters if they run in shoes without socks, and think things over much in the same manner as the rest of us - or not, if the character is so foreign to us that we are perplexed about his or her actions until they are explained. How could a sane person do that? our heroine asks herself, hinting to the reader that she may be facing a maniac.

Cheryl: How did/do you keep track of all the characteristics/preferences — especially doing a series?

Robert: If there are details that are important to the story or plot, I might have to make special note, but once I “know” the characters it’s no harder to keep track of them or their preferences than it would be a member of the family.

Cheryl: Were there any surprises when you put two of your characters side by side in the novel?

Robert: Characters can write themselves sometimes and that can lead to good surprises or bad, but I think the thing to keep in mind is the need for conflict.

Without conflict the reader will yawn in your face. So I would say when you put characters together if they get along too well, you’re not doing it right. They don’t have to bicker, unless they do, but allow characters to change their minds, just as everyone we know does. Allow them to make mistakes, just as everyone we know does. What would surprise me would be if the characters didn’t take each other to task occasionally for one thing or another.

I tell a story of when I was working as a fashion model in NYC and went over to see a dear friend of mine carrying a copy of the NYTimes Men’s Wear Fashion Magazine. “Look,” I said to him, “I’m on the cover. My picture is all over the world today.” “Hmmm,” he said to me. “And tomorrow over on Fulton Street they’ll be wrapping fish in you.” He is still my dear friend and that’s why. That little bit of conflict between friends was for my own good. Characters should surprise each other.

Robert Fate is the author of Baby Shark and Baby Shark’s Beaumont Blues. Visit his website at http://www.robertfate.com/   Meet Bob at Murder in the Grove.

Tags: Robert Fate, Characters, Interview, Murder in the Grove