All about Character - by Mandy Hobart

As we know, compelling and believable characters are vital for any story. I wanted to get the group exploring some of the elements that help to breathe life into our imaginary friends.

We each developed a new character called Sam. The techniques used can work well for brand new inventions, but can of course also be applied to revise characters already in our writing. 

The session began with the group calling out random items that could be found in someone’s bag. This was inspired by The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien, where he introduces his characters by telling us what they carried. We wrote a little about why one of our items was in the new character Sam’s bag, and what it meant to him/her. 

Next we answered questions about Sam during an ‘interview’ with Michael Parkinson, creating a physical presence, a history, and beginning to understand what made our new character tick.

Then we immersed ourselves in Sam’s mind, exploring his/her inner thoughts and inner voice; his/her fears, worries, loves and hates. Deciding what a character feels can help us get right into their head. 

Some dialogue from Oliver Mellors (the gamekeeper) in Lady Chatterleys Lover showed how local dialect and manner of speech tells us more about who the speaker is. We wrote some dialogue for a conversation between Sam and a friend about a programme on tv last night.  

At the end of the session it was wonderful to see how different everyone’s version of Sam was. I was particularly surprised to see how complex some of their backstories were. Even in a short amount of time, processes like this can help us think differently and make new discoveries.