Amanda Meuwissen's Blog - Posts Tagged "supernatural"
Let Your Characters Tell YOU Their Story
Not every character is created the same way, even if you’re an author who has a certain method you follow when taking on a new story. While Sasha Kelly, the incubus character in my recently completed trilogy The Incubus Saga, isn’t the protagonist, there wouldn’t be a story without him.
I had a vague idea many years ago of an incubus story I wanted to tell. I knew generally what Sasha looked like, his name, what he was, but not a real feel for his personality. The story was actually going to be about Sasha and a teenage character, who in the end I did still add to The Incubus Saga though in no way romantically involved with Sasha—a fan favorite actually, Evelyn (Leven) Taylor.
Whenever I tried to write the initial story I had in mind for them, nothing would come out. The bare bones was there, but the heart of the story eluded me. I knew then that I couldn’t write the story yet as it was in my head and held off.
Cut to nearly a year later when at last the muse was inspired and told me what Sasha’s story really was. It wasn’t about Leven, though he played a role, and Sasha’s character was vastly different than I’d initially imagined. It was while watching an episode of the TV show Supernatural—and anyone who’s read The Incubus Saga can understand the inspiration drawn from the show in general—and something just clicked, suddenly I had an epiphany and I knew exactly who Sasha was, his personality, his likes and dislikes, his backstory, everything.
Never before in my time as a writer have I ever had a character just appear before me fully formed like that and say there you go, this, this is my story. Well, I spent the next several years writing it, editing it, tweaking it, and again, Sasha isn’t even the main character, but it was the epiphany that night that started it all.
I doubt I’ll ever have another character experience like it. But it does help hammer home something I’ve discovered as a writer. My characters are always the most fleshed out, the most real and relatable when at least some part of them feels like divine intervention. Not to the extent of Sasha usually, but small things I haven’t yet realized about my characters just suddenly making sense, almost like magic.
I tell people all the time, I don’t create characters; I discover them. I don’t choose things about them; they reveal the truth to me over time.
A more common example of this is for my current work in progress, Life as a Teenage Vampire. As I was working out the details of the protagonist for this story, I knew certain things about him right away. Age, generally how he looked, vague personality, where his story would go, what he was, and what he wanted. But there were still enough things missing that I didn’t feel I was ready to write his story just yet.
Part of how I try to get the muse working to reveal to me those missing elements when starting a new story is simply jotting down notes. With what I do know, what might happen for this scene, that scene, why would a character react this way or that? And maybe it’s part of being a writer, something I can’t explain to someone who isn’t one, but the ideas almost always come naturally if I’m on the right track.
I knew, for example, that this new character, Emery, had a non-American grandmother, but I couldn’t pin down the heritage, and that’s what was tripping me up, this ethnic background that could have an impact on the character and his story in some way, if only I could realize what it was. Greek? No. Romanian? Not quite. And then I felt quite silly, because I knew his surname was Mavus, and that this grandmother would be on his paternal side, so I did a simple name search: what countries is that surname most prevalent? The answer: Turkey.
It might seem like a simple thing, but in that moment several things clicked; his father is Turkish, born there, raised in the US, so very much an American in most ways if no one knew his parents, though his mother moved back to Turkey after her husband passed away, and my main character only rarely gets to see his paternal grandmother now, though she is very warm and doting when she visits.
Even if this doesn’t end up having a huge significance on the story, it’s part of who the character is, how he looks, how people think of and react to him. Even if the detail in question was something as benign as his favorite color instead (gold, by the way), those types of facts are something you need to know about your characters, because understanding their inner workings is how you tell their tale with legitimacy and heart.
How you get to that part can vary, maybe through very technical means most of the way, with sparks of inspiration from unlikely places, but it is my firm belief that the writing comes the most easily if you’re on the right track, telling the story you are meant to tell.
So if you can’t quite get a story out of you, maybe you haven’t discovered everything you need to know about your characters yet. Don’t worry, don’t rush, just wait, give them time, and when they’re ready for their story to be told, they’ll tell it to you.
I had a vague idea many years ago of an incubus story I wanted to tell. I knew generally what Sasha looked like, his name, what he was, but not a real feel for his personality. The story was actually going to be about Sasha and a teenage character, who in the end I did still add to The Incubus Saga though in no way romantically involved with Sasha—a fan favorite actually, Evelyn (Leven) Taylor.
Whenever I tried to write the initial story I had in mind for them, nothing would come out. The bare bones was there, but the heart of the story eluded me. I knew then that I couldn’t write the story yet as it was in my head and held off.
Cut to nearly a year later when at last the muse was inspired and told me what Sasha’s story really was. It wasn’t about Leven, though he played a role, and Sasha’s character was vastly different than I’d initially imagined. It was while watching an episode of the TV show Supernatural—and anyone who’s read The Incubus Saga can understand the inspiration drawn from the show in general—and something just clicked, suddenly I had an epiphany and I knew exactly who Sasha was, his personality, his likes and dislikes, his backstory, everything.
Never before in my time as a writer have I ever had a character just appear before me fully formed like that and say there you go, this, this is my story. Well, I spent the next several years writing it, editing it, tweaking it, and again, Sasha isn’t even the main character, but it was the epiphany that night that started it all.
I doubt I’ll ever have another character experience like it. But it does help hammer home something I’ve discovered as a writer. My characters are always the most fleshed out, the most real and relatable when at least some part of them feels like divine intervention. Not to the extent of Sasha usually, but small things I haven’t yet realized about my characters just suddenly making sense, almost like magic.
I tell people all the time, I don’t create characters; I discover them. I don’t choose things about them; they reveal the truth to me over time.
A more common example of this is for my current work in progress, Life as a Teenage Vampire. As I was working out the details of the protagonist for this story, I knew certain things about him right away. Age, generally how he looked, vague personality, where his story would go, what he was, and what he wanted. But there were still enough things missing that I didn’t feel I was ready to write his story just yet.
Part of how I try to get the muse working to reveal to me those missing elements when starting a new story is simply jotting down notes. With what I do know, what might happen for this scene, that scene, why would a character react this way or that? And maybe it’s part of being a writer, something I can’t explain to someone who isn’t one, but the ideas almost always come naturally if I’m on the right track.
I knew, for example, that this new character, Emery, had a non-American grandmother, but I couldn’t pin down the heritage, and that’s what was tripping me up, this ethnic background that could have an impact on the character and his story in some way, if only I could realize what it was. Greek? No. Romanian? Not quite. And then I felt quite silly, because I knew his surname was Mavus, and that this grandmother would be on his paternal side, so I did a simple name search: what countries is that surname most prevalent? The answer: Turkey.
It might seem like a simple thing, but in that moment several things clicked; his father is Turkish, born there, raised in the US, so very much an American in most ways if no one knew his parents, though his mother moved back to Turkey after her husband passed away, and my main character only rarely gets to see his paternal grandmother now, though she is very warm and doting when she visits.
Even if this doesn’t end up having a huge significance on the story, it’s part of who the character is, how he looks, how people think of and react to him. Even if the detail in question was something as benign as his favorite color instead (gold, by the way), those types of facts are something you need to know about your characters, because understanding their inner workings is how you tell their tale with legitimacy and heart.
How you get to that part can vary, maybe through very technical means most of the way, with sparks of inspiration from unlikely places, but it is my firm belief that the writing comes the most easily if you’re on the right track, telling the story you are meant to tell.
So if you can’t quite get a story out of you, maybe you haven’t discovered everything you need to know about your characters yet. Don’t worry, don’t rush, just wait, give them time, and when they’re ready for their story to be told, they’ll tell it to you.
