Character development
Character development in a novel is the greatest challenge in constructing a successful book. Plots are fairly easy to invent--After all, it has been stated by the experts that there exist less than a dozen fundamentally basic plots, which vary as to scenario and characterization, but little else. As for the scenario--a writer need only pick a place, visit it enough (in actuality or imagination) to encapsulate the feel of it in prose, and voila! The scene is set... Then come the characters.
Ah the characters! That's where all the thought and sweat and labor lie. The internal (and external) voice of each member of the cast needs to be played out in the writer's mind (often during sleep, I find), such that it strikes the reader as not only authentic but inevitable. Given a predetermined mind-set, a given character can respond in only one logical way to a situation. Inconsistencies or malapropisms of speech-pattern or thought stand out as glaring and fatal errors on the page.
Moreover, the well-dimensioned character must come across to the reader precisely as a normal human being does. Since no one--absolutely NO ONE!--is completely good or bad, so the characters in a quality novel must partake of both good and bad characteristics, at least to a degree. The very good, that is, must have their occasional demeaning flaws; the very bad, their partially redeeming virtues. I usually go one better with my own characters, aiming hard to shatter stereotypes: For example, making a forty-something Jewish fellow a sadistic murderer in Adam's Will, and a young trash-talking ghetto denizen an unfathomable genius in Incantation.
Flocking was fairly easy to write. The characters came more naturally to me than in either of my previous books. Such individuals evolve, however, in the course of the action, and I found myself changing direction midway through the book to make one of the less sympathetic characters the out-and-out, uncontested star. Sibyl, the extraordinary wife of the protagonist, turns out to be the one individual in the novel who changes in the most dramatic and unpredictable ways. I had no idea when the book started out that she was going to do the things she did. But once her character was established, it took the reins and led the way.
Ah the characters! That's where all the thought and sweat and labor lie. The internal (and external) voice of each member of the cast needs to be played out in the writer's mind (often during sleep, I find), such that it strikes the reader as not only authentic but inevitable. Given a predetermined mind-set, a given character can respond in only one logical way to a situation. Inconsistencies or malapropisms of speech-pattern or thought stand out as glaring and fatal errors on the page.
Moreover, the well-dimensioned character must come across to the reader precisely as a normal human being does. Since no one--absolutely NO ONE!--is completely good or bad, so the characters in a quality novel must partake of both good and bad characteristics, at least to a degree. The very good, that is, must have their occasional demeaning flaws; the very bad, their partially redeeming virtues. I usually go one better with my own characters, aiming hard to shatter stereotypes: For example, making a forty-something Jewish fellow a sadistic murderer in Adam's Will, and a young trash-talking ghetto denizen an unfathomable genius in Incantation.
Flocking was fairly easy to write. The characters came more naturally to me than in either of my previous books. Such individuals evolve, however, in the course of the action, and I found myself changing direction midway through the book to make one of the less sympathetic characters the out-and-out, uncontested star. Sibyl, the extraordinary wife of the protagonist, turns out to be the one individual in the novel who changes in the most dramatic and unpredictable ways. I had no idea when the book started out that she was going to do the things she did. But once her character was established, it took the reins and led the way.
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