Walk-ons with Character

Characters in any book express their personalities in their actions, their words, their thoughts, their decisions, and their reactions. The reader – and, often, the writer – gets to know them the same way they’d get to know a new acquaintance.

A real-life new acquaintance, however, arrives in one’s life with a pre-existing life that has shaped their personality, beliefs, ideas, and knowledge. Characters can, and sometimes do, arrive onstage as a completely blank slate. This can happen either...