Characters: No that’s NOT you. Thanks for reading.

A few days ago, colleague Kate Flora wrote a great post about “character shopping.”

It highlights a huge part of what we do — thinking about and creating characters. I often wonder if readers and aspiring writers fully understand what goes into creating characters, or further developing characters that we’ve created in earlier books.

It’s something I think about a lot, particularly since I live in a Maine town, probably small by worldwide terms, but average (population 3,200), by Maine standards. People DO know each other and each other’s business, just like in books. People DO gossip. People DO think our town is the center of the universe. That can be tough when you write about a fictional small Maine town. Emphasis on the fictional, people.

Recently, someone in town mentioned to me that another townsperson, one I’m acquainted with but don’t know well, was overheard recommending my books and saying to the person she was talking to, “I know who a lot of these characters are based on.” Or something like that. I picture her saying in a conspiratorial whisper.

First of all, THANK YOU for recommending my books. That’s the most important thing. I guess I shouldn’t give a fig what comes after that. That said, I wrote the first book in my series, Cold Hard News, while I was living in Manchester, New Hampshire. Yes, it was based on the small towns I’ve known in Maine, where I grew up and began my newspaper career, but it certainly was not based on the Maine town I live in now.

There’s a saying, “You don’t [poop] where you eat.” That certainly applies to writing murder mysteries, as far as I’m concerned.

My town. Count me as one mystery writer who doesn’t [poop] where I eat as far as writing characters. (Maureen Milliken photo)

But creating characters is a funny thing. We do shop for them, as Kate pointed out in her post the other day. But she also pointed out that every writer creates different characters out of the same initial seed. It’s a rare writer, I believe, who takes a character wholesale out of life and plops them into a book.

I do have some secondary characters that are drawn from people in my life. These are characters with fewer complications and nuances than more major characters, though. Once you get into a character, it takes off on its own. I’ve had people suggest to me that I put them in a book, as a character. I always answer that they really don’t want that. It’s not that I’d make them a victim or murderer, it’s just that for the rest of their life they’d be thinking, “That’s what she thinks of me?”

People often joke, “I don’t want to make you mad, because then you’ll kill me off in one of  your books!” Ha ha ha! I always respond that, no, I won’t. I reserve the people who make me mad for those who kill people in my books, or at least are jerks in my books. Isn’t that really where the wrath of readers of murder mysteries lies? The bad guys who the good guys bring to justice or at least reveal as the bad guys that they are? I would say, at least with my second and third books — No News is Bad News and Bad News Travels Fast — almost every negative character at least has a germ of someone who’s pissed me off. Most of these germs are people I’ve worked with, so anyone reading this has nothing to worry about on that account. If you see yourself in any of these characters and haven’t been in a newsroom with me, it’s just a coincidence. But also, maybe seek some help? Because you are not a nice person and shouldn’t be doing that stuff. Just saying.

Characters have a way of becoming who they are in fiction, no matter how much real life you draw them from. The last thing you want to do is feel boxed in by creating a character in a way that won’t hurt a real person’s feelings or be taken wrong.

The only characters that I’ve totally drawn from real life are my next-door neighbors, who I put in No News is Bad News. The fictional versions of my neighbors had some information helpful to the case. I can’t remember how it came about that I used them. It could be that Dave snow-blows my driveway in the winter and I thought it would be a nice gesture, since I do absolutely nothing for them except give them cookies at Christmas and try to be as unannoying as possible. But it was tough writing them. They’re very nice people and I was super conscious of how the book could make them look, even though they’re also nice people in the book. People in town, I knew, would automatically assume every single thing I wrote about them was reality. It was exhausting and I don’t want to do it again.

I donated a few books to a local auction a few years ago, and included a bonus of using the name of the person who won the books in my next book. Since then, I’ve come to realize that people think if you give a character their name, the character is “based on” them. It’s not. It’s just a name. Names are hard to come up with, but that’s a post for a different day. Just take my word for it.

This isn’t true for the person who won the books in the auction — I don’t think — but I tried it again the next year, and that winner and I ended up agreeing not to use her name because she was uncomfortable with it.

People ask me to use their names in books. they really do. I always decline because, talking to them, it’s clear that it’s not their name they want in the book, it’s them. I don’t blame them, I want to be in Redimere, Maine, too, hanging out with Bernie and Pete and having all that fun.

Back to the first auction, though. I’m finally well into the meat of writing the book (Dying for News) and the guy who won the naming right is now, in a weird coincidence, just like out of a mystery novel, my next-door neighbor. He’s on the other side, not the same guy who snow-blows my driveway and is in my second book. My instinct was to make him an innocuous character now that I’d see him around all the time. I’d settled on fire marshal arson investigator. A minor part, but with some good lines. The other option was narcissistic and pompous college president who may have something to do with the murder (Or may not! That’s not a spoiler!). I ran into my neighbor one morning as he was cleaning snow off his car and I was coming back from getting a cinnamon bun (since life is so much like a Maine mystery novel), and asked him which part he wanted. My neighbor wants to be the college president. We’ll see how that works out.

People like to draw inferences, no matter how much you try to explain how characters are created. It’s easy to do because small Maine towns, being what they are, are going to have people like the ones in your book.

When I was writing No News is Bad News, I was involved in a minor dispute with the manager of the transfer station (dump) that pissed me off. I was in the midst of firming up the plot and decided I’d make the transfer station in my fake town a big part of it. Those of you blessed with municipal rubbish pickup may not realize it, but the transfer station is often the center of town life, because it’s where everyone has to go at some point. It was a no-brainer.

Now, the guys who worked at the transfer station in my book are not based on the guys who work at the one in my town in any way, shape or form, except for the fact that one has bright red hair, just like one of the kids who worked at the dump at the time. Somehow, though, people in town think the characters are the guys at the real dump. It doesn’t help that the transfer station manager in my book is involved in dealing illicit drugs and there had apparently been a dump manager in my town years ago, long gone by the time I moved here, with the same side gig. I didn’t know that when I wrote the book, but you can’t tell people that. To be honest, knowing it wouldn’t have kept me from writing the book the way I did.

The Bernadette “Bernie” O’Dea mystery series.

Every town has certain types of people, types we’re all familiar with. It’s hard to fully form minor characters, but I try not to make them caricatures. Since they’re not as in-depth as other characters, people read into them what they want to.

I can’t tell you how other authors do it, just how I do. My characters come to me and form into full people. How they look, how they act and talk, all seems to be there somewhere in my head waiting to be born as a character. Of course, they have elements from real people I’ve known or met, or just seen walking by. But they somehow form into themselves. People assume the protagonist in my books, Bernadette “Bernie” O’Dea is me. She is not. I even gave her curly hair and skin that doesn’t burn like mine just to make her different, but people are going to think what they’re going to think. She may have similar characteristics in some way to me, and think some of the things I do, but she is her own person.

One of my goals when I first began writing mystery novels was to have characters who were more relatable than the ones in books I’d been reading. People who weren’t necessarily gorgeous and super-human and right all the time, but more like the people we know and care about. I believe the people in my books are like that. At least I try hard to make them that way. That said, they are not real people I’ve plucked out of real life and plopped into a book.

Here’s something that may make me sound nuts (if my books ever take off to the extent that I’m even a little famous, it’ll become an amusing eccentricity that aspiring writers will try to emulate): The characters in my book actually are alive in an alternate world that’s going on twenty-four hours a day, parallel to the one I live in. I’m often privy to their conversations, meals, and things you’d probably just as soon not know about and will never read in a book. I am not making this up. When I’m in the thick of getting a book written, I’m in that world sometimes more often than the physical one around me. It’s great for writing, but also a pain in the neck when I’m trying to sleep, or have a conversation with a real person, or do any of my money-making work.

In fact, there’s something going on right now that may have something to do with solving the murder. You’ll be able to read about it later this year in Dying for News. Gotta go.

NOTE: Speaking of auctions,  a set of the first three books in the Bernadette “Bernie” O’Dea mystery series is one of more than 600 items in the Harrisville Children’s Center Auction. The online auction goes on all month, but go and check it out. There are many books, tickets to events, gift certificates and more. You can even sort by type of item if you don’t want to browse 600-plus items. The children’s center does great work, so I hope you’ll go ahead and bid on something.