Using A-List Stars for Characters in Books
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All writers know that it is fundamentally important to get characters in books right. They can make or break any plot and, indeed, many stories are actually character driven. In my experience, well-defined characters can quickly assume a life of their own and take the story in directions that the writer had not envisaged. But how do you create a well-defined character in the first place? Well I stumbled upon a system that works incredibly well, and I would love to share it with you.
Years ago, whilst writing a short story, the character I had vaguely in my head suddenly morphed into a soap star and my vision of him became crystal clear. The actor was Freddie Jones and the character was Sandy Thomas, the ‘old codger’ of a vicar’s father in the soap opera, Emmerdale. Sandy fitted the character I had created perfectly, and from that moment on, his every action and every word was actually dictated by Freddie. Freddie does not know this, of course, and no royalties have changed hands. I re-wrote every scene that contained the character. I reproduce an extract from the story below, and those of you who are aware of the character, Sandy Thomas, may well be able to match him to the description. It certainly worked for me, the writer.
An old Morris Minor ground to a halt at the edge of the wilderness. A rotund, unkempt, white haired old man unraveled himself from the little car. He straightened himself, clicked his heels, stood rigidly to attention, stared up at Charlotte’s window and saluted.
She stared at him without expression.
The old man held this position for what seemed an eternity. An incongruous vision standing with parade ground precision but sporting a week’s growth of beard and a huge belly ensconced within a dirty beige cardigan and heavily darned sports jacket. The whole ensemble was topped off with a battered trilby hat. Suddenly, without warning, he assumed the stance of a diver, knees flexed, arms outstretched, and dived head first into the foliage, promptly disappearing from view.
Three minutes passed and nothing in the jungle stirred.
And then, very slowly, a dirty white handkerchief appeared above the mass of weeds and began to wave. She could hear a loud, plaintive cry, a voice in the wilderness.
“Help! I’m lost.”
Her anxiety began to clear as the old man slowly emerged from the undergrowth, his beard providing a new home to two enormous spiders, his hat askew, a forlorn expression on his face.
I never create a character based on a well known actor, but during the process of development, an appropriate well known character will occasionally spring to mind. Sandy Thomas seems to have opened the floodgates to a torrent of ‘A list’ stars, each barging their way into my writing life. Sadly, I’ve become a bit of a name-dropper at parties. It’s great fun – for me anyway.
My first novel, Open House, makes use of this technique. The character Alfie Mann bears the appearance of Shaun Curry who played Vince’s father in Just Good Friends in the eighties. But he has the voice and mannerisms of Michael Caine’s character Charlie Croker in the Italian Job. I know I’ve lost a lot of you now, but one of the advantages of old age is that it gives you a bigger cast to choose from.
For anyone who can remember Michael Caine delivering the immortal words, “You were only supposed to blow the bloody doors off!” in that classic film, they should have no problem imagining his voice in a scene from Open House when the character says, “Jungle Boy did not have a brain as sharp as you, Cocker, even though he could have been mistaken for you on a dark night in the jungle.”
I have even plundered the baby and toddler TV channel Cbeebies. Don’t get worried, I watch it with my grandchildren. I have used Sid, the dreadlocked presenter as the template for Lord Hedgehog in Open House. Brilliant! I love it! I guess they’ll be taking me away anytime soon.
Whilst I occasionally find this technique useful, I am not blinkered in respect of its effectiveness. I doubt if the author’s vision of the character transports directly to the reader, and given the information they have been given, one hundred readers could still easily form one hundred different pictures of one character. But what the process does do is cement the character firmly in the writer’s mind in repect of appearance, speech and mannerisms. This in itself is an amazing resource and virtually guarantees character consistency throughout the story.
