CASTING THE STORY

OK–we’ve got our star performers. But now we need more characters. Lots of them. This is a murder mystery, so we need a variety of suspects, each with a plausible motive. One is the murderer. And a good murder mystery is a puzzle. Gotta keep the reader guessing–and hopefully keep things deliberately confusing so as to surprise the reader when the guilty party is finally revealed at the end. In Ranch Park I actually changed the murderer from the one I had originally planned, since it was obvious from the start that this character was the murderer. So–I decided about halfway through the book, he’s NOT. Of course we need a victim. Or maybe more than one victim. We need characters in supporting roles, too. And how ‘bout a few background characters, just to add some ‘depth’ to the story. As the ideas for my first novel began to flow, I started creating characters. I did it in outline form, describing how they look, their ages, their personalities, type of work they do, types of vehicles they drive, whether they’re smokers or nonsmokers, all to bring them to life in my mind–and hopefully also potential readers’ minds as well. With each one I tried to imagine what it would be like to meet them and whether or not I would like them as friends. I based them not on specific individuals, but rather on types of people I’ve known, often composites of various types of people. Names can be a challenge. But as I geared up to write Ranch Park, I drew on a variety of sources of inspiration. For some, I dipped once more into my family tree–for example the sheriff of Sakakawea County is named Edmund Harshman. The Edmund came from an ancestor in the Mescall lineage of our family, and the Harshman name came from a German ancestor who Anglicized his name to Harshman from Hirschmann. I needed lots of good Norwegian names, too, for an area of the country with a large Norwegian ethnicity–so I picked out at random Norwegian names I had heard during my time as a North Dakota ranch owner. Names from the Williston, North Dakota phone book. Names that appeared on the plat maps I had for the area. For my South African character, I needed an Afrikaans name (South African Dutch, although Afrikaners do not like to be referred to as Dutchmen). So I asked a couple of friends in South Africa for suggestions, and one came up with Riaan Pienaar. Very typical Afrikaans. So–why not? Riaan Pienaar it is. Other names simply popped into my head spontaneously. Some names I picked just because I like the name–such as Laurel, who is a major character in my second novel, It’s A Place For Trees. Then there are some names I picked because I don’t like them. Those, of course, are applied to some of the less likeable characters in the story. Characters don’t always perform as expected!! It can be fascinating to see how they come to life and have minds of their own. Often a character that I had planned to have in a minor role will come on strong and demand to be in a more important position. Ragnvald ‘Raggy’ Haakonson is a prime example. Other characters always crop up as the story progresses. Sometimes a new character will arrive on the scene spontaneously–one being Chuck Halvorson, owner of a garden center, who meets up with Will and Jenine at the Peace Garden in Ranch Park. That has happened in all of my books so far, including the new one I am working on now. But now I’m getting ahead of myself. The cast starts with a core base of performers to place on the stage that is my book. Other ones come along during the writing process. But now, with the core base of characters all lined up to start with, we need the stage for them to perform on.

R. L. Anderson, author, Will Nickerson Mysteries

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