Who are these people? by Eric Beetner

How do you come up with character personality sketches for your books - do you plunge in and let your characters develop on the page, use real life people as inspiration, turn to personality frameworks like the enneagram? Especially for those who've written a lot of previous books - how do you keep your new characters from looking and feeling like your old ones?

I definitely don’t start a book until the characters start talking to me. To be clear, I am NOT one of those people who says stuff like, “I don’t write the book, the characters do” or “I’m just here to transcribe what the characters want to say.” It’s a craft and the author is in charge.

That said, once I can start to come up with lines, dialogue, little moments in my head that sound like the characters, that’s my green flag to know I’m ready to start and I won’t be fighting on the page to figure out who these people are.

I don’t formally write anything out about characters. I have my outline of the story, but I don’t do full backgrounds or anything like that. One of the holdovers from my screenwriting background is the idea that character is action. People reveal themselves by what they do as much, if not more, than by what they say and think.

We all know an unreliable narrator. But even the most unreliable can’t hide their actions. So I generally let the actions let the reader know who a character is. And if I ever get stuck, I look at my story outline and I work to stay true to a character who would do those things.

Now, the second half of this question is interesting to me. I have written a whole lot. 33 published books, 5 more completed manuscripts (about to be 6 if I stay on track) I constantly worry about repeating myself.

I’ve written a few trilogies, so there is comfort in following the same character for multiple books. You not only get to know them better, you don’t have to invent all new people each time out.

But I do love to switch it up. I’ve written first person female protagonists. I’ve written older characters as well as younger. I’ve written period pieces, different styles like Western which require a different style of character.

But ultimately I write “my” type of people, which will lead to some inevitable echoes if not repeats.

For my Carter McCoy novels, the last of the trilogy I am finishing now, that name was always a placeholder. I had written about an older character in my McGraw novels named Calvin. So a C name with a Mc last name. I thought, “Nah, too close. I’ll have to change that.” By the time I got through with the book, Carter McCoy was who he was. Changing his name felt like changing the man himself. So I left it (a happy by-product of knowing not a whole lot of people read those McGraw novels…)

But my character naming schemes are awful and ill-advised anyway. Writing so much – all those novels plus 120+ short stories – means I burn through a lot of names.

The McGraws came from a movie poster on my wall featuring the actor Charles McGraw. Carter McCoy came from my bookshelf and picking a Horace McCoy novel to give him a temp name that stuck.

So maybe I should give the names a little more thought. But in a weird way, once they reach that point of starting to talk to you, then they begin to have their own life. I certainly wouldn’t change the names of my daughters (unless they asked for it). 

I’ve resisted using names of real people in my life mostly because I don’t want anyone thinking the character was inspired by them. My people quite often do unsavory things. So unless it’s for a good reason, I don’t like to use real people. 

Someday I may run out of usable names. The good news is, we all know people with the same names. I know a lot of Steves, a few Johns, quite a few Jennifers, Jens and Jennys. Repeating isn’t a writerly no-no. But WHO those name are attached to is the key.

I need to make them “mine” to stay true to the stories I write, but make them different enough to keep readers engaged and not thinking “This is the same old recycled crap.”

The biggest advantage there is my own desire to mix things up. If I’ve just spent weeks, months with a book and living with those characters, I really want to write something totally different the next time out. I like the change because I also don’t want to think I’m generating the same old recycled crap. After all, I’m the first reader, and I only write books I’d want to read.