I have a guest author on my blog, Efrem Sigel, author of The Disappearance! I asked him to write about how to create realistic characters. So read through, and hopefully you will learn something new! I also have a request for you, my readers. Which do you prefer, author interviews, or essay type posts such as this one? Please leave your comment on this post! Now, here is Efrem on creating realistic characters:
Creating realistic characters is challenge enough for any author. Creating realistic characters for a mystery is a special challenge.
A mystery by its nature must be plot-driven: a who-dunit that impels the reader to turn the pages faster and faster to get to the end. But real characters in literature need time to breathe. That means detours: side plots, interior monologues, dreams and nightmares, conflicts of personality or motivation, all of which may slow down the action for the reader.
Nevertheless, I don’t think this is an irreconcilable contradiction. It is possible to create realistic characters within a mystery or thriller, and writers like P.D. James and Scott Thurow and Martin Cruz Smith manage to do so in a way that enhances rather than detracts from the story.
Which brings us to the central point: what makes a realistic character?
The obvious way to distinguish one character from another is by physical attributes: one is short, another is tall; one is beautiful, the other plain as a sheet of paper; one chain smokes and finishes a bottle of wine with every meal while the other won’t even touch a drop of alcohol (not that such a teetotaler could ever be the protagonist of a mystery, could he?).
Certainly when I began writing stories I spent a lot of time trying to depict characters by how they looked and acted. This may be necessary but it is not sufficient. Because it’s not so much how characters look and act as how they feel. How they feel translates into how they speak and act, how they relate to other characters, how they deal (or fail to deal) with their own shortcomings. If the reader believes that he or she is inside the head of a character, and that this inside view is markedly different from that of another character, then the author has drawn a distinction between those two people that goes far beyond short/tall, fat/slim, wine lover/mineral water aficionado.
My new book, The Disappearance, is a mystery, but along with the mystery of what has happened to this missing child is the drama of what will happen to his parents as they try to cope with this tragedy. They are very different people because they feel and react to events in different ways: Joshua, the father, is impulsive, restless, driven, consumed by the need to find his son. Nathalie, the mother, is reserved, cerebral, disciplined; rather than being propelled into action by her son’s absence she becomes immobilized as a result of it. With a husband and wife pulled in such different directions by the same event, the drama of whether their marriage can survive becomes as important as the who-dunit of the plot.
And this, finally, is the true distinction between a mystery that is plot-driven and one that is character-driven. The plot-driven mystery ends with the solving of the crime. The character-driven mystery ends when the protagonist resolves—or definitively fails to resolve—the internal conflict within him or her. If this is done well, the book is cathartic for the reader in quite a different way from finding out that it’s Colonel Mustard in the library with the revolver.
–Efrem Sigel, February 18, 2009 Information about Efrem Sigel and The Disappearance is available at: www.efremsigel.com
I recently interviewed Ellen Shreiber, author of the Vampire Kisses series amongst other books. Check out her website at 
Savvy Girl by Lynn Messina tells the story of 17-year-old, Chrissy Gibbons. Chrissy has obtained her dream job, an internship at the hottest magazine, Savvy. On her first day, it is announced that Savvy will be adding a new column to their magazine, Savvy Girl. One of the lucky 4 interns will be asked to write the column, all they have to do is write a sample article for the column. When Chrissy is befriended by the fashion editor, Jessica, she is taken to all of the best parties, and gets to meet tons of famous people. She soon gets wrapped up in the glamorous life, and procastinates about her Savvy Girl article. Among all the parties (and even a couple of boys), she also starts to neglect her best friend, Lily, whose parents are getting a divorce. This book is fast-paced, and filled with wonderful characters.
Kisses and Lies by Lauren Henderson is the sequel to Kiss Me Kill Me. In Kiss Me Kill Me, the talented gymnast and sleuth, Scarlett Wakefield, kissed Dan McAndrew at a party. Doesn’t sound like a big deal, right? Well think again. Right after Scarlett kissed Dan he dropped dead in her arms. Everybody thinks that Scarlett somehow killed him. This is where Kisses and Lies picks up. Scarlett is not convinced that she was the cause of Dan’s death. She senses there was some foul play involved. So together with her friend Taylor McGovern, she tries to figure out the puzzling enigma. Scarlett goes to stay the weekend with Dan’s parents, hoping to find some clues. There are many possible suspects, each with a different motive. Scarlett endures many dangerous encounters with people, but will she solve the mystery?
The Bomb that Followed me Home by Cevin Soling is the story of a young boy who finds a bomb following him home. He names the bomb Rusty and begs his mother to let him keep it. Mother tells him about the responsabilites of keeping a bomb. Rusty must be polished, be guarded over every night, and have its fuse changed every day. The boy promises that he will take good care of it, but mother makes him wait until his father comes home. It seems like an eternity before he finally comes home from work, but when he does, he sternly refuses the boy’s plea to keep the bomb. The father calls everyone, the Department of Defense, the National Guard, and even the Weathermen, trying to find the owner of the lost bomb. Without success, they give the bomb to their grouchy neighbors. What will happen now that the neighbors own the bomb?
Paper Hearts by Deborah Williamson tells the story of a 15-year-old runaway. Chancy Deel has had a rough life and wants things to get better. Her mother never wanted her around, and there were always strange men hanging around. Chancy never knew who her actual father was. Chancy’s mother, B.J., has drug and alcohol problems. B.J.’s mother sold her at a truck stop when she was young to get money for drugs. B.J. now feels the need to take her abandonment issues out on Chancy. She beats her, deprives her of needed things, and abuses her verbally and emotionally. The men that B.J. brings around also abuse Chancy. Social workers have taken Chancy away from her mother several times, but they always give her back. This time though, while Chancy is staying in a group home, she decides to not take the chance of being given back to her mother. She runs away and hitches rides with people, finally ending up in the tiny town of Wenonah, Oklahoma. While in Wenonah she meets an elderly man who needs her as much as she needs him. The two bond, and Chancy starts to learn that not everybody in the world bad. With time, she learns trust, forgiveness, and the meaning of love.
