Characters in a Book

 When you write fiction, character development ranks right up there with the plot. 

It's a rare book that has only one character, the protagonist. There will be several other characters that a writer must create as well. The Academy Awards give an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor and Actress, which shows the importance of a supporting character in your stories and books. 

I finished reading my Book Club choice for September this past weekend. The book is a detective story set in Denmark with a bit of horror thrown in and some dark humor, as well. The author is Danish, and the book was on a list of books that our state library puts together. Books that are considered tops in their field, classics, and award winning. We can get book kits for X number of people through our library, so it's a good source for the person selecting the book. This time, it was me. When I read the synopsis, I thought it seemed a good possibility. The book is The Keeper of Lost Causes by Jussi Adler-Olsen, and is Book 1 of a series. 

Once I began reading, I had real reservations as it moved slowly and didn't keep my interest. But, as I delved further, the storyline became more intriguing, and so did the characters. The detective has just recovered from a gunshot wound that killed one of his fellow detectives and paralyzed another. He is divorced, has a stepson living with him, as well as a man who rents the downstairs of his house. Carl, the detective, is sent to the basement of the police station to head a new department, called Department Q. He is given an assistant, an immigrant from Syria by the name of Assad. The cold case they work on is five years old. A woman, member of parliament, disappeared from the deck of a ferry. No sign of her body ever found. The how and why of her part of the story is very complicated, but her captors are three engrossing and repulsive, characters. The story becomes involved and frightening as we follow both Mercrete, the woman being held captive, and Carl, the detective, and his sidekick, Assad. I kept reading longer than I should each evening. 

The characters were engaging, sometimes intriguing. They, of course, move the plot along quite nicely. Being a writer, I greatly admired the characters this author created. As the poster quote says, he must have 'hammered and forged' each one quite well. It was obvious to the reader that the author knew his characters inside out. 

To do that, an author needs to complete a character sketch for each of the main characters, those who move the story from A to B to C etc. There are many helpful articles online about the way to go about doing this. Use your favorite search engine to find some. 

One of the first things will be physical characteristics, then some background, feelings, how they relate to the protagonist and more. It's up to the author to decide how detailed the character sketch is. The more important the character is to the story, the longer the sketch should be. 

The character sketch is merely a starting point. As the story progresses, the author might want to change things. Maybe give the man a slight handicap which fits in with the action of the story. Or change the background of another character. The character sketch is not set in cement; it's a starting place. We get to know the character in a story in bits and pieces, not a three page summary in one chapter.

When you're out and about, if you see someone who catches your interest, jot down a few things you noticed for a possible character to use in a story later. Many characters are based on people we once knew or saw.

There is no story without a plot. There is no story without a cast of characters. You, the author, can have a lot of fun creating the people who inhabit the plot.