How to Create a Character For Your Story: Lessons From a Self-published Author

Photo by Ryan Loughlin on Unsplash

Greetings Whale Fall fans,

If you visit my linkedIn page, you’ll see that authoring children’s books isn’t what I went to school to do. In fact, I graduated from Rutgers University with a Bachelor of Science in Biological Sciences with a focus on microbiology and evolutionary genetics. I spent a lot of time in and out of classes on soil ecology, genetics, microbiology, and physiology but where I really excelled was in the laboratory. In my third year at Rutgers University, I was lucky enough to meet a professor who thought I would make a great addition to his marine biology/microbiology team. They were working on a soil remediation project and it was my first opportunity to try my hand at real scientific work. This is all to say that once I graduated I bounced between laboratories until I eventually moved on to education and most recently to software development.

there’s a strong possibility that you consider yourself a storyteller

Alright, why does this matter? It matters because there’s a strong possibility that you consider yourself a storyteller (if you clicked on an article with a title like this one), and the good news is that you don’t need a rigorous background in creative writing to start your own writing project. Now, there’s a lot of advice out there so I’m going to premise this post with the assertion that my writing process is just that — a process. There’s no magical spark of inspiration, it just takes work. And, when that work has a deliberate flow that keeps you engaged, inspired, and curious that’s when the sparks fly!

So, let’s cut to the chase, this is where I start when it comes to picking and developing characters… These are four simple questions that I ask myself:

1. What possible characters do I have to choose from?
2. Who do I pick? Why?
3. What matters about this character?
4. What other themes can I include?

Brief Caveat/Aside on “Setting”

To be totally honest, before I wrote Whale Fall the most experience I had writing fictional stories was for Dungeons and Dragons quests. So, before I start thinking about characters, I usually spend some time thinking about the world they live in. For Whale Fall, I chose to ground my fictional characters in a nonfictional world — Earth during the 18th/19th century. For me, these kinds of details matter before I start writing characters. I’ll elaborate on how to establish a setting in a later post.

What Possible Characters do I Have to Choose From?

So, I knew early on that the overall format of my book was going to be 6 or 7 chapters, and each chapter would align with a stage of the Kübler-Ross model of grief; Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, Acceptance. I also knew that the environment/setting for the story would be a “Whale Fall”, which is a word scientists use to describe the phenomena associated with a Whale’s passing at sea. Now that I’ve established that context, What possible characters do I have to choose from? Well, it’s pretty obvious that I may consider starting with (and ultimately ending with) the Whale, herself. But, since the whale needs to die for the book to make sense, what characters will I use to tell the story once she dies? I decided to hit the internet and research what animals come and go as the whale decomposes.

So, the first thing I did was write a list of characters that:

1. Chronologically/contextually make sense, given the setting and time the story takes place
2. Make sense given the theme (the first chapter is about the whale, the second would have to illustrate the first stage of the K-R Model: Denial)

And here’s the list I came up with for the second chapter:

• Hagfish/Myxini — an eel
• Sleep Sharks
• Greenland Sharks
• Shrimp-like lysianassid amphipods
• Lithodid crabs
• outside/above water? Seagulls, insects…
• inside the whale? bacteria, parasites…

Who do I pick? Why?

Here are three characters. One is Baleen (now the environment), another is Myxini… and who are these guys!? Maybe, future short story material!?

So, if you’ve already read my book (the first 4 chapters are on Medium for FREE) then you know I picked “Myxini”, an eel. So, why did I pick an eel who can barely see and characteristically secrete copious amounts of slime when it’s scared? Well, it’s because this eel not only makes sense (given the time, place, biological factors) but it also makes a lot of sense for the theme — denial.

Characters need to be relatable

How does an eel represent denial? Well, after doing research on all of the possible characters (above) I discovered that Myxini eels are overwhelmingly defensive animals, also characteristic of humans in denial. Characters need to be relatable, otherwise, you won’t be able to leverage the reader's ability to empathize with the characters — people also call this “relatability”. Just to emphasize the point I made above this, I didn’t have to pick these characters out of thin air, I came up with a list first and then I spent all my time going through that list — keep things moving!

What matters about this character?

Alright, so I’ve got an eel. There are a ton of things I could elaborate on to work through the eel chapter, but what really matters? For the sake of this article, I’m going to literally walk you through my thought process.

• What is it like to be an eel?
• I know eels mostly rely on their senses other than vision… mainly they rely on their sense of “smell”. What is it like to smell underwater?
• What attracts the eel to the whale in the first place, and what is that experience like?
• How am I introducing this character?
• What challenges would an eel have to confront on it’s way to the whale, and what about after the eel reaches the whale?
• What do eels think about?
• Is this going to be a male eel or a female eel?

(fun fact: I intentionally switch between female and male characters throughout the book. I would love to gender bend all the characters and create an “opposite gender version of Whale Fall”, let me know if you want to write about King Crab!)

At the end of my brainstorming process, which involved a lot of youtube videos and research documents, I came up with a list of characteristics that I thought would help me develop the eel as a character. How do they absorb the world around them, what do they eat, how often do they mate, how big are they, and how long do they live? These are really basic questions but it helps me write from the perspective from the animal without overly anthropomorphizing them. It’s a fine line.

I also learned that male eels are rare, and they don’t spend any time taking care of their children. Interesting. That might open the door for another theme (beyond the main theme of the book) that I can use to make this character more independent and unique/relatable.

They are largely considered, “trash animals”

I also spent time thinking about the types of challenges an eel has to confront, mainly what competitors/predators an eel has and how they deal with them. Turns out humans are probably an eel’s worst nightmare, but coincidently most eels are caught by accident and thrown back after turning fishermen nets into slimy nightmares. They are largely considered, “trash animals”. That sounds like another theme I might get into, but how can I make them relatable this way?

What other themes can I include?

Even though Whale Fall is less than 50 pages, it has a lot going on. I’ve already covered the main theme of the story (grief), and I’ve chosen to base each chapter on a stage of the Kübler-Ross model. However, I believe that each of the stages is less of a concrete emotional certainty, and more like a spectrum of emotions that we lump into categories like “Denial”, “depression”, or “Anger”. Denial is so much more than claiming that something did or didn’t happen. Denial is regret. Denial is self-deception. Denial is justifying your decisions. It’s about lying to yourself.

If I were in your shoes at this point I would ask, why include sub-themes at all? What if my sub-themes distract my reader? What if the sub-theme doesn’t make sense? These are both legitimate questions and I honestly wouldn’t even think about sub-themes right out of the gate. Let these ideas come naturally as you learn more about the characters you land on.

I already identified two sub-themes in the section before this one,

1. The role of the male eel in the reproduction/parenting process
2. The eel being thrown back by fishermen/it being a trash animal

Brief Caveat/Aside on Grounding Sub-themes in Reality

Page 2 — Myxini (The Eel) is denied by fishermen

Both of these sub-themes are loosely based on the real experience of being an eel. That’s important to me as a writer because it grounds the theme (somewhat) in real life, and since this is a fictional story in a non-fictional world it was important to me that the theme not be a complete departure from reality.

“What does denial have to do with a parent with thousands of children they’ll never meet?”

Alright, so how did I incorporate this first fact about eels into a logical part of the story? First I thought to myself, “What does denial have to do with a parent with thousands of children they’ll never meet?” Well, that’s an easy one because my own father essentially left my mother and me in the same way. The only way I think people rationalize that kind of decision is to deny the agency of the people they left behind — denial. So I made the eel a parent to thousands of slimy babies and he justifies his decision to leave based on his experience with fishermen who think he’s “disgusting”. From his perspective, they’re better off with him, despite him never actually experiencing rejection.

Conclusion

Two years ago I finally decided to start writing my book. A year later I not only had a relatively finished product but a process for continuing to explore this new passion of mine. My hope is that the skills I learn throughout that process help other people turn their ideas into something that makes them proud. So stay tuned, subscribe, and I’ll leave you with my aforementioned character development question series ❤

Thanks for reading | ♥ RB

1. What possible characters do I have to choose from?
2. Who do I pick? Why?
3. What matters about this character?
4. What other themes can I include?

Now, here’s how you can spread the word about the book and help give more families and communities access to meaningful conversations about grief and hope. Please do at least one of these things, I would be over the moon if you did more than one ❤

1. Clap for this article (little hands button, you can press up to 50 times!)
2. Visit/share the WhaleFall website: https://www.whalefallthebook.com
3. Like Whale Fall on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/whalefallthebook
4. Follow us on Instagram: http://instagram.com/whale_fall
5. ANNNNNDD Get a copy of my book on ibooks or Amazon Kindle, it’s as cheap as I can possibly make it AND the book will update automatically with goodies every now and again.