Make a Move is all about the people. Plot’s important, but everybody’s just reusing the same plots – it’s how my characters react to those plot developments that gives Make a Move it’s unique tone. Originally there were going to be four main players: Freddy, Jay, Holly and “French Guy”, but I new there wasn’t enough room for four, and I didn’t have enough material to sustain the Gallic addition, so he was kicked out, only to return as Jean-Baptiste in Episode Four. Waste not, want not…
Once I had my three leads, and knew how they related to each other, Make a Move was born.
Freddy Mossman
“Not one part of me caring about you right now.”
I honestly can’t remember where the idea for Freddy’s character came from. I know where Jay came from – he was the foil for the potential mundanity that sat around Freddy’s Parisian exile, but Freddy’s origin is a mystery to me. Obviously, his background dictates his type to a large extent – MI6 recruit men and women with no distinguishing features that can be used to identify them, and his subsequent training provided his physique and demeanour. I knew I needed to break that type to an extent though, as this isn’t a military book, and I needed to inject more humanity into him. Once I had the idea for how to do that (big plot reveal from Episode Six – I’ll say no more) Freddy was… ready. Thing is, I didn’t want to detail him too much, as the more readers learn about a character (specifically, the more they learn that differs from their personality), the harder it is for them to project themselves into the story. He’s a cypher for the reader’s reaction to the situations the story presents, and I want people 100% along for the ride. I’m not a big fan of first-person perspectives right now, so Freddy, even as the star, had to take a back seat and let the reader use him as a gateway into the story. There’s a reason he’s just a silhouette on the book cover…
Jay McFarlane
“Take your mind off things with some random acts of social disorder.”
As I said before, Jay’s the opposite of Freddy. He also the person we all want to be: free, fearless, creative, vibrant, and living by his own rules. Jay walks a fine line between being an adventurer/agitator and just being an idiot, but I was careful to keep him safely within his moral framework – no matter how loose that might be. One strange occurrence I hadn’t expected when designing my characters is that all the girls love some Jay. I never tried to paint him as handsome, or even cute, but something about his personality struck a chord with my female readers. I should be put out; if anything, I’d say that Freddy is closest to my personality. Jay’s my other side though – the person I want to be, and I occasionally find when I’m at my most confidently creative. It’s no wonder that I found the interplay between Freddy and Jay so easy to write – they’re both major parts of my psyche. And, no, that’s not cheating; “write what you know.”
I’m still surprised no one noticed that my two male leads are named after the two biggest horror icons of the eighties, but it wasn’t planned that way; it really was a coincidence. Once I spotted it, I thought about it, decided it was cool, and ran with it.
Names
Speaking of which, I think I have an original way of coming up with names for characters. Most character names in books are determined by the genre of the fiction, hence the number of action adventures peopled with characters named Jack. Even if you try to steer clear of the obvious types, it’s hard to break a pattern; people just aren’t wired that way, and truly random thinking is almost impossible. I gave up trying to think of names a long time ago, so when I introduce a new character, I step from my desk to my CD collection and leaf through the credits of a random album. You’d be surprised at the variety of interesting names you can find involved in music production. A first name from one album, a surname from another, and you have a new character. Easy.
French names aren’t so easy, though. Aside from the fact that I have only two French-language albums in my collection, I don’t know enough about French naming conventions and etymology to be confident in using one at random. Luckily, there are a number of websites listing French names and detailing their origin, so I can be confident I haven’t used a name that is either archaic or regionally improbable. It’s not as random, but I’m happy with the balance.
Holly Henderson
“I’m not sure what’s worse – that you’d be comfortable asking me to do that, or that you’d think I had the contacts to arrange it.”
I left Holly until last as, out of the three, she’s the one who represents my biggest success as a writer. Freddy and Jay are two sides of my personality, so writing them is easy; I just think, “if I was in a Freddy mood, what would I do?”. Holly’s different though – guys writing about girls is hard. At thirty-five, I’d hope I’ve learned a lot about women, but I know there’s infinitely more to discover, and that gender – both your own programming and that bestowed upon you by society – is at the core of every decision you make. I was worried from the beginning that Holly just wouldn’t be believable for my female readers – something would give it away, not matter how small.
I overcame this hurdle by first accepting that I wasn’t qualified to write a female character. I’m not being proud – that’s just a fact. That done, I fell back on the adage of “fake it ‘til you make it”. I lifted stories and scenarios from the women I know well – my wife, sister and female friends – and riffed on those situations. That was working well until about midway through the book, where Holly is becoming closer with Freddy and Jay and adopting more of their mindset, at which point I did feel confident enough to write her; she was playing by my rules now, and I felt I knew her well enough to make some suggestions. There’s no feeling like having a female reader tell you they identified with Holly, and enjoyed her journey, especially as I purposefully placed obstacles and decisions before her that aren’t the normal fare of mainstream women’s fiction. Holly took a different path, and people were happy to join her for the ride.
The Best of the Rest
The episodic structure of Make a Move gave me the opportunity to introduce and remove characters exactly how and when I wanted, and that freedom gave me room to have fun. Monsieur Vasseur – the aggressively self-aware clichéd French baker. The Beautiful Spy – the adolescents’ wet dream with a bitter streak that makes your eyes water. Inspector Guischard – the Parisian policeman who would rather Freddy and his friends keep their crimes off his radar. Hector, Dunnes and Abbott – the trio of British agents delivering bad attitude, disease and high-velocity rifles to the party.
The accepted wisdom states that you shouldn’t introduce a character to a story unless they’re going to advance the plot in some way. That belief assumes that dialogue, character and tone are irrelevant, and that plot is king.
As I’ll discuss in a post covering dialogue, I honestly believe that to be the best way to write a boring book.
Tags: Character, Make a Move, Names
Very insightful. Quite often, when I read and discover characters in a book, I claim them as my own. Authors give them to me and I process them, decide what I do and don’t like about them, identify with them and sometimes develop emotional connections with them for the duration of the story. These characters become people I know while my head’s in that book, but the intricacies of their construction from the author’s point of view have rarely troubled me, so it’s delightful to read a little about that process, and about the challenges you faced bringing them to life. It all adds value to the experience, thanks for sharing this.
I love the peripheral characters – and in my opinion, stories are advanced tenfold by characters who colour and paint fun and games into a book. Especially those who encourage the flavour and style in the things that they do and say, like Monsieur Vasseur. I have a firm image of him in my head, and he allows me to imagine part of Freddy’s day-to-day life. This strengthens and supports the world you created for Freddy in a way that makes him more accessible as the main character, and makes the story more enjoyable to read.
Thanks, Julie. I guess it was that freedom to experiment that allowed me to create such random characters to populate the world of the book. They’re not literary icons, but they are fun and different, and that was all I ever wanted to achieve. The fact that you can connect with them in any way is just awesome, as it means I wasn’t just entertaining myself…