How (My) Characters Come to Be

At the moment, I’m fascinated with this part of the process: how do characters such as Ishmael, Huck, Mrs. Bridge, Bilbo Baggins, or Count Rostov evolve? 

I certainly can’t speak to how these characters evolved for Herman Melville, Mark Twain, Evan S. Connell, J.R.R. Tolkien, or Amor Towles, but I can tell you how characters like Oren of Susa, Adam of Eden, or Naamah wife of Noah came to live and breathe in my retellings of the native biblical narratives.

These characters came to me as if I was approaching them through fog. In some cases I took the initiative to go in search of them because I knew they existed. I’d heard of them. In other cases I discovered them as I sought out their famous associates or family members. I found them nearby or already part of the dialogue I was seeking to join.

First came the visual. Like meeting any stranger, I took them in—what they were wearing, the way they stood or sat, their hair and skin, the youth or age in their faces and hands. And like meeting any stranger I began to draw conclusions, develop ideas, build conceptions of who they were inside, where they’d been, what they’d seen. And just as with meeting any stranger, these conclusions, ideas, and (mis)conceptions had to be edited—or more often, altogether tossed out—once I heard them speak.

That is when the sport began.

Once they spoke up, once they commented on what was happening around, to, or within them, this is when they took on life, when they gave themselves up, when they surprised or shocked, when they put themselves on display—when our relationship began. The rest of my work—the writer’s work—was to watch and listen. To follow them through the life that lie before, and capture as much as I could for those who would come after.