Authors who write fiction have the advantage that they can make everything up, but the disadvantage is they have no sources to go back and check. Creating fictional characters requires great care to make sure no inconsistencies are introduced. Keeping records for your characters helps to make them realistic and effective and saves headaches later.

Recently, one of my favorite authors, a very well known one, published a new book. I always buy her books as soon as they come out because they are often a few years apart, and I can’t seem to get enough of her wonderful quirky characters and their interesting existences. Precisely because I respect this author so greatly, I will not reveal her name in discussing the literary faux pas she made in her latest novel.

The mistake was in regards to the main character’s age. The main character is sixty years old. He is divorced with three daughters, the youngest of whom is still a teenager. At one point in the book, he meets another person who is age thirty-eight, which makes him recall that when he was thirty-eight he had already been divorced and had three children. The math here just simply doesn’t add up since his third daughter is a teenager when he is sixty.

Granted, the error is not as bad as when James Fenimore Cooper switched a character’s name halfway through a novel, but it is still a fairly large mistake. To avoid such errors, authors need to know every little detail about their characters, far more than they even tell their readers, and to keep good records of those details.

Two helpful suggestions for tracking character details are to create a family tree for the characters and to interview each character.

Family trees can be simple or elaborate depending on the story, the number of characters, and the detail required. The tree can be drawn on paper, but I highly recommend using a genealogy software program because much of the required information is laid out in a format for the author. Begin with the story’s main character, creating a listing in the genealogy program for him or her. Most programs will then ask basic genealogy information such as:  First, middle, and last name, nickname, title (Mr. Dr. etc.), birth and death dates, places of birth and death, place buried and sometimes place of baptism. Then a notes section will allow you to write additional information about the character and to provide sources for your information (the last you may need for genealogy but probably not for fictional characters).

Beyond the individual person, the program will then allow you to create a marriage for the main character, another separate entry for his wife, a date and place for the marriage, a box to check if they were divorced, and individual listings for the children. Of course, if the character is not married and does not have kids, no need to do so, but perhaps your novel ends before he meets his future wife, but you secretly know he will marry two years after the novel ends so you would like to create this information anyway.

Almost as important as the character’s current marriage and children is information about his family background. Even if his parents and grandparents do not appear in the novel, I think it’s important to figure out where this character came from. Create entries for his parents and grandparents, siblings, aunts, uncles, and cousins. Perhaps you had not thought about his grandparents before, but now if you decide they were immigrants from Croatia, it could make a big difference compared to if they were Jews from Brooklyn or Japanese immigrants to Hawaii. The family background is what usually shapes the character, his worldview, his motivations, fears, hopes and dreams.

Be sure you are specific with all the information you provide. In terms of dates, at the very least provide a year. Your character may be thirty years old and you’re writing the book in 2010, but by the time it’s published, it will be 2012. So does that mean he was born in 1980 or 1982, or is your book set in the 1960s, so maybe he was born in 1932 or 1938. You might even want to go so far as to make his birthday April 12 or December 3. Give birth years and possibly birth dates to all the other characters. Is it enough to say the main character’s grandparents were born in England, or do they need specifically to be born in York or London or Penzance? How does where his grandparents were born make a difference to the main character? Even if you never give specific years or dates in your novel, it can only make things easier for you in knowing these details for yourself.

It may seem like you are just creating unnecessary details, but these details will help you avoid discrepancies later so if you can’t remember how old the main character’s third daughter is, you can go back to check, and you can always change the facts in the genealogy program so long as you also change them in your novel. You will also be learning more about your character so he becomes multi-dimensional.

Interviewing characters is another great way to get to know and even to create them. I recommend you make up some kind of standard interview sheet, and you keep one for each character—especially the main character, but minor characters as well. The neighbor next-door character might need his own sheet—he might even need his own family tree. Most of the basic interview questions you would ask should already be in your genealogy program—name, date of birth etc. so the interview sheet is the place to find out not just details but what makes the character tick.

Be sure to include physical descriptions here. Of course, ask the basics about hair and eye color, height and weight, but then also consider how these might have changed. Was he born with blond hair but it turned brown by the time he was twenty? Did she weigh 250lbs in high school but is only 130lbs by the time she’s twenty-five? And of course, how did she lose the weight? What is your character’s most distinguishable feature? Is he happy with his physical appearance? Why or why not?

Find out all the details you can. Ask your character about his or her favorites: What is your favorite movie/book/flavor of ice cream? Find out the character’s past. What jobs have you held and when? What schools did you attend? When was your first date? When did you decide you wanted to be an astronaut?

How do other characters influence each individual character? If the main character’s grandpa died when he was sixteen, how did that effect him? If the main character decided when he finished college to move to Florida, how did his mother in Pennsylvania feel about her son being so far away? When Grandma left Italy after World War I, whom did she leave behind, and did she stay in touch with her family? How did Grandpa and Grandma raise the main character’s father, and how did that in turn effect how the main character was raised?

The questions you can ask are endless. The point is to ask a lot of questions. You are responsible for telling the story of this character’s life, even if the story only takes place over a few days or years. You want to get it right. You want to know the main character and all the minor characters inside and out. Often this additional information can lead to ideas for more books—even sequels or spin-offs.

Be a good data collector. Not only will it prevent you from making a mistake about your characters, but it will create richer, more realistic characters that your readers will enjoy.

The great magic of writing fiction is in the details, and the more you know the better. I have never forgotten the words of E.M. Forster: “Expansion. That is the idea the novelist must cling to. Not completion. Not rounding off but opening out.” You want to create a world that appears real, a world that feels like it will live and continue on by itself even after the last page of the book is read. Keeping good details about characters is the start of making that fictional world appear a reality.

Irene Watson is the Managing Editor of Reader Views, where avid readers can find reviews of recently published books as well as read interviews with authors. Her team also provides author publicity and a variety of other services specific to writing and publishing books.

Nothing is more critical than the first few lines of a story, since this will often influence whether or not a reader will continue with a work.  And a great opening is never more important than for a non-established writer who is trying to garner an audience or the budding author who is trying to acquire an agent or publisher.

Writer’s like Dickens and Woolf Provide a Lofty Pedestal

It would be wonderful if lines like “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times,” or, “Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself,” were on the forefront of our thinking when we first sat down at a keyboard.  The reality, however, is that this is not how it plays out for most of us.  But there are ways to attract a reader without having to conjure up the catch phrase of the century.

Think Along the Lines of Larry McMurtry

Larry McMurtry opened A DEAD MAN’S WALK by telling the reader about a naked 200 lb. prostitute, nicknamed The Great Western, walking down the street while carrying a snapping turtle.  If into westerns, who wouldn’t want to find out why this woman was involved with this seemingly inane activity?  The same as a feminist would be immediately taken by Clarissa Dalloway’s opening salvo.

But What if it Requires Time to Set up the Introduction to the Story?

This is when it gets sticky.  Yet not impossible to remedy.  A good exercise is to write a page on a random topic–not considered previously–then locate the most significant facet of the text and place this as the lead sentence.  Now rewrite the page with the narrative following this new opening.  This is generally accomplished much easier than first thought, yet it might not be a bad idea to do this several times, each with a new topic.  Then parse the first chapter of your novel and apply this technique to  the opening.

The Opening Requires the Same Effort as the Book’s Title

On this point, it is prudent to apply the same effort for the opening as was expended to come up with the title for the work.  Often, however, much more time is spent on determining the title.  If this should happen to be the case (from the perspective of the amount of time spent on each), it could be suggested to reverse the process.  A solid opening, whether it be a single paragraph or several, will eliminate the need to try to create one-line intro’s like “Who is John Galt?” or “They call me Ishmael,” which only happen on the rarest of occasions by even literature’s most esteemed writers.

The Perfect Write® offers manuscript review and revision, including comprehensive developmental editing and line editing services. Also For authors, The Perfect Write® is now providing FREE QUERY LETTER REVIEW AND ANALYSIS. Post your query to mailto:theperfectwrite@aol.com (no attachments) and visit The Perfect Write™ Sample Letters Page for examples of successful query letters.

Query Letter Writing – a Daunting Dilemma

Some years ago, to add to a discussion I was encouraging related to the nuances of query letter writing, a woman who had just received a contract for her first novel–and with Simon & Schuster no less–wrote me to lament how arduous she had found the task of crafting her missive to appeal to agents. She admitted that she considered the query more difficult than writing the actual work, and had spent over a year on her letter. For discretion’s sake, I won’t reveal the name of the author, but many people would recognize this now well-known Ph.D., and her breakthrough novel.

The Synopsis-Syndrome

I chuckled at her comment, not out of derision, but from empathy, since I have often felt the same way about my own queries. While I haven’t spent a year on a letter to attract an agent, at times I wish I had. One of the problems is that I have often found my query turning into a synopsis. And in parsing the query letters of others, the synopsis syndrome, as I call it, seems to be the most chronic malady that inhibits the presentations (sic, queries).

For a Successful Fiction Query Letter, Size does not Matter

A writer desires to tell as much as possible about the story of which he or she is so passionate, and is often influenced by an industry success story in which someone has crammed as much as possible onto one page, even to the point of reducing font size to make the text fit. Unfortunately, in trying to mirror this, the end result for most is invariably a synopsis and not a presentation of the subtle plot and character elements that reflect the writer’s skill and which sets the work apart–and what will influence an agent to request the manuscript.

Think of a Query Letter as an Advertisement, and Sell the Sizzle and Not the Steak

An agent of mine once railed at me about a poor query I had sent him for a later novel because it told too much of the individual aspects of the story and not about the work as a whole. He said to write the query as if I was designing the liner notes for the novel. I found this to be some of the best advice I have ever received. As a comparison, if one wants to be successful in sales, one of the time-worn truisms is to “sell the sizzle and not the steak.” It might be suggested to apply the same axiom to writing a query letter. This can be like grasping Showing versus Telling the first time around (or the tenth), but it has to be understood if a query is going to work.

Write a Query from the Gut, not the Heart

It might help to think of your work in visceral terms; meaning, what are the hard-hitting aspects of your story from an overall perspective. This will take your thinking beyond the brick and mortar. And remember, most of all, you are wanting to provide the agent with just enough knowledge of your work (and ability) to create interest. If you can do this succinctly and with skill, would it not be logical that the agent might assume that your novel is written at the same level? Should you review queries that have garnered agent representation, please notice how little is told about the actual stories, but how much the successful letters reflect the authors’ competence for writing quality prose.

Robert L. Bacon is the Founder of The Perfect Write(TM) theperfectwrite.com
For authors, The Perfect Write™ is now providing FREE QUERY LETTER REVIEW AND ANALYSIS. Post your query to mailto:theperfectwrite@aol.com(no attachments) and visit the Sample Letters Page for examples of successful query letters.

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