I am enjoying the process of creating a new series of crime novels for the first time in years, not least because it has seen me going back to my book on the craft of writing (On Writing is available on Amazon, in several formats) to remind myself about some of the considerations.
One of the subjects I covered in the book was ‘where do characters come from?’ and my work on the new series has challenged my thoughts on the subject.
You see, I have talked to many authors about this and, while a significant proportion of them say that their characters are 100% invented, the majority say that a lot of their characters are taken, in part, from real life.
That is what I would have said about myself as an author as well (John Blizzard and Jack Harris, the main characters in my other series, come from real life; Harris is based on a real police officer I knew and Blizzard is me playing detective!).
I thought that all my main characters came from real people -but my new one is a complete invention, who began with a name (which I will keep to myself for the moment but I will say that his Christian name was inspired by a name I really like and his surname taken from a fairly well-known comedian. Put them together and they work really well).
Whether characters are inspired from scratch or created from real life, developing them is just the start of the process, and even with someone taken from real life, I will only use a small part of them, and then usually as the catalyst for the creative process.
What I will say about my new main character is that he comes over as somewhat diffident and that makes writing him new and challenging, and puts him in sharp contrast to Harris and Blizzard, who will return in further books (the next Harris Six Steps to Murder is out on November 9, 2026, and the next Blizzard, working title The Art of Murder, has been signed up by Joffe Books with a publication date yet to be announced).
With a new series and new characters, I am finding it a slower and more challenging process but that’s good for the author in me.
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