Flesh and Blood: Breathing Life Into a Series Character
By Chris Carter - July 14, 2010
Ask any author and they’ll tell you that protagonists are the heart and soul of every novel. Even more so if they’re writing a series. Your protagonist is, without a doubt, the reason your readers will keep coming back for more.
They say that if you can get readers to identify, or even fall in love with your main character, then you’ll have a fan for life – or at least until the end of the series. The publishing world is overflowing with such examples – Harry Potter, Sherlock Holmes, James Bond, Jack Reacher, Kay Scarpetta and many more. The question is: How do you do that? How do you write a character that readers identify with and keep coming back for more… book, after book, after book? And how do you carry on developing that character through all the books in your series, however many they may be?
Well, my answer to that question is: I don’t really have a clue. The best I can do is tell you how I’ve developed the main character in my crime thriller series.
To be truthful, I never planned on a career in writing. I never thought about becoming an author. I simply woke up one day with a very basic idea for a book. I had no experience. I never took a creative writing class, or one in character and plot development. I’d never even written a short story before. But nevertheless, I decided that I’d try putting pen to paper.
Many people say that you should write about what you know. I combined that idea with another premise: You should write about what interests you. With that in mind, the idea behind the main detective in my series, Robert Hunter, was simple, common sense, really.
My background is in psychology, where I specialized in Criminal Behavior Analyses. So, it’ll come as no surprise that Hunter is a Criminal Behavior Psychologist turned detective for the Robbery Homicide Division of the LAPD. Though I now live in England, I’m much more familiar with the American criminal and judicial system than I’d ever be with the British one. That’s one of the main reasons my stories are set in Los Angeles. Psychologists are calm people by nature. They listen a lot more than they speak. Hunter doesn’t have an explosive personality, and he only explains things when he really needs to.
I also didn’t want Hunter to be a lone detective. I worked with many homicide investigators in the USA, and very, very few work alone. Plus, I like stories where detectives are able to feed off each other. That prompted me to create a co-protagonist, Detective Carlos Garcia, Hunter’s young and fresh new partner.
Though I had an idea of who I wanted Hunter to be, I still had to make that work on paper. With no experience, my main concern when I started writing was the plot. I just wanted to write and exciting story, a book that I would enjoy reading. Hunter and Garcia’s characters developed naturally throughout the story.
I must admit that my initial intention wasn’t to write a series. I didn’t even know if I could write one book, never mind several, featuring the same detective. My agent, Darley Anderson, was the one who first suggested that I should think about making my protagonist into a series character. He said he’d enjoyed Hunter and Garcia so much, that he’d love to see them back in subsequent novels, but Hunter needed a bit of tweaking. I returned to the manuscript and reworked my main character. I didn’t do much; just strengthen a few little points. My aim was to make Hunter as believable as I could, but still keep him intriguing, maybe even mysterious.
My first novel, The Crucifix Killer, was released in August 2009. Since then I’ve received hundreds of emails from readers saying how much they enjoyed the book and the characters, and that they were really looking forward to Robert Hunter and Carlos Garcia’s next thriller. All that is extremely gratifying. Whatever I did seemed to have worked.
My second novel, The Executioner, is due to be released in July 2010. I know it sounds clichéd, but it felt really good going back to Hunter and Garcia for my second thriller. I understood them a little better. I was finally getting to grips with their personalities and how they’d react when faced with different situations and scenarios. It was quite freaky, but in my head, their characters were really starting to take on a life of their own.
Again, I tried to make Hunter’s progression from book one to book two as natural as possible. Readers will discover a little more about his personal life and his background. They’ll also notice that his relationship with Carlos Garcia has matured, as it would in real life when anyone is working so closely with a partner.
I also brought some new and interesting characters into the new novel. Different people, with different needs, who’ll demand different reactions from Hunter. My intention is to develop Hunter a little more with every book. My hope is that as he grows as a character, more readers will identify with him. After all; isn’t that what every author wants?
They say that if you can get readers to identify, or even fall in love with your main character, then you’ll have a fan for life – or at least until the end of the series. The publishing world is overflowing with such examples – Harry Potter, Sherlock Holmes, James Bond, Jack Reacher, Kay Scarpetta and many more. The question is: How do you do that? How do you write a character that readers identify with and keep coming back for more… book, after book, after book? And how do you carry on developing that character through all the books in your series, however many they may be?
Well, my answer to that question is: I don’t really have a clue. The best I can do is tell you how I’ve developed the main character in my crime thriller series.
To be truthful, I never planned on a career in writing. I never thought about becoming an author. I simply woke up one day with a very basic idea for a book. I had no experience. I never took a creative writing class, or one in character and plot development. I’d never even written a short story before. But nevertheless, I decided that I’d try putting pen to paper.
Many people say that you should write about what you know. I combined that idea with another premise: You should write about what interests you. With that in mind, the idea behind the main detective in my series, Robert Hunter, was simple, common sense, really.
My background is in psychology, where I specialized in Criminal Behavior Analyses. So, it’ll come as no surprise that Hunter is a Criminal Behavior Psychologist turned detective for the Robbery Homicide Division of the LAPD. Though I now live in England, I’m much more familiar with the American criminal and judicial system than I’d ever be with the British one. That’s one of the main reasons my stories are set in Los Angeles. Psychologists are calm people by nature. They listen a lot more than they speak. Hunter doesn’t have an explosive personality, and he only explains things when he really needs to.
I also didn’t want Hunter to be a lone detective. I worked with many homicide investigators in the USA, and very, very few work alone. Plus, I like stories where detectives are able to feed off each other. That prompted me to create a co-protagonist, Detective Carlos Garcia, Hunter’s young and fresh new partner.
Though I had an idea of who I wanted Hunter to be, I still had to make that work on paper. With no experience, my main concern when I started writing was the plot. I just wanted to write and exciting story, a book that I would enjoy reading. Hunter and Garcia’s characters developed naturally throughout the story.
I must admit that my initial intention wasn’t to write a series. I didn’t even know if I could write one book, never mind several, featuring the same detective. My agent, Darley Anderson, was the one who first suggested that I should think about making my protagonist into a series character. He said he’d enjoyed Hunter and Garcia so much, that he’d love to see them back in subsequent novels, but Hunter needed a bit of tweaking. I returned to the manuscript and reworked my main character. I didn’t do much; just strengthen a few little points. My aim was to make Hunter as believable as I could, but still keep him intriguing, maybe even mysterious.
My first novel, The Crucifix Killer, was released in August 2009. Since then I’ve received hundreds of emails from readers saying how much they enjoyed the book and the characters, and that they were really looking forward to Robert Hunter and Carlos Garcia’s next thriller. All that is extremely gratifying. Whatever I did seemed to have worked.
My second novel, The Executioner, is due to be released in July 2010. I know it sounds clichéd, but it felt really good going back to Hunter and Garcia for my second thriller. I understood them a little better. I was finally getting to grips with their personalities and how they’d react when faced with different situations and scenarios. It was quite freaky, but in my head, their characters were really starting to take on a life of their own.
Again, I tried to make Hunter’s progression from book one to book two as natural as possible. Readers will discover a little more about his personal life and his background. They’ll also notice that his relationship with Carlos Garcia has matured, as it would in real life when anyone is working so closely with a partner.
I also brought some new and interesting characters into the new novel. Different people, with different needs, who’ll demand different reactions from Hunter. My intention is to develop Hunter a little more with every book. My hope is that as he grows as a character, more readers will identify with him. After all; isn’t that what every author wants?
