Fi Phillips

Last week I was ill, incapacitated by pain after what should have been a routine visit to the dentist. I was on heavy duty painkillers and ironically, although taking the edge off the pain they were intended for, they gave me sickening headaches. I found myself in tears for a few hours each day and felt generally pathetic. Emotionally and physically, I curled up in a ball and did the bare minimum. Even in this state of shutdown though, my muse found a way to inspire me. My inability to do a great deal physically and mentally led me to do one thing more - listen. I listened to my children talking, my husband's worries, the sounds outside the house, the news on TV and specifically to the music on the radio. One song in particular grabbed my attention because it's lyrics beautifully matched the personality and life of a character in the novel I'm writing. This in turn got me thinking about songs that could represent other characters too. I'll tell you about those other...

One piece of advice that is often offered by creative writing books and courses is to nail your characters before you begin writing. Work out their name, their age, how they look, where they were born, what their attitude is to marriage, etc, etc. The list is endless. For a long time, I followed this advice and attempted to write my characters into the details and personalities that I had so carefully written down and crafted beforehand. Do you know what happened for ninety nine per cent of the time? I wrote cardboard cutout characters who fell apart under the rain of conflict and time. I now understand that I was taking the 'get to know your character' advice too literally or too naively at least. What the advice should be is 'work out the details of your character's life that you need to begin writing'.  The difference between this and the 'nailing of characters' is that with my version, there is room for your characters to develop and grow as you the wr...