Fi Phillips

I love creating new characters. For my murder mystery plays, they will probably already have a name or a job or an age, which is always a good start. For my novels, though, I've had to form my characters completely from scratch (apart from Hartley - he's been with me for decades). Janice Hardy's article, The How to Create a Character  Game on the Publishing Crawl website offers a fun way to bring to life a new set of characters. Have a look. Cesca Major talks about where she writes.

I love the characters in my novel, whether they're good or bad or somewhere in between. They're individuals with their own way of speaking and their own motivations. Like me, most of them will happily tootle along in the same routine, day to day, year to year. Working out what would make them change, react, break out can be a puzzle. On Janice Hardy's Fiction University website, there is an article by writer K M Weiland on just this topic - How to Find Your Character's Breaking Point . Have a look.

Today's exercise is about character building. When I begin to write a play, one of my foundation stones is always my cast of characters. It is only when I have them firmly imagined that I begin to build a plot around them. 1. Find two photographs of people whom you feel you can build a character from. These can be your own photographs, images from a newspaper or magazine, or photographs you find online. Here are my two: 2. Name your characters and give them some details such as age, job, and some characteristics. Again, here are mine. Stan - in the top photo, he is the young man whose face is partly obscured by the woman in the pink top. He's 25 years old and works in a record shop. His friends persuaded him to go on an 18-30 holiday where they met the girls at the table with them. Stan lives at home with his mum who constantly nags him to improve himself. He's shy and generally hides himself away, even from customers to the shop. Doreen - in the bottom photo, D...

Santa Baby by the wonderful Eartha Kitt