How did I come up with my characters?
I read Stephen King's On Writing before starting my first novel, and took one piece of advice from his non-fiction book to heart. It was to write “situationally.” Instead of superfluous plotting, King starts his scenes with a situation – a single, often-bizarre, instance in time – and expands outwards from there. I attempted to do the same, and found that it helped me reach a word count far greater than what I’d published previously in non-fiction.
When writing The Past Awakens: Baneford Book 1, I started the story by fictionalizing a rather strange memory from my adolescence – the time I was certain there was an evil spirit in my bedroom. In Book 1, that became the scene when Evelyn first senses Hendrick’s presence in the dark basement of her listing. Everything else flowed from there.
In the first two books, and the upcoming third, Evelyn and Adrian are the main characters. Evelyn is a real estate agent in her late twenties. I gave her that job because I hold an active real estate license in Massachusetts, and I used knowledge from my real estate career to add color to the story. With Evelyn facing an evil spirit, she needed an ally and love interest, and that’s how Adrian came to be.
Adrian popped into the book ready to offer assistance, which meant he had to be some type of necromancer, or spiritual medium. I chose to make him foreign, because I thought I’d have an easier time writing his character if he was. Since he needed a country of origin and I felt that using Egypt (my own) would be too contrived, I went with Romania. It’s a country with abundant supernatural references in its folk culture, and I’ve always wanted to go. I also wouldn’t mind visiting Dracula’s home.
Thinking back, there was one more meaningful influence for the characters and what turned out to be the Baneford Series. Before starting writing, I spent a good amount of time in self-published author forums. I learned that paranormal romance fiction was quite popular. I figured if I could write it, I’d have a better chance at launching into a pre-established audience. However, I’d always been a fan of horror, and I’d never read any paranormal romance books or any contemporary romance books at all! So, I thought of the closest thing I knew of, and that was the show True Blood on HBO. I’d watched the seasons a few times and had thoroughly enjoyed it, so I used that as a general direction for navigation going into the genre.
I think I have one more book in me for the Baneford Series. After that, this completely spontaneous-made-up-on-the spot-experiment will come to an end, making room for new work. I’ll likely incorporate more plotting going forward, but will still write situationally and spontaneously. We’ll see who or what comes through next!