When it comes to creating characters
I've found that the best approach
the best model that you can use for creating characters
is to start from the assumption that if you, as a writer
you, as a person, had been born in different circumstances
a different place, a different time
if you had had all of this stuff going on in your life
that was different to your other circumstances
then you could have been
any other human being on the face of the planet
given the right circumstances, given the right background
given the right time and place.
So, I choose to regard personality and identity
as like a huge, multifaceted crystal
of which we, as individuals
choose only to polish one facet
which is the personality
that we will have throughout our lives.
As a writer
you can explore the other facets.
You can rotate that crystal
and look at some of the other faces of it.
And you can ask yourself the question
"In what way would I have been different
if I had been born
in a different place, at a different time
of a different gender, of a different morality
of a different species?"
Depending upon where your story is going.
If you can do that
then you can imagine a whole range
of alternate personalities for yourself.
You can inhabit the characters
rather than seeing them as another person.
Ideally, all of the characters in your story are yourself.
We are told
that all of the characters in our dreams are us
and that is obviously true.
And the same goes for our stories.
You are going to be inhabiting these characters
and you want to do it with conviction
because you are trying to convince your readers
that these are real people
so let them be real people.
This is if you are creating characters.
Of course, sometimes, you might be writing
about a genuine historical individual.
That is a slightly different process.
It will still need all of that empathy and understanding
but you will be accomplishing most of it through research
which is probably as good a place as any
to mention the importance of research
and the importance of coming to love it.
Don't think of it as homework.
Don't think of it as you surrounded
by piles of dusty books, although, in my experience
that is pretty much what will happen.
But the thing is
if you can learn to enjoy your research
learn to love
expanding your information about something
then that will reap incredible benefits.
As an example of researching a historical character
I would mention the character of
the royal surgeon Sir William Withey Gull
who was my candidate as a culprit
in the Jack the Ripper murders
as in my book From Hell with Eddie Campbell.
I looked at every detail that I could
about the man's life
about his childhood as the son of a bargee
about how the family's circumstances changed
when the railway started to replace barges
as the main means of transportation.
His early interest in nature
which included the nature of biology
and the interior of animals' bodies.
All of these things.
His politics.
His many surprisingly worthwhile accomplishments.
I believe that he was the first doctor
to actually give a name
to anorexia
and the first person to notice it as a condition.
In all of these things
by getting an idea of the man in the round
how he spoke
how he reacted to friends or strangers
what his politics were, what his philosophy was
this...
If I was going to portray that person
as the most famous serial murderer in British history
I felt that it would be good
to make him a complete, nuanced individual.
I didn't want simply
a figure with a top hat and a raised knife
the standard stereotypical image of Jack the Ripper.
I wanted a real person
that the audience would be able to understand
and the only way of actually accomplishing that
is through tremendous research.
And it's not difficult.
I was doing that when my only means of research
was a library or my own book collection.
You people in the modern day have no excuse.
You have all of the knowledge of the world at your fingertips.
So, don't come crying to me
because your research is difficult.
No, just get out there and do it
because it will enrich your stories massively.
Now, I mean, with regard to character
there are, of course, other elements.
With fictitious characters
or even with characters based upon
real historical individuals
you will come to know them so well, hopefully
that you will reach points in the story
where, perhaps, what you had plotted
you will realise, "They would never do that."
Even if it's an imaginary character
you will realise that
"No, no, my sense of their character is that
they will not do these things
that I had planned for them to do."
This is the point where your characters
are almost alive
and it is wonderful.
You should always listen
to what your characters are saying.
You should bear in mind
that these are coherent individuals
if you've created them well enough
and that there are things that they would not do.
Even if that would greatly help the plot of your story
you can't do that.
If it would be against
what is the core of that character.
So, yeah, there is that point
where your characters start talking to you.
Don't worry about this. It's perfectly normal.
Now, one important thing
with regard to characterisation
is how you characterise your villains.
As I've just said
if you're writing a terrifying serial murderer
do try to get inside the personality
so that you create them as a rounded individual.
I remember when I was writing V for Vendetta
back in 1980, 1981
when we were just putting the series together
and I was thinking about
how I was going to portray the fascist Secret State
the fascist government that was controlling Britain
in the impossibly far future date of my story
which was 1997
because I was writing it in 1981 and I thought
"Well, 1997's obviously never going to happen."
But...
having these Nazi figures
given that I am a third-generation anti-fascist
and I absolutely abhor Nazis
what I didn't want to do
was to reduce all of my villains
to two-dimensional Nazi cartoons
where they'd all got a monocle
and a University of Heidelberg duelling scar.
No, no.
I had to remember that
the Nazis didn't arrive from space.
They were perfectly ordinary bakers
and street cleaners and cobblers and schoolteachers
who happened to have
a very bad national experience happen to them
and they became Nazis.
So, I thought, if this was happening in England
it would be ordinary people.
So, give each of the Nazis
a different reason for what they're doing.
Some of them are perhaps good people
who are trying to do their best in a horrible regime.
Some of them are going along with it
because they're frightened.
Some of them are going along with it
because they actively enjoy it, the feeling of power.
But it's important to understand what is inside them
to empathise with them
perhaps, especially the villains
because if you're not careful
those are the things that can end up
as completely predictable, two-dimensional travesties.
And if your heroes are to have any weight
and resonance
then you better make sure
that your villains have the same weight and resonance.
The importance of making your characters
three-dimensional can't really be overstated.
As an example from comics
a one-dimensional character
is where it's either a hero
or a villain.
It's a goody or a baddy.
You don't need to know anything about them other than that.
They don't have to have motivations.
They're just a good guy or a bad guy.
All of the bad guy's schemes
they can be explained by the fact that he's a bad guy.
This is one-dimensional characterisation.
Sometime around the...
probably early '60s
Stan Lee came up with a kind of formula
whereby he would give
a personality problem
to his good guys and his bad guys.
So now they were a good guy
but they had trouble finding a girlfriend
or they were a good guy but they had a bad leg.
Which, apparently, a bad leg is considered a character trait
in that kind of comic book.
So this is a two-dimensional character.
There's really nothing to them.
They don't resemble human beings.
They just have one slight cosmetic flaw
to make them seem more realistic.
If you want a three-dimensional character
then you have to take that much, much further.
You have to have a character
where you know them from the inside out
where you know why they do things.
You know all of the elements in their life
have made them the character that they are
so that they have complete agency
so that they have their own agendas.
Because, actually, in real life
the way that characters work...
This reminds me of when I was working
on my film The Show with Mitch Jenkins
which had an incredible amount of characters
who we had given narratives, to all of them.
So that we decided to have no secondary characters.
We decided all of the characters had got their story arcs
they'd got their personalities.
And we directed the many fine actors
that we'd got working on The Show.
We told them, "Play this as if the whole film is about you."
The reason for that was because
that's how it works in real life.
We all think that the whole film is about us.
We are the centre of the narrative.
And, in fact, the interaction of characters
is generally just that.
It's a bunch of people interacting
while all believing that the narrative, the story
is entirely about them.
That is how three-dimensional characters behave.
And you won't get that degree
of realism and involvement
unless you are actually allowing your characters that
allowing them all the complexity in an ordinary human being.
The point where your characters are so well known to you
that they start
actually dictating to you what they're going to do
can be quite a surprising and eerie one.
I remember when I was working on Watchmen
and I'd been working with the driven
semi-psychotic right-wing vigilante Rorschach.
I'd been working with him for a few issues.
And it slowly occurred to me that...
Rorschach is not going to survive this, is he?
Rorschach's got a death wish.
He hates himself, he hates the world
he hates his life, he wants to die.
He is not going to come out of this book alive.
That was a surprise to me.
I had to refigure the ending
with that realisation
but it was exactly the right ending.
And this is a perfect example
of when you should listen to your characters
listen to what they're really trying to tell you
with their words and their actions
because, sometimes, it can be very, very surprising.
As for how you create those characters
I would say that it's sometimes useful
to take tips from the acting profession.
Now you don't need to go full method
and start dressing and acting as your character.
In fact, if you're writing about somebody like Jack the Ripper
that is probably a really, really bad idea.
But what you need to do is to...
I would advise, sit down with a mirror.
Sit down with a mirror and think about your character.
I remember when I was working on the Swamp Thing series
and we had a minor character
that we were introducing for two or three issues.
It was a previously existing character
created by the great Jack Kirby
called the Demon.
This was a bright yellow demon from Hell
who spoke in rhyme.
When I was trying to feel my way into the character
I sat down in front of a mirror.
I thought, "OK, this is a demon.
He's quite a short, squat figure.
I'm kind of feeling that maybe demons
are perhaps more dense than ordinary human beings
that they weigh a tremendous amount."
So, his posture, his posture that would be weighed down
by this density, this weight.
He would be fiercely sort of solid in his stature
in the way that his body language worked.
And I figured that he would also be
very... hot.
There would be an internal heat
like a furnace, that was driving him
and an emotional heat as well
a ferocity
that, even though it expressed itself in rhyme
was really fierce
really full-on, this devouring power.
And when I was sitting there in front of the mirror
I was attempting to do the voice.
HE GROWLS: This low, inhuman growl.
And that is wonderful, if you know how they talk.
I remember Kenneth Williams once saying
that he didn't need to know anything about a character
other than whether they talked high or low in their noses
which is perhaps a bit extreme
but I think I know what he meant.
Once you've got the character's voice
once you've got the character and the way that they stand
their body language, everything
the way that they think will follow on.
If you feel like the character
you will know what the character thinks
and what the character feels.
This is the importance
of actually inhabiting a character
in the way that an actor inhabits their character.
Now, when you're constructing a character
you are obviously going to be basing a lot of this
upon your own experience.
That you'll be taking things from your own life
impressions that you've had of people
thoughts that you've had
and you will be loading them
into this fictitious character that you've created.
When you're doing this
I would advise you to look really deep
into your own memories.
Try to find those little affecting moments
that, as far as you know
only you, out of the entire of the human race
has ever experienced those very specific things.
Because, in my experience
if we talk about something specific
with enough passion
enough detail, enough reality
then it becomes the universal.
It strikes a chord somewhere deep in every human being
because even if they haven't had that precise experience
they've had something like it
and they thought
it was only something that had happened to them.
And this brings us to what is perhaps
the most majestic power of art and writing
because if we think
that we have had an experience that was uniquely ours
and then we see a painting or a film or a novel
in which something like that experience is expressed
then we feel less alone.
And that is very possibly the ultimate purpose
of all art and all writing.