Character development – who ARE these people?
One thing I learned in the course of writing Meeting Murder was the importance of creating detailed character profiles. Not just what they look like – what they are like. Each character’s emotional history. There was one character I didn’t do that with in Meeting Murder, and his words and actions just didn’t ring true until I did.
The bonus for me as a mystery writer is that as I develop these character profiles, I discover new paths to go down, new plot twists, new suspects, new motives. Readers will never see these profiles – but they’re invaluable to me.
I was comforted and reassured when I read a novel recently (a best seller!) by a writer whose early work, while good, lacked a certain confidence, a willingness to tackle a different world from the one she knew so intimately. My first book focuses on meeting planning and pharmaceuticals – worlds I know. My second will concern itself with many things and many types of people that I don’t know. Yet. Only the two main characters from Meeting Murder will move on to the next book…
I already know who gets murdered in the next novel, and I know who the killer is. I know the motive, and even some of the clues and red herrings. But it’s the character profiles that will help me tell a cohesive – and hopefully compelling – story. It’s the character profiles that will tell me who these people truly are, and where the story needs to go.
