Keeping to the ritual

Ritual plays a big part in the lives of us as writers, and of our characters. Whether we or they are religious, we all have little rituals that we perform regularly.

For me as a writer, the daily ritual is going out to a coffee shop to write.  As soon as I open my notebook, get out my pen, and sip my first mouthful of cappuccino I'm in writing mode.  The ritual signals to my brain that this is work time, and as a result I don't get writer's block.

You can add richness to your characters by showing the reader their rituals too.  The woman who takes two hours to put on her make-up is performing a ritual, so is the man making sure he wears his lucky gold cuff links to an interview.  

Rituals can be religious in nature or something borne out of your characters' lives.  In the Panthera books Nic always scans the security setup of every new place as soon as he arrives.  That's a ritual out of his Combined Forces background, a habit he now puts to good use in running his security company.

In Eyemind, Bi's ritual is to run a morning sensor check of his Supercruiser.  He's permanently linked to it, and would know instantly if something went wrong, but he still retains that ritual.

Rituals add richness to our characters, but they can also motivate them to do things.  If your character is required to perform a ritual to ensure the rains return, what happens when they're late one year?  Rituals can push characters into unwanted journeys, or motivate them to murder the emperor if the omens are right.  So if you're looking to add extra richness to your characters, invent a ritual for them.