Coherent personalities

This week I'm away on a writing retreat in rural Somerset with two writing friends, Carol Westron and Christine Hammacott.  We're staying in an old Weslayan chapel that's been converted into a holiday home, and it's provided us with some interesting conversation.

The furniture is, shall we say, an interesting mix of styles and periods.  A heavy carved dark wooden mirror in the gothic style mixes with a huge mirror with an ornate gilt frame. Modern sofas and a huge home cinema TV jostle against the original wooden pews and stained windows.  And there's an oak sideboard with leaded-light windows in its doors, and a rattan table with a glass top.

Being three writers, we set to trying to analyse what kind of character would own this mix of stuff.  Who would live in a place like this?  And we couldn't come to any conclusion about the personality of the owner.

That got me thinking about coherence of character.  One of the exercises I set creative writing students  is to get them to write about a character's room.  In our personal spaces we collect things that reflect our beliefs and values, and our personalities. An extrovert might have a flamboyant room full of mementoes of frequent travel or party going. On the other hand, an introverted bookish person may line every inch of wall space with bookcases, stuffed to the ceiling with an eclectic mix of volumes.  How about a character with shelves of self-help books, science fiction, gardening, science, and art books?  That's going to be a very different person from the flamboyant traveller.

Thinking about a character's space and what they own can help to define their hobbies, their job, their way of life.  And pulling all of those things together helps to create a character that reads as coherent.

There's a danger when doing this that we can end up with a stereotype, but once you've produced a list of traits and possessions it's easy to review them and introduce a unique twist here and there.  Those little tweaks will make the character unique while keeping the overall picture coherent.

Wendy Metcalfe is the author of Panthera : Death Spiral and Panthera : Death Song, and the short story collection Otherlives.  Find out more at www.wendymetcalfe.com