Guest Post: On Characterization - Gerrard Cowan

Today on Bookish I'm thrilled to welcome Gerrard Cowan, author of The Machinery! Gerrard was one of the fifteen authors chosen by Harper Voyager during their open submissions a couple of years back for his novel The Machinery. Look out for my review of The Machinery coming tomorrow but in the meantime happy book birthday Gerrard!

Don’t Forget The Grey Bits

One of the main challenges an author faces is characterisation. I have heard many different methods and techniques writers employ to create believable protagonists. You should pull together separate biographies for each of them. You should go down to the pub or the supermarket, and listen to the way people talk. You should base your characters on people you know, like your partner or your friends (not sure this one is very advisable).

For me, it was more a process of trial and error. I developed a rough idea of who each character was, but I didn’t write it down: it was just in my head. I then launched into writing, and over the course of several years and many drafts, my picture of each of them grew increasingly clear.

But that’s just the way it worked for me, and I certainly wouldn’t advise against preparing detailed sketches before you begin, or taking whatever other approach works for you. One thing I would say, however, is that you should remember to colour in the grey bits. 

In today’s fantasy genre, you rarely come across characters that are totally good or totally evil. George RR Martin’s books are the classic example, but the same applies to the other big names in the genre. I absolutely love Mark Lawrence’s Broken Empire Trilogy. The main character in these, Jorg Ancrath, is on paper a very dislikeable guy, but you end up rooting for him. At least I did.

Anyway, I am likely preaching to the converted. Fantasy readers demand nothing less than rounded, complex characters these days. But how do you go about doing this? How do you find the grey bits?

For me, the trick was to focus on the details. One of the main characters of The Machinery is Aranfal, who is a member of the Watchers: a kind of police service meets intelligence agency. It’s made clear early on that he is a torturer, whose particular technique to extract information from someone is to hurt his or her loved ones. Clearly he’s not the nicest guy in the world. However, at the same time, he isn’t a fire-breathing ghoul. He has been twisted by his membership of the Watchers, whose modus operandi is torture. He joined the organisation as a bright-eyed youth, confident that he could change its ways of working: in the end, it changed him.

Now, this is not to excuse his actions. But there is more to him than a cruel torturer. One day, when I was describing his living quarters, I suddenly found myself writing about his collection: rows of shelves in which he keeps ancient trinkets that he has found through his travels around the country. In essence, this ruthless, blood-stained man is also an antiques enthusiast. That little detail seemed to add such depth to him.

In a strange way, it’s actually harder finding the grey in your good guys, who can easily come across as boring and wooden if you’re not careful. The heroine of The Machinery is Katrina Paprissi, a young Apprentice Watcher who is struggling to establish herself as a full Watcher. It took me a while to find her voice: I really didn’t want her to come across as a vapid do-gooder. I eventually hit upon the idea of giving her a tired, world-weary viewpoint, which is a little jarring in a young person. She has witnessed some terrible things: she saw her brother being kidnapped when she was a child, and the subsequent breakdown of her family. It made sense that she should have a kind of jaded view of the world.

There’s no particular trick to finding the grey bits. One thing I do, however, is to imagine the opposite of what we might naturally expect from a character. So, if we have a man who is hard and cruel, imagine him being loving and caring. You can’t do this every time. However, you can then move along the spectrum, from the very opposite point, until you find something you can picture fitting with the character.

Finding the grey bits is a challenge, but it’s also a lot of fun. You would never use just one or two words to sum up the entire personality of a friend or family member: it should be the same with the characters in your book. 

 

About The Author

 

 

Gerrard Cowan is a writer and editor from Derry, in the North West of Ireland. His debut fantasy novel, The Machinery, will be published by HarperVoyager UK in September 2015. It is the first in a trilogy.

His first known work was a collection of poems on monsters, written for Halloween when he was eight; it is sadly lost to civilisation...

 

Website | Twitter | Goodreads | Facebook

 

Waiting On Wednesday #133 - The Abyss Surrounds Us

Waiting On Wednesday, where we put the spotlight on upcoming releases that we're eagerly anticipating, is hosted by Jill at Breaking The Spine.

This week's choice is -

The Abyss Surrounds Us - Emily Skrutskie

ISBN - 9780738746913

Publisher - Flux

Release date - February 8 2016

Find - Goodreads | Book Depository

For Cassandra Leung, bossing around sea monsters is just the family business. She’s been a Reckoner trainer-in-training ever since she could walk, raising the genetically-engineered beasts to defend ships as they cross the pirate-infested NeoPacific. But when the pirate queen Santa Elena swoops in on Cas’s first solo mission and snatches her from the bloodstained decks, Cas’s dream of being a full-time trainer seems dead in the water.

There’s no time to mourn. Waiting for her on the pirate ship is an unhatched Reckoner pup. Santa Elena wants to take back the seas with a monster of her own, and she needs a proper trainer to do it. She orders Cas to raise the pup, make sure he imprints on her ship, and, when the time comes, teach him to fight for the pirates. If Cas fails, her blood will be the next to paint the sea.

But Cas has fought pirates her entire life. And she's not about to stop.

This sounds amazing. Pirates, sea monsters, set in the future? Yes please! Thankfully not too long to wait.

Top Ten Tuesday #98 - Series I Have YET to Finish

Top Ten Tuesday is hosted by the wonderful gals cover at The Broke & The Bookish. This week's topic is -

Top Ten Series I Have YET to Finish

The prompt is really FINISHED series I have yet to finish but I've gone with series that are both finished & unfinished as there are a lot of them on my Goodreads!

Codex Alera - Jim Butcher

King Rolen's Kin - Rowena Cory Daniells

Falling Kingdoms - Morgan Rhodes

Glamourist Histories - Mary Robinette Kowal

Bloodlines - Richelle Mead

Throne of Glass - Sarah J Maas

The Grisha - Leigh Bardugo

Under The Never Sky - Veronica Rossi

Morganville Vampires - Rachel Caine

Percy Jackson & the Olympians - Rick Riordan

Bookmarked... #7

The return of the (mostly) weekly post letting you all know what I'm reading and have lined up for the week! It's my own version of Sheila at Book Journey's It's Monday What Are You Reading and I have her permission to rename it for my own nefarious reasons :)

I don't often talk about my personal life in much detail but wanted to say a few words about why I've been a crappy blogger over the last few weeks/months. Apart from suffering from pretty severe depression & anxiety I also have Rheumatoid Arthritis, a major auto-immune disease. I mostly get on with everything but after a blip on my regular monitoring my doctors are messing about with my meds and I'm struggling. All I want to do is sleep - all day and all night - and if I don't want to sleep I have dreadful insomnia. This is not conducive to anything so hence the blogging going slightly awry. The point of this though is just to say, bear with me as it'll settle eventually and things will be back to normal soonish!

Currently Reading

The Edge of Reason - Melinda Snodgrass

The Machinery - Gerrard Cowan

The Quick - Lauren Owen

Sorcerer To The Crown - Zen Cho

ARC August Final Update

ARC August is hosted by Octavia & Shelly over at Read Sleep Repeat. Well, I would say my stab at ARC August was pretty successful although discovering I've got dozens of reviews still to write wasn't quite what I wanted! In the end I read 7 books and am halfway through another one with another 17 to write reviews for. I think they're going to have to be very brief reviews otherwise I can see myself having to read them all again!

Reading

Seed

Finished During August

The Whispers

The Burning Girl

The Three Sisters

Monsters

Magic City: Recent Spells

Starborn

The Unnoticeables

Need To Review

A Court of Thorns and Roses 

Lives of Magic

Cuckoo Song

Peacemaker

The Miniaturist

The Raven's Head

The Geography of You & Me

Landline

Jackaby

Catch Me When I Fall

The After House

Wylding Hall

Grave Mercy

Unborn

The Pocket Wife

The Spider In the Corner of the Room

Because You'll Never Meet Me

Bout of Books 14 Daily Progress

It's that time again! This is my ninth Bout of Books and, I'm hoping, my most productive! No specific goals but I do want to make a significant dent in my Jar of Shame. If I can read a book day I will be ecstatic but I'll be happy with five.

Day 1 and the internet went down. Always happens, without fail, every single time I do Bout of Books.

Day 2 was mostly spent either at the hospital having tests done or having the biggest nap ever...

Day 3 and I'm having trouble... I've been picking up books left, right and center but nothing (except Kate Elliott's Court of Fives) is holding my attention. I'm definitely suffering from some sort of Bookish Attention Disorder a.k.a. BAD!

Day 4 was a good day for reading

Day 5 was spent at the hospital having tests and napping. Again... I've also veered away from my Netgalley/Edelweiss books that I was meant to be reading this week for ARC August. My concentration has been bad...

Day 6 was mostly spent watching Netflix or napping!

Daily Challenges

Ooops, day 6 and I've yet to do a single challenge!

Daily Progress

Monday August 17th:

Today's Read(s): Becoming Death - Melissa Brown, Starborn - Lucy Hounsom, Lorali - Laura Dockrill
Number of books I’ve read today: 0
Number of pages I’ve read today: 180
Total number of books read: 0
Total number of pages read:180

Tuesday August 18th:

Today's Read(s): Becoming Death - Melissa Brown, Lorali - Laura Dockrill
Number of books I’ve read today: 0
Number of pages I’ve read today: 190
Total number of books read: 0
Total number of pages read:  370

Wednesday August 19th:

Today's Read(s): Court of Fives - Kate Elliott, Becoming Death - Melissa Brown
Number of books I’ve read today: 190
Number of pages I’ve read today: 0
Total number of books read: 0
Total number of pages read: 560

Thursday August 20th:

Today's Read(s): Neversuch House - Elliot Skell, Mountwood School For Ghosts - Toby Ibbotson, Codex Born - Jim C Hines
Number of books I’ve read today: 2
Number of pages I’ve read today: 584
Total number of books read: 2
Total number of pages read: 1144

Friday August 21st:

Today's Read(s): Codex Born - Jim C Hines
Number of books I’ve read today: 1
Number of pages I’ve read today: 260
Total number of books read: 3
Total number of pages read: 1404

Saturday August 22nd:

Today's Read(s): First Class Murder - Robin Stevens
Number of books I’ve read today: 0
Number of pages I’ve read today: 200
Total number of books read: 3
Total number of pages read: 1604

Sunday August 23rd:

 Today's Read(s):
Number of books I’ve read today:
Number of pages I’ve read today:
Total number of books read:
Total number of pages read:

ARC August Update #3

ARC August is hosted by Octavia & Shelly over at Read Sleep Repeat.Well, this week didn't quite go as planned! Rather than making a serious dent in my Netgalley/Edelweiss/review books for Bout of Books I've been reading anything but. Ooops??? For this last week of ARC August I'm going to to my best to get at least 3 ARC's read and hopefully get some reviews written. If I achieve that I'll be happy, sort of...

Still Reading

I'm really enjoying The Unnoticeables but I only seem to be able to read it in small chunks! It's a very descriptive novel and as my concentration is shot at the moment I'm having trouble with the dual time periods. Remembering who's who is an even bigger job!

Finished This Week

 I just discovered Lucy is going to be at BristolCon this year so will have to take my copy along to get signed! Expect a review sometime, we all know how behind I am...

Finished

The Whispers

The Burning Girl

The Three Sisters

Monsters

Magic City: Recent Spells

Read But Not Reviewed

A Court of Thorns and Roses 

Lives of Magic

Cuckoo Song

Peacemaker

The Miniaturist

The Raven's Head

The Geography of You & Me

Landline

Jackaby

Catch Me When I Fall

The After House

Wylding Hall

Grave Mercy

Unborn

The Pocket Wife

The Spider In the Corner of the Room

Because You'll Never Meet Me