Tag: creating characters

  • Creating Characters Collaboratively

    In terms of creating interesting and viable characters, the first thing collaborators need to decide is how many central characters there are in the story. There are tracts on creative writing that say that any story has only one central character. It’s an interesting notion but an unhelpful one. Your novel will most likely feature…

  • Dating Advice from Satan

    Heide and I have now spent nearly six months and approximately 50,000 words in the company of Jeremy Clovenhoof, Satan’s earthbound alter ego and we feel we’ve got to know him quite well. He’s not the character we perhaps initially envisaged. He’s more human, earthier than either of us expected. He’s like the child we…

  • **Competition** YOU can be a star in our novel!

    We can tell from the stats that we have lots of traffic on our blog.  Lurkers, who aren’t speaking up. That’s fine, we’re happy with lurkers. But we’d love to know who you are. That’s why we’re offering a unique incentive. Everyone who leaves comments on the blog will be put into a draw when…

  • The Clovenhoof Bible

    At this point in time, Heide and I are knee-deep in planning individual chapters of the Clovenhoof novel (have I mentioned we still need a cool title?). We’re perhaps even only days away from writing some actual prose. However, the more detailed our planning and plotting has become, the more we need to co-ordinate our…

  • Archangels

    Inspired by Iain’s question below, I’ve become more and more intrigued by Archangel Michael. Archangel Gabriel is the one I grew up with. He’d be there every year in the nativity. If you said St Michael to me, I’d automatically think of M+S. It’s only latterly that I’ve come to realise some of the fascinating detail…

  • Approaches to Writing

    I want to write a number of blog posts about how we might go about plotting this story of Satan’s life as a mere mortal. However, that requires me to explain (to myself, if no one else) what my approach to writing is. This is particularly important because it does stand in stark contrast to…

  • Who would be Mr Clovenhoof?

    So that we can both write about Satan in a consistent way, we need to agree on what exactly he looks like. We thought it might be helpful to imagine who we’d get to play him in a film of our story. The above pics, Robert de Niro, Gary Oldman, Simon Callow, Tommy Lee Jones, Mickey…

  • Nerys Thomas

    Nerys has an aunt who lives in the upstairs flat from Satan. Here are some of the index cards that formed her character: Nerys has everyone’s best interests at heart. That’s what she tells herself anyway. She likes to think that she knows what people need better than they know themselves. Her best friend for…

  • Ben Kitchen.

    And the character sketch for Satan’s next door neighbour… Ben lives in flat 3A. He lives alone. He would like to pretend he is a self-contained individual, a lone wolf but, in truth, he is desperately friendless. Unfortunately, his overall personality is not conducive to making friends. He suffers from a form of OCD which…

  • Mr Clovenhoof.

    So after the index card game/brainstorming session in the pub, here is the first character sketch. Satan has lost his job and been booted out of hell. Perhaps he should have seen it coming. His last seven performance reviews all highlighted a “lackadaisical” attitude, revealing a master of Hell who has been coasting for the…