More than a few years ago, when mobile technology didn’t interfere with healthy posture and relationships, my mom regularly took me shopping on Saturday afternoons. Most of the time, we weren’t in dire need of anything in particular (except reliable air conditioning—it was Florida—and Chick-fil-A sandwiches), but we’d wander around the mall people watching, gagging from one-too-many perfume testers, and trying mystery meat samples at a weird German deli next to the Gap. On days like this, away from the rules and rhythms of home, I was able to see another side of my mother—her quirky humor, sense of adventure, and inability to find a bathroom before she was about to “pee her pants.” I also watched how she deeply inhaled the smell of warm roasting pine nuts at Morrow’s Nut House, nodded respectfully at Ray, the ancient security guard in a Stetson and cowboy boots, and stealthily read the cover of the National Inquirer as we waited in line at the bookstore.
My mother died over thirty years ago, and my clearest memories of her are not from the Dickensian best or worst of times but from our directionless wanderings side by side. The plot of our story as mother and daughter was a difficult read, one in which darkness had more than a fighting chance to prevail. Long after she disappeared from the narrative, though, the way she lived in life’s small, quotidian moments defines her best. She was a complicated character, my mom, as are all the good ones.
Now, as a writer, it’s my job to craft characters and my goal to make them complicated, good ones. What they do, say, think, and feel in my story world should reflect how they would behave anywhere. So, I take them shopping or wherever they want to go. Some prefer yoga, church (to worship or mock, depending on who’s with me), or the hair salon to collect strangers’ hair clippings in Ziplock bags (she’s a weird one—my mom would have loved her). I spend time with each of them off the page and in the real world.
Let’s say, for fun’s sake, I take my highly combative, insomniac narcissist character, Meg, to run errands one day. Starting at Starbucks (the bribe that got her out the door), we stand in line behind a woman ordering for her entire office, and the only other barista is “having stomach issues” in the bathroom. What would Meg do? What I imagine isn’t pretty, but it sure makes the wait for my latte go faster.
Later, in the grocery store, when my plastic-wrapped round roast leaks blood all over her case of Diet Coke, Meg surprises me with sticky-sweet understanding. It turns out her crush is right behind us. I’m sure I’ll hear all about my shopping incompetence in the car while she’s also cursing me for letting her go out in her pajama pants.
Next, imagine there’s a twist in our outing. My cell phone rings and Meg answers it because “Lord knows,” according to her, I can’t “even drive and sing ‘Jesus, Take the Wheel’ at the same time.” Let’s say it turns out the caller has terrible news. Someone I love is in the hospital, and I must get there immediately. Shaken, I pull over. Now, who takes the wheel? Is Meg the type who comes through in a crisis, or does she continue to make everything about her? I’m not sure yet, but thinking about all the possibilities helps me flesh out Meg when I’m not at my desk. The pressure of fitting her into the plot recedes, and I can just focus on how she talks, what she wears, what surprises her, what softens her edges, and all the nuances that make a person unique.
Now that I’ve made a habit of running errands with my characters, I’ve upped my game to deliberately taking certain characters to places they don’t belong—places where they might misbehave or find intolerable. If one of my characters has trouble sitting still, you’ll find us sitting in a pew at a three-hour Easter Vigil. If another has an irrational fear of gelatinous foods, we’re eating sweet corn pudding at the Golden Corral—or not. I may have just overcommitted to my craft.
Corn pudding aside, if hanging out with imaginary friends sounds appealing, and you’re not shy about the occupational hazard of accidentally speaking aloud to them in public, you might find it productive to take your characters out and about for a bit. If it helps, practice first. Choose a known, well-defined character, like Fredrik Backman’s Ove or Chuck Palahniuk’s Tyler Durden, and throw him in the passenger seat of your car. Spend the day imagining how he’d respond in every situation you encounter. Then, try it another day with one of your own characters like I did with Meg. While out together, be present and resist the urge to take notes. What you remember later will be the impressions that matter and surface when you bring her (or him or they) to life for your readers. So, like my mother, long after your character disappears from the narrative, she will be remembered as one of the good ones.
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