How do you create a PERFECT CHARACTER?
Casually off to kill her next victim…
What if your perfect character is also the villain?
And how do you balance the villain character with an every-day character?
Do details such as clothes and food matter to the story?
All the answers are HERE.
Even if, like me, you don’t write crime, there’s still plenty to take away from this BBC article. It also describes the process of turning a novel into a script and selecting the perfect actor to play the MC. I found it educational.
Enjoy!… And then come back here and join the discussion.
I must say, I haven’t watched a single episode of Killing Eve. But I’ve got a very good alibi…
The author Luke Jennings said about his character “She came to me fully formed and it was clear, adventures needed to be made for her.” I’ve also had a similar experience with some of my characters who were initialy based on real people. I just had to intensify flaws and add nastiness, sparingly, to make them fiction worthy.
I also liked this bit “we are most drawn to how she lives her life – she is completely carefree” and… “There’s no part of her life that she isn’t in charge of.” This gave me a warm feeling, because it just sounds like my MC. Whether I’ll succeed in writing / showing her that way is another story, but it looks like I’ve got a very good premise that is already a winner with audiences.
But that’s where similarities end: I’m writing a romance, not a crime novel. Yet, the line “she loves having nice things“, made me think of one of my secondary characters who just lives to shop.
When it comes to clothes and food, this article shows how they can be a strong element of characterization. Like the image of Inspector Morse in a tweed jackect, drinking a pint, it endures.
But enough from me. What about your characters?
I like the sound of your MC, mine keeps being wet! I’m always telling her to man-up but she just smiles and does things the softer way. Very annoying.
I’ve never watched killing Eve either but it is still an interesting article on character building. I’m glad she eats cake and pasta. Somebody put a question on here a couple of weeks ago about overdoing the details of what the character is eating. I reread some things I’ve written and was a bit worried to find that more than one of my characters clearly thinks with their stomach (maybe food is more important to me than I’d realised). Now I am relieved thinking that my character describing their meals with relish can show setting and character and I don’t need to scrap all those scenes!
And if you make your character’s food preferences very specific (such as japanese, thai, morrocan food etc.), you’ll add a new layer of interest and make that detail more memorable. I read a book where food was a big thing and there were even a few recipies at the end of the book. I felt like experimenting, and still remember the story even if it was not a particularly well written one.
Food is also good for social media: talking about food and linking to your characters & novel. I have a ton of ideas for this too.
You are absolutely right. When I was a pilot the other topic of conversation was always food. This is especially true with airline pilots who spend so much time eating away from home, but also true of helicopter pilots.
I found it interesting to read that the author Luke Jennings got to choose the scriptwriter for the series. I don’t know if this is routine practice. In the unlikely event of my novel being taken by a production company, it would be nice to have a say about who would write the script, but… I don’t think this is a problem I’ll ever have to solve. LOL