A Question Of Character

 We have a saying ‘oh you’ll be getting your character’, it might be a saying from the north of England where old ladies used to chat over the fences in the backyard with their hairnets on, stockings round their ankles and gossiping about the neighbours. If a lady walked down the street with a skirt deemed too short, a heel deemed too high or any kind of lipstick she’d be getting her character. Ie people generally gossiping about you.

                                                        

              Babs Windsor here would have 'got her character', appearing on the ward like this!

A lot has happened since last week. The good news is that my editor likes the character for the new series. She adored the outlines of the first two books. Note that I say outlines because I can’t do a synopsis for love nor money. Even if the money’s good. I need to grab Douglas Skelton and bribe him with a poke of chips – bag of French fries – they are both the same thing, and I tell him about the book and he produces a wonderful synopsis. I think it’s a talent that journalists have whereas I tend to write a synopsis the way I talk – it's all vaguely nonsense, but it makes some kind of sense in the end.

Les Dawson in character as Cissie and Aida.

So since I’ve been thinking of this new character, the huge fear is starting with what appears to be a good idea; the scope for getting it wrong is huge. I know authors that have regretted starting a series with the protagonist being too old. being diabetic or called the wrong name, like Winter or East. Indeed calling my Procurator Fiscal Archie Walker meant that in every book he was either hurrying or ambulating. 

Initially the page seems very blank and there’s no trusty guidelines to follow. But then you need to narrow it down. I can’t imagine myself writing something that’s not a police procedural. You should write about what you know, but there’s only so many times an osteopath could be involved in a murder without being struck off. Thank you Harold Shipman.

                                      

                                       Don't ask where I got that bone from... or should I say who...

 So that leaves me with police procedural and probably a female lead to make it different to the last one. She has to be of a certain rank for her job to be interesting and not just doing as she’s told. And being of that age she has to be with some kind of baggage. And I’d like to make her as identifiable as possible and rather a mainstream. I’m just not brave enough to be dragged into a war of sensitivity, racism, gender issues, independence issues; all these things can be addressed within the story itself without that feeling that the author is banging on about it.

Just as an aside, I was talking to a hyper intelligent Scottish Muslim of Asian descent about her Ph D. She was saying that she found Glasgow a very non racist place to live and there was a lot of empathy between Irish Catholics and Scottish Muslims. I explained that I think it would be very difficult for any white person living in Scotland to know what its really like to live in a racist culture. But it's very easy from first hand experience to know what its like to live in a sectarian culture, and she looked me straight in the eye and said 'I hadn’t thought of that'.

Even then, the sectarianism is an old story that we should all try and leave behind. So that’s not going to be an issue for my new character either. She's started to talk to me now, I think her name is Janice, she’s been demoted and takes a chance to start again in a new regional force in a different part of the country. I think she’s got a teenager at University and one of those useless ones at home, the ones who play computer games all day and think its going to turn them into a millionaire. She’s not told me much about her husband yet but while the marriage is happy in most senses, she’s the bread winner and some aspects of his life mean that she’s rather lonely.

Maybe he goes fishing a lot.

                                                   

                                                         Benny tinkling his ivories. A love interest for Janice?

 Looking around on the cast of characters that are appearing, the one that steps forward is a man who looks very like the beardy one out of ABBA – that might have been influenced by the music I was listening to at the time. So I don’t think that attraction is going to go very far. Now if it was the lead singer from A-HA  Mr Morten Harket then I could see that attraction going somewhere and then Mrs Winnie Satherswaite would be heaving her bosom onto her forearms and saying that Janice will be about to get her character.

                                                  

                                                                 Morten Harket.

Caro Ramsay