Developing characters for a novel

TimeSplash has been having a good day. Sadly, I can’t tell you about most of it (sorry) but I hope to be making a very exciting announcement soon.

What I can mention is a great review I found at 1889 Labs just now by author MCM. One of the delights of having a book ‘out there’ is that, sometimes, reviews just pop up out of nowhere. This one was a particularly fulsome one but, better still, MCM really appreciated the world-building and research that had gone into making the future world of TimeSplash as rich and believable as possible. I really take a pride in making sure I get everything as close to plausible as I can, so it is is great when a reader notices.

Like every reader of every book ever written, MCM didn’t think TimeSplash was quite perfect. For him (I think it’s a him!) the protagonists were just too young to be saving the world. He was especially concerned that Jay (who is just 20 at the end of the story) is working for MI5 and wouldn’t have had time to complete his training. Luckily, I can set MCM’s mind at rest on this one, as this just happens to be one of the things I was careful to check as I wrote the book.

MI5 takes in recruits at all age levels from school-leavers (18) upwards. They give intensive training courses and these don’t take as long as you might expect. A graduate recruit will be given six months of training (plus training in specialisms as their career develops.) For comparison, this is a few weeks longer than the 20 weeks of training given to FBI Special Agent recruits at Quantico. When we meet Jay the second time, he has been in MI5 for two years, has been in training for a lot of that time. He has also gained a fair amount of field experience.

I think it is also fair to say that Jay’s prominence in the action is not at all of his own choosing. He is pushed forward (manipulated, you might say) by superiors, and thrust reluctantly into the limelight when he teams with Sandra. Nevertheless, he is a very highly-motivated young man – for reasons that come up early in the book – and, while he’s no genius, he’s not daft, either. When he is given an opportunity to make a difference, he takes it without (much) hesitation and does a good job.

But why did I make Jay so young?

There are two reasons. Firstly, Jay and Sandra were both part of the splashparty scene at the start of the book – no grown-ups allowed. Secondly, as the book proceeds, a relationship builds between Jay and Sandra. Now, neither of them is stupid, yet they are both pretty inept at making it work. True, they have their problems, but if I’d made them both mature adults, the only real excuse they could have for not being sensible about their feelings, is that they are idiots. I didn’t want people to think that, or to lose sympathy with them. So I made them young and (especially in Jay’s case) inexperienced.

Planning a book is a tricky thing. You have endless choices to make and a huge number of parameters to nail down. It is probably the part of writing a novel that I enjoy most. It is certainly the most creative part. I don’t know what it would take to make a book that everybody agrees is perfect. (Genius?) Perhaps it has never been done – I can only think of a couple of books off-hand that are almost there. Even Lord of the Rings had the irritating Tom Bombadil