Blog 50: Quite the Character

I’m very excited to tell you that Sarah Banham from For The Love of Books and the Author Support Network is back with us again today. However, what you may not know is she is not only an Editor but also a Writer of five non-fiction and six fiction books. This extremely ambitious and motivated lady has challenged herself to publish one book a year!

I thought, as a special Christmas Treat, because, yes, it is the big C this week, she could talk to us about how she creates her characters. Are you ready for this? I certainly am. Go grab a hot chocolate, something to eat and let's get comfy.

Great to have you back, Sarah. I’m sure the readers would love to hear a little about the fiction you have written. Could you give us a peek into what they are about?

Hey, lovely to be back.

Back in the olden days of 2006, I published two novels and another a year later in 2007. These were all in different genres because that’s where I’m most comfortable. Exploring and combining genres seems very natural to me and has turned out to be a good fit for my writing style and story ideas.

The first novel was a Romantic Suspense story called Dicing with Danger about a blunt-speaking socialite, Genevieve Dicing, and her very intriguing bodyguard named Casey Pitt.

My next book was a Young Adult novella called Jenna’s Dad. (Jenna’s Dad is going to be renamed First Time in LA.) This is a rather to-the-point-story about a 16-year-old school-girl named Fizz who has a mad crush on her mate, Jenna’s dad Mike. Between peer pressure, hormones, and excitement during a joint family trip to California, Fizz decides she wants to lose her virginity to Mike. It’s an exciting and intense read that leads to unexpected consequences.

The third novel was a Thriller called Guardian Angel. It’s about writer, Jayne Murray, whose editor says she needs her crime novels to be ‘sexed up with gore’ because they’re currently not selling. She is sent on a drive-along with local cops, Tim Angel and Dale Faulkner to witness the seedier side of life.

Sadly, none of these are currently available other than the few copies that remain on my bookshelf.

A few years later I co-wrote an anthology for charity (Help for Heroes) which came out before e-books were a thing.

More recently, I published Livin’ and Lovin’ in Texas which is a super read about a bittersweet romance in the wilds of Texas. It’s about two brothers who run a ranch and the woman who left one of them only to take up with the other. It’s a heart-breaking, yet forgiving story.

In 2022 Dream State was published. This was the most complex book I’d ever written because it encompassed so much – essentially two stories entwined and, while making it fluid and readable, became my favourite one so far (even though we’re not meant to have a favourite!).

It’s about an author, Lilah, who wants to rewrite the ending of her latest novel, but her overbearing and bullying agent wants something different. Lilah decides to get in her car and drive away the anger and frustration but ends up causing a crash with an artist, Ben.

While in a coma, Lilah becomes her lead character and finishes the story the right way. In the meantime, Ben meets Lilah’s sister, Becca, at the hospital bedside and a romance blooms. In the midst of it all a mysterious woman named Margaret holds the pieces of everyone’s futures.

You have quite an intriguing mix of storylines in there. What usually comes first for you, the plot or the main character(s)? Does it depend on how your ideas come to you?  

With me, there is no hard and fast answer. I’m very much in touch with my dream life and can easily bring the details of a dream into my waking world but I can find a story in almost every situation. Despite dreams not always being logical, Dicing with Danger had to be pulled to pieces then glued back together again for it to make sense.

Guardian Angel was inspired by elements of a character from a TV show I used to watch. I wanted to put him into an uncomfortable situation to see how he would solve it. It resulted in me writing a sequel to the story and encapsulating them within one book.

Jenna’s Dad was based on an overheard conversation by school girls in a shopping mall. One of them said, ‘I need to talk to Jenna’s Dad about that’ and within a few hours I’d written the outline.

The anthology was filled with poems, short stories and first chapters of stories intended to be developed. There was an array of different genres included.

Livin’ and Lovin’ in Texas was developed from seeing a photo in a travel brochure (remember those?) It was of the Texas sparce landscape with mountains in the background and in the foreground was a sleeping bed, the back of a truck, and a pair of cowboy boots.

Dream State was a story that came to me years before it was written. I was focused on another novel at the time so jotted down the notes and forgot all about it. Later I took it to 30,000 words and put it down again. After I finished my degree in 2020, I needed to get my teeth into something fictional, so I developed it to 105,000 words then pared it back to 95k.

So, you have been prompted by dreams, TV shows, conversations, and a photo in a travel brochure. It is amazing what things in our daily lives can spark ideas and inspire us to get writing. Do you create character profiles for all your characters to help you set them apart as individuals?

 This is such an interesting question. I love to study characters as they develop. I have an idea of what they might look like and sound, if they have an accent and how that aligns with their culture, if they’ve been taken out of their original culture etc. Different cultures have different ways of delivering dialogue, for instance, we know an American might say, ‘I’ll take a coffee,’ while a Brit might say, ‘Can I have a coffee, please?’

I’m interested in sociolinguistics and have studied how we all, essentially, say the same thing but, through a different selection of word choice, deliver it different ways from region to region or country to country.

Clothing choices, profession, social status etc all make a difference to how a character is formed and of course there is nature vs nurture to consider. Age, background, genre, and a host of other things (including name choice – more on this another time) help to shape characters too, so add an intriguing situation to the mix and the author just has to see where it all takes them.

These are excellent things to consider when developing characters. Can you tell us how you come up with realistic characters that your readers can relate to?

This is a tough one to answer because I truly don’t know. All I know is that if I totally believe the character is real, somehow, through my word choice, the reader believes it too. If I don’t have a lot of love for a character, it’s noticeable in my word choice and is read as flat. Believability in characters seems to be key.

I think it helps too when, if I’m speaking at an event about a character, I tend not to hold back. If I adore the character, it’s evident in my speech, my gesticulations, and my excitement. Afterwards, readers have told me they feel like they know them personally too which is always lovely to hear.

We have all been enchanted with fictional characters. And knowing your characters well will bring them to life. Do you put emphasis on differences of appearance as well as in personality when constructing characters? For example, would you give them specific traits that stand out, such as wearing glasses or having piercings?

If it’s relevant to the story and character development, yes. In Dream State, Becca and Lilah’s red hair is pivotal to the plot. In Guardian Angel, Jayne has a tattoo on her back which sparked off a long conversation that developed characters.

We all know characters need to have an arc in their story, where their position has changed somehow from the beginning to the end and with some sort of lesson learned about themselves. Have you got any tips on how to create a good character arc?

Character arcs can be so fun to create. For example, in Dicing with Danger, Genevieve Dicing was a nasty bit of work, egotistical, totally ignorant of the needs of others. By the end of the story, she was compassionate, empathetic, loving, and caring. It just took several ‘life or death’ moments to get there.

But that’s the thing with characters, they are just the same as any other person you know. Some are totally cold and emotionless, but something happens in their life and suddenly they care about everyone. Other times it’s the other way around and they get disillusioned from helping people in the community and get no thanks or even consideration from it, so they end up not wanting to be around anyone at all.

The trick, I think, is to look at the personalities of characters in movies and see how their arcs work, then look at the people you’ve known the longest or your family members and see how they’ve developed. Take a look at yourself too and be honest about it. You’ll see similarities everywhere.

How did you react to a big life event when you were a child and how would you react to it as an adult? You’ll see instant differences due to age and life experiences but in there, in the depths of studying it, you’ll see elements of their character too. It’s fascinating to do as an exercise, so why not give it a go?

Absolutely. All our experiences, knowledge gained and the people around us create a state of change in us. We mature, adapt, and alter over time. And tapping into that is an excellent way of developing our fictional characters.

Thank you so much for popping in today. I think, given the time of year I must ask one final question: what have you asked Father Christmas for this year and what are your plans for 2026?

I don’t think I asked for something specific this year, but my family know me well enough to know anything book/writing related is likely to be a hit. I’ve got a few plans for the new year and one of them is that I’m going to be a tutor at Swanwick Writers’ School in August.

Huge thanks for having me back. It’s been a blast! 😊 

Have a lovely Christmas, Sarah, and I look forward to hearing about how your tutoring goes in the New Year, what lucky students!

So there you go, readers, if you want any advice on writing or are in need of a Structural Editor or Book Coach, you fancy checking out some of her books, perhaps for that last minute Christmas present for someone or even yourself, pop over to Sarah’s website: https://www.loveofbooks.co.uk/

Whatever you do for Christmas, I wish you all a happy and restful time. See you next week.