Building the Idea, Part 2: The Character Sheet Behind a Thriller

How well can you know someone before they’ve said a single word?

With my characters, I try to know them very well. That’s the job of the character sheet, the second piece of the recipe I started sharing last week. The storyline overview tells me what has to happen. The character sheet tells me who it has to happen to, and that turns out to matter more than almost anything else.

Here’s what goes on mine, with a few of the people from The Apex Code as the examples.

Who They Are on Page One

I start by getting very clear about who a character is at the beginning of the story. Then I get ready to let the story change them, so the reader can watch it happen rather than be told that it did.

Decker opens the book as a retired Navy Master Chief, a year out and working very hard at being nobody. He mails his medals to his sister without a note. He pays cash for everything. His last psych evaluation called him detached. He calls it survival. That’s my starting point, and I need to lock that in before anything happens to him.

Every Character Needs a Crack

I also need to know why a character is right for the role they’ve been cast in, and also why they’re incomplete. Every character has at least the appearance of a flaw. The interesting question is what the story does with it. Either someone else compensates for it, or it eventually undoes them.

Riley is a gifted hacker, but he’s a kid who has never had to decide anything of importance. Decker has spent most of his adult life making that call, and it hollowed him out. Put them side by side and each one covers the other’s blind spot, whether either of them likes it or not.

What Drives Them

Underneath every character is a motivation, and it shows up in behavior before it ever shows up in dialogue. Trained habits that fire automatically. Old events they’re still reacting to without realizing it. Instincts that kick in whether they help or not. We all have them. So should they.

Decker watches everything on the street without seeming to. Riley came to Key West on nothing but bus fare because of a promise to his mom. Neither of them explains any of this. They just do it.

If I Can’t Hear Them, They’re Not Ready

This one is key for me. I have to hear each character’s voice in my head before I can write them. Is he sarcastic as a coping mechanism? Does she joke about everything because it buys her time to think?

When Riley first finds Decker, at the coffee shop counter, he asks, “Are you Mr. Decker? Er, I mean Master Chief Decker?” Decker points at his name tag and says he’s Al. Two lines, and you already know a fair amount about both of them. If I can’t hear a character that clearly, they go back on the sheet.

Meeting a Stranger

I want my characters different enough that, at first, they don’t really understand each other. Meeting a new character should feel like meeting a stranger in real life. You work out who they are from how they act around other people, not from what they tell you about themselves.

Decker has no mailing address and no digital footprint. Riley lives almost entirely online, and found his uncle by running facial recognition across the town’s public webcams. Then there’s Hackett, twenty-plus years at the Bureau before being loaned to the NSA, whose inbox slowly filled up with every federal cybercrime case going and then, almost as a joke about his name, everyone else’s too. Three people, three completely different ways of seeing the same problem.

The Journey They Think They’re On

This part always interests me the most. What journey does a character believe they’re on at the start? What changes it? And by the end, emotionally, in their relationships, in what they want, what journey are they on now?

Decker thinks his story is about staying gone. Riley thinks his is about keeping a promise. I’ll let you find out how accurate either of them turns out to be.

The “Why Them” Test

For the main characters, I ask a blunt question. What’s lost if this person is written out entirely? If the answer is “not much,” they go.

Secondary characters get a different test. What do they reveal about my leads, or do for the story, that nobody else can? Sarah, who runs the coffee shop, never pesters Decker with small talk, and he quietly respects her for it. That tells you more about him in a paragraph than he’d ever say out loud. It’s also Sarah who mentions that a kid came in asking for him.

Keeping the Character Sheet Alive

That’s my character sheet, seven questions per character, answered before the drafting starts. It doesn’t stay frozen, though. Sometimes, as the draft develops, I realize one of my characters needs a tweak so that the story, the theme, and the people all hang together. That’s fine. The sheet gets updated, not abandoned, and the characters are usually better for it.

Next week, the theme sheet, and why theme is something I build in from the start rather than bolt on at the end.

As always, thanks for reading!

Chris