Hi BK Duncan To what extent to you write yourself into the protagonists story to see where it leads or do you favour a more formally structured path?.

B.K. Duncan My protagonists are always themselves and never me – it’s like having a best friend who you are close to and know very well but can never fully predict. Where I do call on my own experiences is when it comes to emotional reactions. I can’t possibly know how anybody else really feels when they are in love, betrayed, hurt, angry, hopeful or disappointed, so I have to give characters my own reactions because they are the only ones I know from the inside. But they will differ with each character’s personality, just as they change within me depending on circumstances, age, and with the coolness of hindsight (sometimes: often they are painfully current!).

As with a best friend, I learn more about my characters from us spending time together. Before I start a novel I do everything I can to dig under the skin to find out what makes my character tick – and with the protagonist, this can take files of detailed work. Every aspect I can think of that would make them who they are. There my knowledge of psychology comes into play with the sorts of things that mould each of us into the unique person we are (background, family, relationships, hopes, fears, strengths, flaws, moral compass etc) and it’s these areas that inform the attitudes I can assign to each character. And, as I write historical fiction, each must be appropriate to the time in which they would’ve lived. I also go off-piste a little and scour books on star signs, enneagrams, transactional analysis or motivational theory to make sure I am imbuing my characters with qualities I don’t possess and wouldn’t automatically think of (being house-proud or excessively fatalistic, for example) which helps check:
a) they are all not like me;
b) are different from each other;
c) have the potential to clash personalities and for misunderstandings (always great for plot complications).

But it is in the writing of the story that I discover who they truly are and this, as you suggest, does change the plot as I realise they wouldn’t react in the way I had sketched out for them or have extra depths I can use to my advantage. The first draft (and often the next ones) is always about getting the story down. It is in the rewriting that is comes alive. When the characters begin to live and breathe. So, a structured approach, some insight into what makes people who they are, and a fair degree of alchemy arising from the writing process are what ties the story to the characters and the blends the characters into the story. Then who knows where it might lead?

flag