How Nicola Griffith Creates Characters
IMPORTANT: Readercon 26 Burlington Marriott Hotel Reservation Deadline is JUNE 19
If you’re planning to stay at the Burlington Marriott for Readercon, book your room by June 19! We’ve contracted a block of rooms at the special price of $139/night. To reserve your room, call the hotel at 781-229-6565 and request the special Readercon rate. LEARN MORE ABOUT HOTEL
Hello again from Readercon 26!
We are delighted that Nicola Griffith, author of Hild, The Aud Books, Slow River and many more, will be one of our two guests of honor. In this pre-Readercon chat, we ask her how she creates such compelling characters.
The SF/F marketplace has changed dramatically since you published your first work, “Mirrors and Burnstone” in 1988. Have those changes affected your work in terms of the characters you create? If so, how?
My characters have always been women: women who love women, at that. I wrote one short story from a male perspective-but he fell in love with a woman who loved women. So, hmmn, that seems to be a fixed point in my fictional reality.
You live in the Pacific Northwest. Does Seattle culture find its way into your characters? If so, how? Examples?
I don't know if the culture finds its way into my characters, but the city does. A lot of my stories are set here, and one of my novels, the third Aud book, Always. If I planned to write a fourth, Aud would live here. As my characters are heavily influenced by their environment...
Do your characters come to life slowly as you write, or do they spring forth, fully formed? Can you describe how they come to you?
Their essence-temperament, if you like-is just there, fully armed, ready to go. But that's true of any newborn. What makes a person wholly themselves is an accretion of experience, the consequences of decisions taken or avoided. Part of a novelist's job, I think, is to accelerate that process mentally, to greenhouse the character so that the adult is ready to go on page one; that way the reader is immersed immediately in her experience. Then, in the course of the novel, she grows and changes as a result of what happens while we follow her.
But, yes, I also learn about my character as I write, because I'm forced to really think about every single thing she does, says, thinks. What she chooses to eat or wear, how she earns her money, the vocabulary and imagery she uses-with herself, with others-tells me a huge amount about her. Most of that I just know, it all came to me subconsciously while I was thinking, say, about the environment she moves through. Some of it I try and discard until it feels right. It's like a test flight: the plane is what it is, but flying it gives me a better idea of its capabilities, clues as to how to improve it. Or, y'know, it just crashes and burns.
Aud came to me in a dream: a woman asleep, sprawled naked, confident as a lion in an empty apartment in a brand-new apartment complex. She wakes with a man pointing a gun to her head. Without blinking, without any pause for thought or transition from sleep to waking nightmare, she surges off the floor and, whap!, kills him.
I woke up thinking, Wow, who was that? What kind of person can just...kill someone? Later that day, I was in the local library and I checked out two books: one, a history of Norway, including a woman called Aud the Deepminded, and the other about Norwegian architecture. The pieces snicked together: she was Aud, part Norwegian, part American. She had skills.
Hild, I wrestled with for a long time. I couldn't see her at all. And then one day I just began, and there she was, under a tree, three years old...
Which of your side characters is your favorite and why?
Ooof. There are so many. From Ammonite: Danner and Aoife, because they do their best in a hard situation. From Slow River: Spanner, because she breaks my heart. From the Aud novels: Dornan, because he's so damn cheerful, Kick, because she's like me in many ways, and Aud's mother because, well, just because. And then there's Hild. My favourite characters are legion. Breguswith is so Machiavellian it makes me grin; Edwin's cunning and self interest thrill me; Begu makes me inordinately fond; Onnen feels like the one who gave Hild a mother's love; the brothers Berht make me laugh; Gwladus fills me with admiration-and on and on. I love them all. Mostly.
Do you have complete control over your characters, or do they sometimes behave in ways that surprise you?
When I was at BEA a few months before Hild was published, I did a reading with some literary novelists-the kind of people who win the National Book Award etc. A member of the audience asked us if we knew the endings of our books or if we just let the characters or events of the novel have their way with us. (That's not exactly how he put it-he wouldn't have dared; it was one of those evenings-but that's pretty much what he meant: Were we so besotted we were easily swayed?) All the Famous and Critically acclaimed writers said, essentially, that the prose was in charge. I snorted. The prose is not in charge. That's like a painter saying the pigment is in charge. I’m a fucking writer not a channel to the spirit world; I am god of my work. I said as much, and told them that I knew the very last line of the very last Hild novel and I'm heading there relentlessly.
What I didn't say is that there are myriad ways to get there.
Every day when I sit down at my keyboard, I have a notion of what I have to achieve that day-where Hild is, who she's with, some notion of what has to happen-but the actual events and the dialogue often take me by surprise. And, to be frank, the surprises often delight me. Some of the best moments of the book were unplanned. The framework is planned but not the moments, or the people who appear with a bang and flash and a bag of writerly jewels. Begu came from nowhere, and Gwladus and Oeric and Morud. All the gesiths and half the thegns. Some of the pithy metaphors and delicious imagery. I just sit down and know stuff will happen. And so it does.
See Nicola Griffith, and our other guest of honor, Gary K. Wolfe at Readercon 26, July 9 - 12 at the Burlington Marriott, Burlington, MA.
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If you’re planning to stay at the Burlington Marriott for Readercon, book your room by June 19! We’ve contracted a block of rooms at the special price of $139/night. To reserve your room, call the hotel at 781-229-6565 and request the special Readercon rate. LEARN MORE ABOUT HOTEL
Hello again from Readercon 26!
We are delighted that Nicola Griffith, author of Hild, The Aud Books, Slow River and many more, will be one of our two guests of honor. In this pre-Readercon chat, we ask her how she creates such compelling characters.
The SF/F marketplace has changed dramatically since you published your first work, “Mirrors and Burnstone” in 1988. Have those changes affected your work in terms of the characters you create? If so, how?
My characters have always been women: women who love women, at that. I wrote one short story from a male perspective-but he fell in love with a woman who loved women. So, hmmn, that seems to be a fixed point in my fictional reality.
You live in the Pacific Northwest. Does Seattle culture find its way into your characters? If so, how? Examples?
I don't know if the culture finds its way into my characters, but the city does. A lot of my stories are set here, and one of my novels, the third Aud book, Always. If I planned to write a fourth, Aud would live here. As my characters are heavily influenced by their environment...
Do your characters come to life slowly as you write, or do they spring forth, fully formed? Can you describe how they come to you?
Their essence-temperament, if you like-is just there, fully armed, ready to go. But that's true of any newborn. What makes a person wholly themselves is an accretion of experience, the consequences of decisions taken or avoided. Part of a novelist's job, I think, is to accelerate that process mentally, to greenhouse the character so that the adult is ready to go on page one; that way the reader is immersed immediately in her experience. Then, in the course of the novel, she grows and changes as a result of what happens while we follow her.
But, yes, I also learn about my character as I write, because I'm forced to really think about every single thing she does, says, thinks. What she chooses to eat or wear, how she earns her money, the vocabulary and imagery she uses-with herself, with others-tells me a huge amount about her. Most of that I just know, it all came to me subconsciously while I was thinking, say, about the environment she moves through. Some of it I try and discard until it feels right. It's like a test flight: the plane is what it is, but flying it gives me a better idea of its capabilities, clues as to how to improve it. Or, y'know, it just crashes and burns.
Aud came to me in a dream: a woman asleep, sprawled naked, confident as a lion in an empty apartment in a brand-new apartment complex. She wakes with a man pointing a gun to her head. Without blinking, without any pause for thought or transition from sleep to waking nightmare, she surges off the floor and, whap!, kills him.
I woke up thinking, Wow, who was that? What kind of person can just...kill someone? Later that day, I was in the local library and I checked out two books: one, a history of Norway, including a woman called Aud the Deepminded, and the other about Norwegian architecture. The pieces snicked together: she was Aud, part Norwegian, part American. She had skills.
Hild, I wrestled with for a long time. I couldn't see her at all. And then one day I just began, and there she was, under a tree, three years old...
Which of your side characters is your favorite and why?
Ooof. There are so many. From Ammonite: Danner and Aoife, because they do their best in a hard situation. From Slow River: Spanner, because she breaks my heart. From the Aud novels: Dornan, because he's so damn cheerful, Kick, because she's like me in many ways, and Aud's mother because, well, just because. And then there's Hild. My favourite characters are legion. Breguswith is so Machiavellian it makes me grin; Edwin's cunning and self interest thrill me; Begu makes me inordinately fond; Onnen feels like the one who gave Hild a mother's love; the brothers Berht make me laugh; Gwladus fills me with admiration-and on and on. I love them all. Mostly.
Do you have complete control over your characters, or do they sometimes behave in ways that surprise you?
When I was at BEA a few months before Hild was published, I did a reading with some literary novelists-the kind of people who win the National Book Award etc. A member of the audience asked us if we knew the endings of our books or if we just let the characters or events of the novel have their way with us. (That's not exactly how he put it-he wouldn't have dared; it was one of those evenings-but that's pretty much what he meant: Were we so besotted we were easily swayed?) All the Famous and Critically acclaimed writers said, essentially, that the prose was in charge. I snorted. The prose is not in charge. That's like a painter saying the pigment is in charge. I’m a fucking writer not a channel to the spirit world; I am god of my work. I said as much, and told them that I knew the very last line of the very last Hild novel and I'm heading there relentlessly.
What I didn't say is that there are myriad ways to get there.
Every day when I sit down at my keyboard, I have a notion of what I have to achieve that day-where Hild is, who she's with, some notion of what has to happen-but the actual events and the dialogue often take me by surprise. And, to be frank, the surprises often delight me. Some of the best moments of the book were unplanned. The framework is planned but not the moments, or the people who appear with a bang and flash and a bag of writerly jewels. Begu came from nowhere, and Gwladus and Oeric and Morud. All the gesiths and half the thegns. Some of the pithy metaphors and delicious imagery. I just sit down and know stuff will happen. And so it does.
See Nicola Griffith, and our other guest of honor, Gary K. Wolfe at Readercon 26, July 9 - 12 at the Burlington Marriott, Burlington, MA.
STILL NEED TO REGISTER
FOR READERCON 26?
REGISTER NOW
HELP US GET THE WORD OUT
AND MAKE READERCON 26 THE BEST EVER!
• Tell your friends, your SF readers, and your social media followers about Readercon and why they should come.
• Join and post often on our Facebook Group.
• Tweet up a Readercon storm! Follow us on Twitter @Readercon. Use hashtag #readercon.
• Don't miss a single update! If you haven’t already done so, join our mail list and get Readercon news sent right to your inbox. SIGN UP FOR EMAILS.