Deconstruction

If you want to know how to create a character, I would say read this blog post. It pretty much sums it up. I can stop writing now.

But being me . . . and having my coffee to get me going, I'll add that I often think the movie Deconstructing Harry is a pretty accurate portrayal of the way writers create characters.

In general, I am asked to read a lot of fiction in my life, both as an editor, and as a writer with a lot of writer-pals. I started thinking about when a book is a meh, and when a book holds together for me . . . and it is that idea that there is a seamless, uniting thread to a character. EVEN in the contradictions.

I think about it as applied to me. I loathe organized religion, but take my children to church every Sunday. Why? I vacillate between moral relativism and ethical realism, and decided I wanted to offer them solace in an insane world. Contradictory? Sure. I hate clutter but love tchotchkes--can't bear to part with them, really. Why? Because I am completely sentimental, which goes back to solace for my children, which . . . uniting threads.

Which brings me to the meh . . . I think that sometimes writers go about this process BACKWARDS. They START with the quirks. "Oh, I think it would be cool if he talked to his gun and was an alcoholic." Maybe they start with what they think will sell or what is required of the genre, but it can feel very hollow and lack emotional depth.

I tend to think start with the whole . . . deconstruct to the parts. Create a unifying thread.

In my wip, Aleks is a stoic and self-contained doctor. He was orphaned by Chernobyl, and had thydroid cancer as a child and spent time in isolation wards in a dreary children's hospital behind the Iron Curtain. When you deconstruct Aleks, you find the little boy. His unifying thread is solitariness. He is of this world but apart from it.

In essence, my character has a THEME.

Thoughts? How would you deconstruct your latest character? What trait has its roots in a unifying thread?