How Do You Cast Your Characters?
My Favorite Sources for Shaping Fictional Characters
I’m inspired by a lot of things. When exploring new book ideas (novel ideas, if I’m being punny), I mostly lean on my own intuition, listening closely to what notions want to be shared as plot lines. Most of my book ideas began with their characters. By now, you’ve probably read somewhere about how the tarot showed up a decade ago in the form of a vision of the character I was meant to write. I love telling that story, but for the sake of time and not repeating myself, you can read about it here.
In summary, my storylines are character-driven. And after brainstorming ideas for who they are, building a character profile to flesh them out (pun intended), I feel like I know them—like we’re old friends.
The best characters stay on our hearts and minds, and in Part 4 of this #NaNoWriMo Support Series I’m sharing my favorite sources that help with shaping fictional characters: movies, TV shows, and tarot.
Many of the characters I’ve written were fashioned after someone living or passed whom I either found intriguing, admired, or loathed. Because many characters in books, movies, and shows are also inspired by real-life muses, I find a kinship with their writers.
Watching movies and TV shows serves as research for language, clothing, and culture, especially those with which I am unfamiliar. As my new book series falls in the magical realism and historical fiction genres, among others, lately I’ve been mostly watching and reading period pieces.
For example, the first book in my new fiction series includes three separate plot lines, one of which is set during the 1980s. If you’re a Gen Xer like me, you’re a historian, and/or you’re versed on American pop culture, then you know the ‘80s was a decade teased, spiked, and synthesized into a movement that caused a ripple in the fabric of American society that even radiated internationally when carried by pop artists and media programming.
In preparation for this first book, I’ve been watching a lot of ‘80s movies, especially those written by John Hughes. The Breakfast Club was on that list, and while watching it with my eldest son, Jalan, we started chatting about each of the five student stereotypes and how they might be represented in as tarot cards. According to a consensus of folks who investigate and hypothesize this movie, the five student stereotypes are: the geek, the princess, the jock, the basket case, and the criminal.
Let me pause here,
because it behooves me to say that back when I was a kid in the ‘80s, I didn’t realize how offensive these labels were. As a cultured adult, while I understand that some of these terms have been reclaimed, I still find a few outdated and, frankly, harmful. As such, I’m proposing an edit on a few: the geek, the diva, the athlete, the eccentric, and the rebel.
Back to my conversation with Jalan.
The Breakfast Club characters as tarot cards? Almost immediately, I knew which card I believed perfectly represented each character:
Brian the Geek, played by Anthony Michael Hall: The Page of Cups
Claire the Diva, played by Molly Ringwald: The Empress
Andrew the Athlete, played my Emilio Estevez: Knight of Pentacles
Allison the Eccentric, played by Ally Sheedy: Death
Bender the Rebel, played by Judd Nelson: Knight of Swords
Your Turn: Cast Your Characters
Think of a movie or show that takes place during the same time period or a similar fantasy world as your book or story idea. Shuffle your tarot deck and then select cards as Character avatars. Which characters and cards did you pick? Share in the comments!
About Mandy
Amanda "Mandy" Hughes is an author and instructional designer who uses the tarot to inspire storytelling. Her book Mystic Storyteller: A Writer’s Guide to Using the Tarot for Creative Inspiration and companion tarot deck are coming soon! She also writes fiction under pen names A. Lee Hughes and Mandy Lee. Mandy lives in Georgia with her husband and four sons, two of whom are furrier than the others (but not by much). Visit her website at www.haintbluecreative.com and follow her on Instagram @HaintBlueCreative.
I use a few characters from Godfather movies. They are true to life for me because I was with and married to a man in the “organization” for over a decade. I’m writing a mystery/romance that begins in the 70s and goes through the 2000s. I thought of using tarot cards but in this novel, some of my characters are real and some not.