Why Do Some Characters Live On Beyond The Book?

March 16, 2020 | By Kate Bradrley | 2 Replies More

Why is it that some characters just don’t disappear? The book is finished, the edits have been completed, the next work is in progress and yet… a particular character is still refusing to rest or retire or whatever it is that characters do when the writer has finished the book.

I’ve been reflecting on this, because there is still a character that is very much with me – one that just simply refuses to let me go. To Keep You Safe was e-published in October last year and the print copy is out in March 2020. The premise is: how far would you go to keep a child that wasn’t yours safe?

The story is of teacher Jenni, who becomes concerned that her vulnerable pupil, Destiny, is at risk of being snatched by a gang: unless she acts immediately Destiny will be lost forever.

I won’t say if it’s Jenni or Destiny (answers on a postcard please), that still stalks me silently, side-stepping me in my shadow, so that she is always, still, well, just here. But it has left me thinking why. Why is she still here with me when the other characters, are well, for want of a better word, simply asleep?

I know I’m not alone with characters that live on beyond the book. My youngest son feels the same. World Book Day is just around the corner, on the 5^th March (the same day To Keep You Safe is launched, good folks). On this day, children at his school are encouraged to dress up as their favourite character from a book. ‘Who do you want to be this year?’ I asked him. His answer was immediate: ‘Mr Happy.’ I reminded him that he had been a Mr Man both last year and the year before.

In that time, as an enthusiastic reader, he has moved onto more complex, middle grade fiction, but he was resolute. It would be a Mr Man again. Lucky for him, I’m pretty nifty with coloured card and a staple gun. Although he couldn’t define why it is Mr Happy and his gang that are so appealing to him, I did remember that as a child, I felt the same about Roger Hargreaves’ creations. Loved by millions of children, they encapsulate that something special that keeps my son engaged even after he has closed the book.

My son is the reader, Hargreaves and his son now too, the writer, but we are all readers and writers, so is there any difference between those characters who won’t let you go? Psychologists have found that we experience what we have read in the same neurological regions of our brain, as if we had lived it for real. Researchers at Stanford University found through MRI imaging, reading results in an increase in blood flow that is ‘dramatic and unexpected.’

The sheer act of reading something absorbing, increases blood to our brains. Furthermore, different types of reading provoked different types of responses. Natalie Philips, assistant professor of English at Michigan State University, found that reading provoked ‘more distinct patterns in the brain’ that are ‘far more complex than just work and play.’ If that is true of reading, then surely that must be true of writing too?

This complexity within the brain, surely, can be partly experienced as empathy. Through studying macaque monkeys in the 1980s, scientists realised that the monkeys had an amazing ability to understand and share the feelings of another. The empathy, neuroscientists found, was experienced in the brain through mirror neurons, causing a reaction even when something isn’t happening to us directly. As writers, we create situations to be as empathetic, evocative and as engaging as we possibly can.

It’s our job to deliver a window — no a door – to another world, another experience, that is possibly transformative, but always absorbing. Otherwise we haven’t done our job. And it’s our characters that walk the readers through the door. Certainly there are characters that have walked me into another world, but have stayed with me after the door is shut.

I have been considering if there’s any commonality between them. I’m not sure there is. Some characters are ‘good’, yet some are ‘bad’. Among the longest living to me include Cooper’s Rupert Campbell-Black; Nabokov’s Humbert Humbert, Blyton’s George; Salinger’s Holden Caulfield and King’s Frannie Goldsmith. Frannie is ‘good’ and determined, Rupert often ‘bad’. Humbert beyond bad. Before I dismiss the concept of feeling empathy for unpleasant characters, I remind myself of the nuance between that and sympathy.

I might not understand other characters, but it doesn’t mean that – through others’ skilful writing, I can’t experience their feelings. Perhaps the only commonality between memorable characters is that for some reason, in my brain, the blood flow increased, the mirror neurons fired as their character’s feelings moved from someone else’s imagination into my own.

Perhaps that’s what happened to me: my character has enacted my neurons in her creation to the extent that I feel I know her so well, she seems as real to me as anyone I know. Perhaps it’s about how she makes me feel – back to that empathy factor again. At some point, perhaps in her creation before she even made it onto the page, I started emphasising with her, and now she’s no longer on the page for me, I’m still quietly emphasising with her still. I hope she speaks to at least one other person in the same way she does for me.

Perhaps then she might – finally – let me go.

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Kate Bradley worked for many years managing services for people who are marginalised by society; her work has taken her into prisons, mental health hospitals and alongside the homeless. She currently works in education. She holds a first class degree in English Literature, in addition to qualifications in creative writing, coaching and teaching. Kate lives in a small coastal town just outside of Brighton with her husband and sons.

She would love you to follow her on twitter at Kate__Bradley.

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TO KEEP YOU SAFE: a nail-biting suspense thriller that asks: how far would you go to save a child that isn’t yours?

You don’t know who they are. You don’t know why they’re hunting her. But you know she’s in danger.

What do you do?

When teacher Jenni Wales sees 15-year-old Destiny’s black eye, she’s immediately worried. Destiny isn’t your average student: she’s smart, genius IQ smart, and she’s in care. But concern turns to fear when Jenni witnesses an attempt to abduct Jenni from school.

Who are these men and what can Destiny know to make them hunt her?

With those around her not taking the threat seriously, Jenni does the only thing she can think of to keep Destiny safe: she takes her.

buy TO KEEP YOU SAFE by Kate Bradley

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