In one of her Writers’ Digest columns, Nancy Kress states that the job of the first line of your story is to get the reader to read the next line, and the job of that line is to get the reader to read the line following that, and so on until the very last line. That’s why active writing is so important, and why sensory data are encouraged in the richest language possible without overloading the reader. But the writer can power-pack his story with as much rich description as the page will carry, she can make every word alive with meaning and import, but if his characters are uninteresting then it is all for naught. The reader will give up your story for more stimulating environs. So how do you write stories with rich and varied characters?

     Giving your characters character: My favorite character anecdote comes from reading Isaac Asimov’s THE NAKED SUN. For those of you who have not read this fifties SF work, it is one of Asimov’s first Robot novels. It involves Lije Bailey from earth and R. Daneel Olivaw, a robot with a positronic brain (Data was not the first to have such a device) living (?) on the planet Solaria. Lije Bailey is investigating a murder at the same location, a world sparsely populated with wealthy humans who have as little contact with others as they can get away with. Bailey interviews a woman at some point in the story, who prepends the phrase, “skies above!” to every statement she makes.

     I have forgotten almost every other character in that novel except Bailey, Olivaw, and this anonymous woman (I read the book thirty years ago), and the only reason I remember her is because of that marvelous bit of character Asimov pastes onto her cameo appearance. Her exclamation is a bit of color that I can never forget.

     Such characteristics are sometimes called “tags.” Think of some of your favorite television characters. X-Files Mulder ate sunflower seeds. Farscape’s Crighton had a kind of sophisticated cynicism that allowed him to say “we aren’t at war with any other species: we’re too busy kicking the crap out of ourselves to be bothered.” Zaahn had her “worship of the godess,” and Rygel passed helium when he became nervous. In Star Trek (the original series) we have the greatest TV characterization ever attempted in SF to that time in Spock; a half-human, half-alien hybrid who eschews emotion in favor of logic, always logic. As a matter of fact, that whole series is full of brilliant characters, whether its Bones with his “I’m a doctor, not a (fill in the blank)!” or Scotty’s protestation of feigned ineptitude, or Chekov’s Russian accent, or Uhura’s lovely singing. The writers of that ground-breaking series were some of the best in the business, and they knew their stuff, and that stuff was remarkable character traits that made them memorable and colorful. Who will easily forget Harcourt Fenton Mudd? Or Khan Noonien Singh? I believe that Star Trek survived to become the celebrated series that it is today precisely because the characters were so memorable, a tradition that the writers of later incarnations attempted with more or less success to continue, and that such luminaries as George Lucas attempted to copy when building their own successes.

     So what does one do to develop character in one’s characters?For starters, write down a detailed history of your most important persons. Start young. For example: Bleys Ahrens started school in a Jesuit monastery at the age of five, already knowing how to read and write, and already knowing how to do simple arithmetic. At age seven his school had a which he decided would have not happened if control had been maintained. At age nine… and so on (to be sure, the above is completely from my own imagination—Gordon R. Dickson, I’ve no doubt, built his own history of Bleys, which may or may not have looked like this one).

     Once you have a history, fill out the behavioral quirks. We all have quirks, why shouldn’t our characters? In my office, Waldo likes to complain (“this is a really stupid idea”), Rob likes to whine (“why am I always required to wear a tie? Joanie doesn’t have too!”), and Fred’s mouth makes a stevedore’s sound like a church choir (sorry, I’ll leave that one to your imaginations—by the way, these are not real names and not real persons). Additionally, did you know that Fred wears clothing purchased from the Goodwill, and then washes them rarely? Nor I’ll bet did you realize that Rob is cheap, saving old teabags for repeat use. On the other hand, Waldo has a heart of gold, but he works hard to conceal it because he considers it a weakness. Rob is a Christian, but he smokes long, thick black cigars and enjoys optical banquets (he likes looking at women). Meanwhile Fred’s abject honesty masks a larcenous heart. By the way, Kirkegaard, their boss is a recovering alcoholic who wears pinstripe suits, professionally laundered shirts with a bow tie, shaves his head, and never speaks in sentences of fewer that twenty-five words and he never uses a single syllable word when he can find a word with three or more syllables to use in its place—nor does he contract. Now there’s a bunch of characters to liven up a story!

     So, you’ve developed characters, their histories, given them interesting behavioral twists and generally fleshed them out so that they become thicker than cardboard. How can you know that they are developed enough? Well, that’s not an easy answer, but one sure indicator is when the characters hijack the story. Here you are, Johnny Plotsetter, with a particular message you want to transmit and very definite steps you want your story to take. Suddenly, on page three, Darvid the butler takes a unexpected principled stand against his employer, going so far as to force the man to do the right thing by whatever means he has at hand. You didn’t plan for it. In fact it may completely derail the original plot, but because you have put so much work into your character, you suddenly find that he cannot act any other way or you ruin either the story or the character, or both. This has happened to me in my writings, and the left-hand turn in the story plot that resulted absolutely stunned (and delighted!) me.

     Of course, if that happens, there’s not much you can do except ride that roller coaster. However when it does you can also be pretty certain that you have a solid character who will stand out to your readers even under the closest scrutiny, worthy of their affection or scorn (either coin is acceptable to pay for a story’s success).

     First and last this issue is the return of Editor Emeritus of Anotherealm, Jean Goldstrom (who obviously has a thing for animals). She leads off with our Featured Story and closes out with a second offering, which we wanted to fit in this time rather than make you or her wait for Web17—a Double Dose of excellence! Our cover story, “Catastrophic Judgement Day,” examines the final destination of an accomplished doctor who did so much for humanity, and to cats (I promise you, as a Presbyterian I took no offense). And in her second contribution, “Persistence of the Soul,” our protagonists find out that friendship outlasts even the most final of events.

     In “A Few More Seconds” Joe Ficor provides us with high drama in the depths of space when after a catastrophic explosion in the depths of an uninhabited star system his protagonist Jaron finds himself facing a very bleak future, but also finally understands his family’s weird religious notions. In “Beloved Ghosts” Danielle Parker visits a planet of aboriginal inhabitants who have the ability to pluck out memories from our crania, even those most grotesque. H. H. Morris gives us a chilling look into one possible future in his short, “Cease Operations.”

     Jonathan Snyder provides the first installment of a chilling space opera he calls “Dark World;” a mystery wrapped up in the costume of a ghost story on a dismal and frightening world. Stay tuned for more from him. Meanwhile Neville Rhys Barnes returns to the pages of GateWay with a remarkable story called “The Outlaw,” about the travels of a young man named Yohan. Ahmed Khan returns to our pages with a little tale called “Those Who Don’t Lie.” It’s told in a unique way, with a rather unexpected viewpoint, and features a new kind of life that, because of its nature, manages to thwart the arrogance of the murderously unjust.

     Weston Louis joins this magazine for the first time with a remarkable story about a young woman of ancient Persia who makes a startling, life-changing journey to the heart of the Big Apple, finds a life-mate there, and returns home to reshape history. I strongly recommend the highly entertaining “Veil of Shushan.”

     And there’s more where they came from. So pop the popcorn, fill up on the lemonade, kick off the shoes, lay back in the warm spring sun and enjoy these wonderful, welcome stories!

John A.M. Darnell Editor-in-Chief April, 2006