The Outlandish Companion Page 19

  But who the heck was this character? And having created her purely for plot purposes, how was I to give her a personality? She didn’t talk to me for quite a long time, and it was difficult to crack the puzzle of her personality. She plainly wasn’t a clone of either parent, but someone unique. Who, though?

  Well, there are various ways and means of giving a character reality, none of which necessarily works all the time, but all of which may be worth trying sometimes.

  PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION

  This tends to be easy for me; I “see” people very easily. Other writers have told me that they deliberately visualize popular actors or people they know as the original basis for their characters. With the exception of the Real People (see p. 140), I never do this. In fact, I was actually rather appalled by the idea when I heard this; it seemed rather like body-snatching. Still, whatever works …

  Some writers write out the physical description of the character separately from the story itself—rather like the police description of a suspect. This description may grow to involve more than the purely physical, including things such as mannerisms and incidental characteristics (e.g., this person bites her nails, sunburns easily, smokes like a chimney—but only mentholated Super 100s—and is so overweight her thighs are chronically chafed). I don’t do this, either—I seldom write down anything at all, other than the actual text of the book itself—but many good writers do.

  I could in fact “see” Brianna quite easily; the physical part of her persona was there from the beginning. I happen to have a tall, redheaded husband, and two redheaded daughters, so I had some experience to draw on, in terms of appearance and resemblances. Still, appearance is only a beginning.

  IDIOSYNCRASY

  One may also develop a character by supplying him or her with a striking idiosyncrasy of some kind. Mr. Willoughby began to assume a personality for me when I purchased a sprightly little volume from a remainder table, titled The Sex Life of the Foot and Shoe. This went into every variety of foot fetishism one could imagine (and several that would never have occurred to me, I having led a sheltered life before I began writing novels), including a section on foot-binding and ancient Chinese attitudes toward the perfect “lotus foot.”

  Having a Chinese man in the story already—and foot-binding being in fact an aspect of Chinese culture in the eighteenth century (as well as earlier)—I couldn’t resist the notion of letting Mr. Willoughby have a “thing” for feet—with the concomitant notion of a strong attraction toward women in general—which in turn led me to the story of his escape from China, and his true vocation as a poet.

  Brianna, though, seemed not to have any striking idiosyncrasies. Part of the difficulty there, of course, was that she was quite young, with a sheltered upbringing. Parts of her emerged slowly—she had a feel for objects, the ability to make a space her own, manual dexterity, and a flair for building—but none of that was sufficiently striking as to illuminate her character for me.

  CULTURAL BACKGROUND

  One can also develop a character by supplying her with an Exotic Background. If a character comes from a different culture or society than the writer does, or than the story’s main characters do, one can sometimes understand her or round her out by reading about social customs, fairy tales (you learn as much about people from the stories they tell as from their more “official” histories), or other cultural attributes.

  Mr. Willoughby, the houngan Ishmael, Louis XV—all these characters drew on elements of an exotic cultural background. But Brianna? English by descent, American by upbringing, thoroughly contemporary in outlook. Nothing helpful there, I’m afraid.

  BACK STORY

  One can also tell the character’s “back story.” That is, what led this character to his involvement in the situation where the writer has placed him? Even though this information may not be included in the story, knowing it may give one substantial insight into the character. (And then again, some of us write the back story and can’t keep it out of the main story, which is one of the things that leads to thousand-page books.)

  Brianna’s back story, though, was really her parents’ story (all three of them). She found herself in situations as the result of actions that certainly had an effect on her—but in which she had had no active part.

  THE RATIONAL APPROACH

  I once heard a talk on character development in which an author advocated using a standard psychological test (the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory, in fact) to figure out what characters were like, and get a grip on them before writing. I’m not a rational writer at all, so this notion does nothing for me (though I suppose I wouldn’t really like to think of myself as an irrational writer).

  THE INTUITIVE APPROACH

  And finally… you can just live with characters for a while, put them in different situations inside your head (not story situations, necessarily; just things like “Character A cuts his toenails. Does Character B offer to help, watch closely, turn away in disgust?”), and gradually get a feel for them.

  Similarly, you can learn about the characters by the way the other characters regard them. Brianna finally began to come to life for me when Roger, watching her in church, thought to himself, Though capable of the most tender expressions, hers was not a gentle face. Aha! I thought. At last I know something about her; she doesn’t have a gentle face. And from that, I began to intuit why, and the conflicts that might underlie someone ungentle but at the same time capable of tenderness.

  Returning to the basic story question: What does this person want? That’s where the complexity of Brianna Randall Fraser lies, I think. The superficial answer would be “She wants her father.” But that’s not quite it.

  If she were a teenager or a younger girl, then yes. But she is an adult young woman, well-educated, fairly self-confident, and on her own. Of course she has the deep-seated yearning for a father that all girls have— but at the same time, she’s had a father’s love … and returned it.

  So she may want to know Jamie Fraser out of a sense of curiosity, loneliness, obligation, etc.—but it’s not the same feeling as that of a woman who had never had a father at all. She feels complete in herself; and yet there is that urge to know the truth about herself—and about her parents’ relationship.

  The urge to find out, though, is complicated by her feelings of attachment to Frank. Many adopted children refrain from searching for a birth parent out of feelings that this is somehow a betrayal of a beloved “real” parent. Add to this the feelings of abandonment caused by Claire’s disappearance into the past, and you have a young woman with greatly conflicted feelings: the urge to find out battling with the urge to avoid the whole issue, love for her mother versus subconscious anger at her departure, and finally—curiosity about Jamie Fraser, warring with feelings of filial love for Frank.

  The general result of all this is to cause her to become rather secretive; she deals with her conflicting urges by concealing them. Only Roger—adopted himself, but with a firm grounding in his own history— understands.

  And so gradually I “found” Brianna, mostly by watching Roger as he fought his way through Brianna’s layers of self-protection.

  ARE YOU CLAIRE?

  Evidently there are a great many people under the impression that all fiction is essentially autobiographical; I think these are the same people who want to see a movie made of the Outlander books because they want to see “what Claire and Jamie look like.”

  But to answer the question …

  Physically? Well, disregarding such small matters as height, hair and eye color, hair texture, skin pigment, and build, of course—I mean, we’re both obviously female.

  In terms of personality and attitude … well, as the result of having been raised in a conservative Catholic home and school, I am completely unable to swear. I will say, “Damn!” in situations of extreme stress, such as dropping an iron skillet on my foot, but that’s it. Consequently, Claire swears for me. Being a person of great courage and forth
rightness—attributes I admire, whether I share them or not— she’s also able to do things that I personally would be much too shy to attempt.

  Still, on one level, the answer to the question must obviously be yes. All of an author’s characters must in some way be manifestations of the author’s psyche and experience; after all, where else would you get them?

  There is a local group of readers who invite me to a formal tea once a year, for the purpose of picking my brains about what I’m writing. On one such occasion, the ladies present got onto the subject of Jack Randall, and began denouncing him with heat and passion. “He’s just loathsome!” went the refrain. “He’s such scum, such a horrible human being. I just despise him!“ And so forth and so on.

  During all of which I sat quietly, sipping my cup of Earl Grey, and thinking, You don’t have any idea that you’re talking to Black Jack Randall, do you?

  Where do characters come from? Sometimes I think it’s better not to know.

  NAMES

  Naming fictional characters has never seemed to be a problem for me; most of them simply have names, from the moment of creation. Still, sometimes I’m able to recognize the ground from which my subconscious mined a particular gem.

  This process started early on. When I decided that I should have a female character, I simply introduced her, knowing nothing about her other than the fact that she was an Englishwoman. She walked into a cottage full of Scotsmen, who all stared at her in some consternation. The leader got to his feet and introduced himself courteously as Dougal MacKenzie.

  “Dougal,” because at that point I knew very few appropriate Scottish names, but did know that my husband’s name— Douglas—was Scottish in origin, meaning “dweller by the dark water.” I got “MacKenzie” off a tartan-patterned cooler I’d seen in the grocery store (well, look, I’d only been writing for two or three days; I hadn’t had a lot of time to do research yet).

  So, Dougal MacKenzie stood up and introduced himself, asking—with furrowed brow—who this visitor might be?

  To which she replied, speaking quite clearly, “Claire Elizabeth Beauchamp— and who the hell are you?”

  Now, in retrospect, I think “Claire” was the result of my having just read Isabel Allende’s House of the Spirits, which has a significant character named Clara. Allende had a recurrent riff on this name, repeating “Claire, Clara, clairvoyant” at intervals throughout the story (the character having a certain amount of supernatural talent). This created a nice rhythm, which was likely still ringing in my inner ear—so when Claire spoke up and identified herself, the name was there on the surface of my mind.

  “Beauchamp” because the minimal amount of research I’d done to that point had referred to the French link with Scotland and its importance in the Jacobite Rising. It seemed vaguely desirable to give her a French name, so that I could later invoke French connections for her, if that seemed useful (at this point, I still thought she was an eighteenth-century woman). Anyway, Beauchamp was the name of a math teacher at my high school, and I’d been struck—in high school—by the fact that it was pronounced “Beechum,” in spite of the obviously French spelling. If I wanted a patently English lady, but with a French name, Beauchamp seemed a good choice.

  “Elizabeth”? Well, it fit, that’s all. Whereupon Claire Elizabeth Beauchamp promptly took over the story and began telling it herself. Being in no position to argue with her, I took the path of least resistance, and went along to see what would happen next.

  Jamie was originally named in compliment to the Doctor Who character who inspired the setting and time period of the book(s). This character, a young Scots lad acquired as a companion by the doctor, was named Jamie MacCrimmon—and while he had nothing in common with my character other than nationality and a certain pigheaded notion of male gallantry, I liked the name Jamie.

  So Jamie he was, but with a blank for a last name. Knowing nothing about Scotland when I began, I was reluctant to give him a last name until I knew more about the history of the Highlands and its clans. He remained “Jamie []” for several months, in fact—until I happened in the course of my research to read The Prince in the Heather, by Eric Linklater.

  This book told the story of what happened to the Bonnie Prince and his followers after the disaster at Culloden. Included in the description of those harrowing days was the poignant quote which I later used in Dragonfly in Amber: After the final battle at Culloden, eighteen Jacobite officers, all wounded, took refuge in the old house and for two days, their wounds untended, lay in pain; then they were taken out to be shot. One of them, a Fraser of the Master of Lovat’s regiment escaped the slaughter; the others were buried at the edge of the domestic park.

  Now, by this point I had “seen” enough of the story to think that it should end at Culloden—but I had the feeling that there was more to the story than that. So, on the off chance that there might one day be a sequel to this book (cough), I thought it might be advisable for Jamie [] to survive that battle—and if that were the case … well, plainly his last name should then be Fraser.

  As to the other characters in the books, some name themselves without apparent reference to anything, some names I pick from the mists of memory or the ragbag of whimsy, and others I select quite consciously—though these latter names tend to belong to minor characters.

  Colum MacKenzie (Callum, in Cross Stitch) was another character who arrived early on. Groping for a Scottish-sounding name, I picked “Colum” from one of James Clavell’s novels (Noble House, I think), in which a Scottish family had a son so named. Much, much later, when we sold the book to a U.K. publisher, and I asked them to have a Scot read it, Reay Tannahill (who read the manuscript and made many helpful comments) informed me that while this was a Gaelic name, the usual Scottish spelling was “Callum”; “Colum” is, evidently, Irish.

  Ah, well. We changed it for the U.K. edition, but since the U.S. edition had already reached the galley-proof stage, we didn’t change it there—on the grounds that the spelling would be immaterial to U.S. readers—and given the extreme variations in Gaelic spellings that I had so far encountered, Colum/Callum seemed minor.

  I WATCHED DOCTOR WHO as reruns on our local PBS channel. Owing to the differences of format between British shows and American programming, the credits of imported shows were sometimes cut off, to allow time for PBS announcements following the show. Consequently, it was not until I had finished writing Outlander that I discovered the name of the actor who had played Jamie MacCrimmon—one Frazer Hines.

  As I went on doing research through the course of the novels, I came across the legend of the Dun-bonnet—the survivor of Culloden who returned to his estate, and lived seven years in hiding in a cave, protected by his loyal tenants. This struck me as a most romantic and suitable story, so—in the larcenous fashion of novelists—I snatched it and adapted it to my own purposes.

  Many months later, I came across the story of the Dunbonnet, repeated by another source. This one, more complete, gave the real name of the man known as the Dunbonnet— one James Fraser.

  Colum’s son (or not, as the case may be), Hamish, was named in compliment to the hero of M.C. Beaton’s delightful comic novels, the Highland policeman Hamish MacBeth.

  Where did I get names like Letitia and Maura? Heaven knows: I don’t.

  Geillis Duncan was a conscious choice, though. In the course of the research, I had discovered a Scottish witch, executed in the late sixteenth century, named Geillis Duncan. I liked the name—and had also seen a passing reference in one of Dorothy Dunnett’s novels (which I much admire) to Geillis as “a witch’s name.” Little did I realize that the woman who bore it in Out-lander had also chosen it deliberately, and for the same reason! She so informed me, sometime later, when she chose to reveal her real name—or what I must presently assume to be her real name—Gillian Edgars.

  Mother Hildegarde was another who named herself. Having decided upon her profession and avocation, I set out to write her, and found the name “
Hildegarde” being insistently shoved under my nose. Nonsense, I said, I don’t think Hildegarde is even a French name. Surely she ought to be Berthe or Matilde or something. But no, it was “Hildegarde” and nothing else.

  Fine, I said, already used to argumentative characters. Have it your way, Hildegarde. We can always change it later, if the copy editor tells me it isn’t French.

  A year or two later, I found myself in London, in a store called Past Times, which specializes in the reproduction of art and artifacts from … er … past times. They had a rack of musical recordings, compositions dating from the tenth century to the twentieth, performed on period instruments and according to the performance conditions appropriate to the time of the composition. Finding this interesting, I thumbed through the rack, only to find a tape of songs composed by … one Mother Hildegarde.

  Hildegarde von Bingen, to be exact (as I recall, my actual exclamation at the time was, “Ha! So it isn’t French!“). A mystic, a composer—and an abbess—from the twelfth century. But Mother Hildegarde, nonetheless.

  As for the minor characters who don’t speak up for themselves, I often rely on a book titled Scottish Christian Names, by Leslie Alan Dunkling. This is really a rather misleading title, since a good many popular Scottish names are not “Christian” at all, coming from much more ancient Celtic roots. The author of the book really means simply “first” names, as opposed to surnames, and the general derivation, meaning, and alternative forms of each name are included.