Bringing Characters to Life
When you want to bring a character to life, what do you reach for?
Think about the people you know in your own life. What distinguishes one from another? Their look, yes. Gestures. The sound of their voice. And, going deeper, their origins: geography, family, culture.
Bring some of these together in a memory, a snippet of backstory, a dream, and your character begins to come to life.
In Otherside, Marla is part of a fringe group that, at first glance, might be considered part of an “individualist” faction. But look again, and the lines grow blurry…
Meet Marla: Brought to Life in Backstory
“Before the Others, Marla’s dress was red and beaded with glass and metal that swung and clattered when she twirled, and on the tiled dance floor her sisters whirled and clapped and sang. All the noise and the light, circles forming and then spiraling outward, and every so often a dance-off in and among everything else. Marla’s shoes were abandoned on the edge of the dance floor and the bottoms of her feet were black with dirt as she turned and turned. Smiling, one of her brothers grabbed her by the hand, and then let go: her uncles and aunts were dancing, and granny, among them, wore a dress that sparkled like moonlight. Friends and family she’d never met became a blur of kind faces and heat and the deep vibration of movement, music making its way into her bones. It was enough to cover even the sound of blaster fire from the out- skirts of the city, and the sirens were quiet. Dancing, and dancing more, Marla lost everything but the precise moment. An aching, wild joy that was too much for her to hold reached out for everything around her, a blessing.”
Friends and family she’d never met became a blur of kind faces and heat and the deep vibration of movement, music making its way into her bones.
About the Author of Otherside
In addition to Otherside, Sara Barkat is the author of the National Indie Excellence Awards finalist The Shivering Ground & Other Stories. She is also the illustrator of two graphic novels: The Yellow Wall-Paper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman and The Colour out of Space by H.P. Lovecraft. Sara adores art, sailing, random coding projects, and quantum physics. You can find her at sarabarkat.com or drawing mostly daily at sadbook.substack.com
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a novel that frames itself using “the rime of the ancient mariner”
Try It: Backstory Prompt
Think of a character in a story you might like to tell. Create a vignette or a poem that tells us something about that character’s backstory. Include colors, sounds, even scents, to bring us a rich sense of the character.
Photo by Arya foto, Creative Commons, via Unsplash.
- New Video! — Brookhaven | Civil War Novel + Prompt - June 29, 2026
- Bringing Characters to Life—1 - June 15, 2026
- New Video! — Otherside | Jason “Anchored Only by Memories” - June 12, 2026
Rick Maxson says
Joe had been awake for an hour. Sitting on the edge of his bed fully dressed for hunting. His Cravenette coat crinkling with his slightest movement, the pants too added to the presence of the coming day as he repressed calling Jack to make sure he was awake. It was now 3am. The fragrance of waterproofing filled his bedroom. For Joe, that smell embodied woods and river walks, his face colliding with bitter cold, his hands wrapped around the fascination of a hand warmer, and the sound of his heavy, stiff pant legs rubbing each other as he paced himself to keep up with his uncle Jack, educating him on the ways of the wild: the names for trees; the way the river presented itself and the distinctions of wood ducks, mallards, coot, and teal. The boy could wait no longer. Hunters had to wait until sunrise, and that was a mere four hours away, but the drive to Pickerel Creek was two hours. He began to dial Jack to wake him up.
Jack Willis was a retired engineer for the C&O railroad. At fifty-five he was fit and knowledgeable about the world around him, especially the wild. Joe loved and admired him for what a boy of nine could know about his uncle.
—Joey, I guess you’re excited about Pickerel Creek, it’s 3 am. Come on over. Nell will fix you some breakfast and some sandwiches for lunch today.
Nell and Jack lived next door to Joe. Joe’s mother and Nell had purchased the Craftsman duplex in 1947 when Joe was a year old. She and Jack had no children and Nell loved Joey like he was theirs. She was college educated and refined and worked as the assistant to the comptroller for Columbus, Ohio.
L.L. Barkat says
Lots of great details tucked in here. So happy you shared, Rick! 🙂