guest post: Author Sean Beaudoin

Sean Beaudoin is the author of Going Nowhere Faster, Fade to Blue, and the latest; You Killed Wesley Payne. I'm glad to have a chance to ask him how he got all those ideas of writing his novel's characters. Whether it's from his experience, someone he knows, or he just made it up. And this what he told me;

Creating Characters and Choosing Favorites:
How You Killed Wesley Payne Was Cast

As to the question of how I go about creating a character, I would say that I pretty much don't. I usually just start writing. I'll have a situation and notes and ideas about how the chapters will lay out. I'll know what the character looks like, and what he wants and if he's going to get it or not. But I find that the circumstances end up defining the character as I go along. We sort of meet each other sentence by sentence, trading jabs, ducking behind paragraphs, until I feel like I know them pretty well. Once it seems like we've hung out at the mall for a while, they can begin to sort of speak for themselves. I don't have to try very hard to "create", I just need to get out of the way and let them opine. The strange thing is, most characters want to talk and talk. Sometimes you can't get them to shut up, they're so in love with the sound of their own voices. They want to be in every scene. It's my job as the author to let them know when to pipe down and stay on point.

I love all my characters equally. It’s not fair to play favorites with them. But I would say one of the most interesting to write was Sophie from Fade to Blue. It was a lot of fun seeing the world, or at least her world, from a female perspective. She discovered her voice very quickly, and I always knew what she was thinking. A lot of times I wished I could call her up and see if she wanted to go see a movie or head over to the park and toss the Frisbee around. She was clearly a girl who knew how to kill an afternoon in an entertaining way.

I almost never base a character on anyone I know in person. It just doesn’t seem like that much fun. But I do think most characters are usually amalgams of all the people an author has ever met. Then it’s just a matter of cherry picking tics or tendencies, little snatches of dialog or funny anecdotes.

But don’t tell that to Wesley Payne, who the best man at my wedding was.

About the Author:

Sean Beaudoin is the author of Going Nowhere Faster, Fade to Blue, and You Killed Wesley Payne. His stories and articles have appeared in numerous publications including Glimmer Train, The New Orleans Review, The Nervous Breakdown, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Onion, Instant City, The Rumpus, Opium, Barrelhouse, Redivider, Narrative, and Spirit: the In-flight magazine of Southwest Airlines. He is currently working on a collection of short stories and a crime fiction novel.

Visit Author at: Website | Blog | Twitter | Facebook | YouTube


Thanks Sean for stopping by at Darlyn & Books!

Come back tomorrow for a book giveaway in courtesy of Sean Beaudoin =)