Presenter: Welcome to Ask the Author, the podcast where kids get to ask published authors how they create their stories.
Presenter: Today we’re talking to Hannah Gold. We’re asking her about how she creates memorable characters in her book.
Hannah: Hi, I’m Hannah Gold. I’m a children’s author. Today I’m gonna be talking about how I create characters in my second book, which is called The Lost Whale.
Presenter: The Lost Whale is about a boy called Rio who is sent to California to stay with his grandma by his mum, who is not well.
Presenter: Rio doesn’t want to be there, but he finds his mum’s childhood sketchbook and sees some amazing pictures of a whale. Let’s listen to Hannah Gold read from the story.
Hannah “A head, a tail flicking out of the ocean. Water shooting up from a blowhole. A picture of a whale leaping in the air. Yet another with a whale gliding along the surface. Other sketches capturing more tails, more spectacular leaps, more heads poking out of the water. Some were of individual whales, and others were of mothers and their calves. Tearing his gaze away, Rio glanced out of the window towards the ocean, where the surface lay flat and calm. He remembered Mum telling him about the whales when she was trying to get him excited about California. Apparently there were lots of them out there. Rio had doubted seeing a whale could be that exciting, but now looking at the pictures, a strange shivery feeling ran down his spine.”
Presenter: We’ve got questions for Hannah and how she creates the characters in her books, so let’s ask the author.
Presenter: How do you decide who your characters are? Do they change while you are writing the story?
Hannah: Oh, that, that’s a really great question. I always start my books knowing my characters first of all. So I had in my mind I was going to start with Rio, and then we had White Beak the whale. But I do confess that Rio did change quite a lot during the writing of the story. He was quite a slippery character to get hold of. So it’s quite normal that you start out with one idea and then they change as you write.
Presenter: Do you like base any characters in your book on anyone who’s been through a lot in their life or anyone who’s your friend?
Hannah: I often draw inspiration from real life for my characters, but there’s no one person that they model in particular, just lots of different people. So Rio had a little bit of me in him because when I was younger, my dad went through quite a negative experience like Rio’s mom. And also probably there’s some of me in Rio’s grandmother, and there’s probably some of me in White Beak as well, so we put ourselves in all our characters and then we draw inspiration from other people too. But a lot of it does come from your imagination too.
Presenter: Are your characters always either good or bad, or are they a mix?
Hannah: I think every character has good and bad in them. So we kind of have to make them relatable. And we have to separate what makes a good person or a bad person from what makes a good action or a bad action. Sometimes good people can do sort of bad things and sometimes bad people can do good things. So you want to make it kind of believable. So it sits halfway in the middle between good and bad.
Presenter: Why did you pick to do animals in your books and not like humans? Would you ever write a book from the animal’s perspective?
Hannah: You know what, the answer is really simple. It’s because I love animals. When I was younger, I had loads of animals growing up and I still have such a soft spot for them. And I think one of the biggest pieces of advice that I could give to any budding author’s listening is write about what you love. So if you love animals, write about them too. I would love to write a short story or a book from an animal’s perspective. I’ve actually done a short story in the Roald Dahl Christmas anthology. It’s called Charlie and the Christmas Factory, and I wrote a story from Frankie Fox’s point of view. That’s the Fantastic Fox’s daughter. That was really good fun. I think I’d love to do that again in a bigger book. So watch this space.
Presenter: Thanks so much, Hannah. We just have one final question for you.
Presenter: Do you have a top tip about how we should write our characters in all of our stories?
Hannah: So one of the things that I might do to help me develop my characters is firstly understanding that no character ever comes fully formed on the page. When I start writing my books, it’s really rare that a character just appears fully fleshed. So quite often I discover my character during the actual writing. And I think that’s really important because when we start writing, we often have this expectation that everything’s going to come out perfect, even for someone like me, and it doesn’t. It’s only during the writing process that I might think, oh, my character actually wants to do this in this particular situation, or they want to do that, and I wasn’t expecting that. So really, it’s coming at it with an element of being open minded and letting go of that perfectionism and just seeing where the character takes you, rather than you trying to take the character.
Presenter: Today we learned about how authors create memorable characters…
Presenter: …and how characters can be inspired by lots of different people.
Presenter: I’m going to start writing about a character and get to know who they are as I write.
Presenter: There are more writers answering our questions about how they create stories in Ask the Author episodes on the BBC Bitesize website.
Presenter: Thanks for listening.
Description
In this episode of Ask the Author, Hannah Gold answers pupils’ questions about how she creates characters. She talks about Rio, a character from The Lost Whale.
Hannah explains how characters evolve, why they don’t need to be all good or all bad, and shares a top tip – “write what you love and let your characters surprise you”.
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