My focus recently has been on creating the backstory, the logic of Lyra’s world that will explain why things happen the way they are happening: how she discovers she has phoenix cells, why her parents would go on the run, how they’re eventually caught, etc.
But what I learned is that it’s not just Lyra’s backstory–it also belongs to her mom and her dad and her sister and the doctor who discovers her phoenix cells and the woman Lyra befriends and the boy who helps her and all the other secondary characters who appear in Lyra’s life.
Lyra may be the star, but each character who orbits her is the star in his or her own life–which means for their actions to make sense when they interact with Lyra, they, too, have to have a full, comprehensive and detailed backstory. For example, why have I made Lyra’s mom Charlotte more paranoid about getting caught than her dad John? Because I’ve made Charlotte a war veteran. She was a soldier in the war overseas who saw the horrors and futility of war; she’s seen first hand what her military superiors are capable of and therefore fears even more for Lyra’s safety than her dad, who is a civilian.
I’m creating another character, Mama Jua, an old woman who befriends Lyra. To many around her, she seems like a saint: she helps orphans and dispenses wisdom and kindness, and laughs with a unique joie-de-vivre in these dark, plague-ridden times. Yet, I don’t want her to be a stock character, a wise-old woman whose only purpose is to guide Lyra. Yes, she does all that, but why? Because Mama Jua is estranged from her own adult daughter. Because Mama Jua often ignored her own daughter as a child, she now feels compelled to make up for that by helping kids today. Which of course, begs the question, why did Mama Jua ignore her daughter? I have to be able to answer that, even if none of it appears in the novel, because it influences how I write Mama Jua’s interaction with Lyra.
All those characters…that’s a lot of work ahead of me.
Now I’m thinking, maybe I should have stranded Lyra on a deserted island.
Alone.
