Writing a thriller
Chris Carter, author of The Crucifix Killer tells us about the development of his central character, Robert Hunter.
Who is Robert Hunter?
Readers frequently fall in love with a character and want to know more about him or her, and I can say that’s the same for authors.
Not long ago an interviewer asked me – “I know Robert Hunter is a criminal behavior psychologist turned detective for the Robbery Homicide Division of the LAPD, but who really is Robert Hunter?”
One of the real pleasures of writing a series is the ability to see the characters grow and change over a period of time, to get to know them in a multitude of situations. That’s exactly what’s happening to me concerning Robert Hunter. Though at the time of writing this piece only my first novel, The Crucifix Killer, has been released, I’m now writing my third book in the series. The second, The Executioner, will be released in hardback in July 2010.
With every book I write, I learn a little more about Robert Hunter, his strengths, his downfalls, his quirks, what makes him tick and what doesn’t. That’s exactly the experience I want to give the reader: the chance to find out a little more about Hunter with every novel.
In The Crucifix Killer the readers are introduced to Robert Hunter for the first time. They get to know a little about his childhood. How he lost his mother to cancer at the age of seven. How he was way too smart for his age and could figure things out a lot faster than most. They also get to know why, after receiving his PhD in Criminal Behavior Analysis and Biopsychology at just twenty-three-years-old, he decided to join the LAPD instead of going for the predictable choice of becoming a profiler, despite insistence from the FBI.
In the second novel, The Executioner, the readers will find out a little more about his early life and his relationship with his mother before she passed away. There are also a few new revelations about his personality.
A friend of mine, after reading The Crucifix Killer said – “Do you realize how much of you there is in Robert Hunter?” I said that I didn’t think there was that much. She said I was wrong.
Most writers, when starting a series, start with an idea for a center character, but that’s just what it is, an idea. That idea develops a little more with every book, and the writer, together with the readers start to understand the center character more and more.
I guess what I’m trying to say is that the best way to find out who Robert Hunter really is, and probably any character in any series, is to follow his progress throughout the books.
April 30th, 2011 at 9:42 pm
I would reckon this technique is applied by a lot of the successful crime/thriller writers, for example, Ian Rankin in his Rebus Novels, set in Edinburgh. As he himself admitted, he probably made ‘Rebus’ too old at the beginning and therefore had to pension him off in ‘Exit Music.’ However, once you have your readers hooked, you can then entice them with subsequent crime novels in spite of changing the main character.