The Character Biography
The second phase of character creation generates a small biography of the character. People tend to call a character realistic if there are moments when the character recalls key childhood events, reveals an event that has become traumatic, or when the dynamic of the character's family becomes apparant. We're still very much in thrall to older notions of psychology based in psychoanalysis. Of course Americans have their own version of psychoanalysis called "psychobabble" and you're free to draw on that tradition as you create your character's biography. A remarkably useful tool for this task is the DSM-III for wonderful thumbnail lists of symptoms. More recent editions are highly practical, but the drift toward medicalization doesn't serve writers as well as it serves patients. The bio below is from a book abandoned by Ray Buck and Hugh Culik.

Remember, there's a third stage to character creation:

 


SAMPLE CHARACTER BIOGRAPHY

ROBERT EMMETT [based on Robert Emmett, Irish revolutionary who led rebellion of 1803, which, when its inevitable failure descended, fled to Wicklow where a safe passage was arranged to America. Of course Emmett re-entered Dublin to bid his beloved goodbye, and he was captured and hanged. After his sentence, he gave the following statement, one which has for the Irish the same power than a speech such as the Gettysburg address holds for us:
     "My lords you are impatient for the sacrifice. The blood which you seek is not congealed by the artificial terrors which surround your victim -- it circulates warmly and unruffled through the channels which God created for noble purposes, but which you are now bent to destroy, for purposes so grievous that they cry to heaven. But yet be patient! I have but a few more words to say -- I am going to my cold and silent grave -- my lamp of life is nearly extinguished -- my race is run -- the grave opens to receive me, and I sink into it bosom. I have but one request to make at my departure from this world, it is -- the charity of its silence. Let no man write my epitaph; for as no man, who know my motives, dare now vindicate them, let now prejudice or ignorance asperse them. let them rest in obscurity and peace! Let my memory be left in oblivion, and my tomb remain uninscribed, until other times and other men can do justice to my character. When my country takes her place among the nations of the earth, then, and not till then, let my epitaph be written. I have done."
          The English hanged Emmett, and then he was drawn and quartered.
          Robert Emmett is a Mickey Rourke type character: the hero and about thirty years old. An Irish Catholic who is bright, lower class, addicted to stories of IRA terrorism and of futile Irish rebellion. As omnivorous in his reading as in his consumption of alcohol, Robert can quote an array of Irish writers. Stubborn-stupid, in and out of trouble as an adolescent, he is nonetheless an honorable man, one whose word is his bond.
          Robert was born in Boston to Irish parents, both of whom were alcoholics. Their anger at schools, governments, priests, cab drivers, and store clerks was monumental. Anyone who held the least bit of authority provoked them. Robert grew up with nine siblings, and like Emma, he is the youngest.
          In junior high school and high school his intelligence and rebellion nearly tore him apart; teachers recognized his vivid intelligence, attempted to nurture him, but always came away realizing that he would never submit himself to the "authority" of a discipline any more than he would any other form of control. Robert's great intelligence hungers to learn, but it is barred from the larder by his unfocused rebelliousness.
          Robert's the low\high point of his high school career came on a St. Patrick's day when he met the principal in the hall. As an ill-considered joke, the principal was wearing an orange ribbon. Robert was expelled for the remainder of the year for beating the man senseless and then pinning the ribbon to his lips.
          Robert drifted for five or six years, but when the AMS schools opened, he applied and was given a provisional admittance. He wound up working on a pediatric floor. He identified with these small suffering children and saw their diseases as vast conspiratorial designs against their freedom. With this mythology he became a highly competent AMS doctor, but he is quick to tell everyone that he's an "outsider" and not like the "real" doctors. By age thirty, he has recognized the psychology of his success, and sometimes rues the loss of the old fiery rebellion.
          Some critical incident in the story makes him change from small-time rebel to big-time hero, applying the model of Irish history to the case of America. He becomes militant, politically and morally active and conscious. While still motivated by rebellion, it is genuine rebellion in the service of a morally coherent vision.


          WHAT IS OBNOXIOUS ABOUT HIM AND HOW MUST HE BE REDEEMED
possibly his cocky assertiveness at being a dr.? Has it gone to his head? Urged to act omnipotently toward patients? Conflict arises when he realizes his limits?