Blog Nine- November 2025 – Behind the scenes of a fiction writer and characters

What goes on inside the mind of a fiction writer?

I want to explore how I came up with the characters in my novel The Formula of Memory and share direct sections from the book. I’ll share a link below to Amazon-kdp if you’d like to buy a copy, please do!

Firstly, the two main characters – Daniel Cohen and Renate Mayer.

Daniel is a bit of a loner, a lost soul. He’s teaching Science in an outback town but doesn’t know why. There is a sixteen-year-old schoolgirl who fancies him. He’s out of his depth about how to handle this. In my first draft, my beta readers said that they didn’t like him. He was too “sleazy”. I went back and re-wrote those sections to make him more likable. Why? Because readers (you) like to relate to a character. It helps you become emotional interested in the characters’ journey throughout the book. Also, it allows me (the writer) scope to present unconventional and atypical characters. Like Jules Jackson, Daniel’s flat mate. He’s a Maths teacher. All Maths teachers are straight, conservative “pillars of society” types, correct? No. Jules is a sleazy deviant whose paraphilia (atypical sexual fantasy) is collecting female underwear. I did this on purpose to be a foil to Daniel’s character and introduce the concept of an “occupational dissonance”. He’s a minor character, but definitely a deviant.

Quote from Chapter 1:  “There must be thirty or more (underpants)in there, hanging up like spray-painted bats. You might want to lock them up.’Thirty-eight, last count. I want to get forty.’ He grinned. ‘Yeah, I should lock them up, I guess. Not like it’s hurting anyone, is it?’ Jules raised his eyebrows.

Daniel stared, conflicted. ‘So why do you collect them? Like, the newsagent sells Playboy you know?’

‘No, no, it’s nothing like that. Well not quite.’ He winced. ‘I’m fascinated by who’s worn them, where they have been and how many men, or women have taken them off.’ He gave a quick, high-pitched laugh. Daniel thought: Christ he’s not taking this seriously. What am I going to do?“

This scene leads to conflict for Daniel and introduces themes of sexual assault. Always a difficult subject for writers to explore and I hope I’ve done this in a sensitive way.  He asks himself :  ‘what am I going to do?’ He wants to do the right thing, but circumstance get in the way.

The other main character, Renate Mayer is also a loner, probably on the spectrum and intensely curious about the world. She is also very clumsy and trips over things. You can follow her development from a six-year-old right up to when she starts university and moves to Australia. She is orderly, efficient, punctual and direct, a typical German. How does she cope with Daniel’s personality? Does love always find a way around personality differences? How does she discover her father, who worked at Auschwitz, is telling the truth about his time there? You’ll find out if you read the book.

The other behind-the scenes I’d like to share is the main reason I chose to self-publish. Besides a much quicker process, I had complete editorial control. If mt editors (I had two, developmental and proof) suggested changes, which they did, I could decide either way. Sometimes I made big changes, other sections I kept the same. I like this kind of control over my work. I have a scene where the character meets the author (ie me). It is an example of Art imitating life and I like to play around with scenes like these. Just one or two, not too many. (I won’t tell you where in the book this happens. Go find and let me know what you think.

That’s all till next time.

Happy reading! Please, if you have any comments or suggestions, (I’d love to hear from you) let me know via my e-mail: wooborachris@yahoo.com.au