I kind of embarked on a fruitless search to find information about my character, Frederick Aiken. And it was fruitless, unfortunately, because there's so little about him.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
I try to research or make up for myself what happened in any character's life. From when he was born until the first page of the script. I fill in the blanks.
I get sent a lot of scripts which feature him as a kind of all-purpose Victorian literary character and really understand little, if anything, about him, his life or his books.
A big part of what I wanted to do with this character was go from when I was a boy and try and develop into a man, really try and play him as a man who is on this search, on a journey of personal, spiritual, political, social discovery.
Here was a man with loads of talent, loads of ability, lots of love to give; but that had been stifled and aborted. I became very fond of that character.
I love spending time researching a character and reading about them.
I wanted more in depth ideas about the character and it never came.
I always look for good stories and good characters, and if they're placed in a whodunit, then I'm interested.
For some reason, all my characters come to me with their names attached to them. I never have to search for the names.
As the writer of a pseudonymous book, I gave up my own accumulated history as a novelist and became what I had been as a child: unnamed, unidentified, unacknowledged. Invisible. In a very real sense, what I hope for in the process of imagining a book is to disappear.
I consider myself fortunate that I've been able to find a character that people have responded to.