1. Write a dossier on your main character. In other words, create what’s known in the spy community as a “legend,” a history of your fictional narrator from birth to present day. However—and I can’t stress this enough—do NOT use this dossier as an excuse to dump the entire thing in chapter one of your novel! Rather, use it as a tool so that as a story progresses, you can sometimes drop in tidbits of background information about your narrator. Be stingy in giving this information out. In book one of my Lewis Cole detective series, I made Cole an only child with no close living relatives. It took until book five until I reached a point where it seemed appropriate to mention the time and circumstance of his parents’ deaths.

In your dossier, you’ll want to answer the following questions:

•    Where was your main character born?

•    Does he have brothers and sisters? If so, does he stay in close contact with them?

•    What kind of education does he have?

•    What is his employment background? What kind of jobs has he had, and for how long?

•    What outside interests or hobbies does he have?

•    Does he live in an apartment? A house? A condo? Is he a neat freak or a slob?

•    Is your character married, or does he have a significant other?

•    List five strengths of your narrator, attributes you can be proud of, such as loyalty, honesty, and other great Boy Scout traits.

•    Since none of us is perfect, what five faults does your main character have? A short fuse? Easily frustrated? Forgetful of family members’ birthdays?

•    What frightens your character the most? It doesn’t have to be the big-ticket items like death, taxes or dying in a plane crash. How about being in debt? Or powerful thunderstorms? Or drowning?

•   Now, what pleases your character the most? A fine meal with friends? A day alone at an art museum? Watching old noir movies from the 1940s?

•    What causes your main character to toss everything aside to right a wrong? And again, it doesn’t have to be something major like preventing a murder. What would your narrator do if she found somebody abusing a dog? Or laughing at a disabled vet? Or pushing aside a senior citizen at a shopping center?

I got out of the shower and wiped myself down, taking a good look in the mirror. My pale blue eyes stared back at me as I used the towel. I noted that my brown hair, flecked with gray, was too long, and that luckily I had a hair appointment for tomorrow for a trim.

My upper torso was fairly well-muscled, though I was in better shape back in college, twenty years ago, when I worked out on a regular basis.  Now, as I rubbed myself down, I noticed how my shoulders ached from yesterday’s exertions. I finished drying off and with my old lean running legs, I went into the bedroom to get dressed.

After showering I got dressed, wincing as I slipped a sweatshirt over my shoulders. They ached from yesterday’s workout and I ruefully recalled what better shape I was in two decades ago in college, when I didn’t have to worry so much about exercising. Downstairs I grabbed a water bottle from the refrigerator and saw a little business card on the door from my hairdresser: Carla’s Supercuts. Carla is in her mid-30s, brassy, funny, and always teases that whenever she gives me a trim, she’ll either add highlights to my brown hair or finally get rid of the gray flecks. And when I tell her no go, she leans in and whispers, “But Lewis, with those Paul Newman eyes, I could really spruce you up.”