Character

Interviewer: How do you go about developing the characters in your novels? What has been the inspiration for the characters and their relationships?

Tristan Bancks: I often start off with an idea for a story. Some writers work from character first and some work from story first. I often work from story and by messing around with that story it starts to present a character to me. And I'll often find a character that’s in conflict with the story perhaps. So Mac Slater in the Mac Slater, Coolhunter series is a really uncool kid and he gets offered a job as a coolhunter. And an idea like that will present itself and I'll think, 'Well, how am I going to make that work? But it sounds interesting!' and so I feel like then there'll be some grit in the oyster, kind of thing, a challenge.

And in the Nit Boy books, Lewis has thousands of nits. He has the worst case of nits in world history. But rather than trying to get rid of them, he loves his nits. So, you know, so okay, well, what about a kid who has thousands of nits and thinks of them as his pets? That could be interesting. With a book called 'It's Yr Life' I started off with a character breakdown. We filled out questions, I co-wrote it, filled out the answers to questions about our characters and the story emerged from that. So that was a totally other way to approach things for me.