Creating Jack Reacher with Lee Child | Meet your Maestro | BBC Maestro

Added: 2026-05-11

[00:00:00]How important is character? Especially with series fiction. Well, the answer to that is supremely important. There is nothing more important. Actually, nothing else matters. A series depends entirely on the character.

[00:00:16]And you can reduce that down if even if you're writing standalone novels.

[00:00:22]The character is absolutely supreme.

[00:00:25]Harking back to what we said a little earlier about plot.

[00:00:30]Consider this. You could have the most inventive and ingenious plot that is has never been seen before, possibly. But nobody will ever know unless your characters are compelling.

[00:00:44]Because unless your characters are compelling, people will put the book down. They won't even get into the plot.

[00:00:51]They won't ever reach the amazing twist that you invented. They won't ever appreciate the fantastic originality of the plot because they'll have given up if the characters are not carrying them through.

[00:01:06]That is universal truth. What I'm encouraging you to do is invest your characters with what you already know.

[00:01:14]You've read a lot. You've thought a lot.

[00:01:17]You've gone back in history. You've picked out the great characters.

[00:01:22]You know that it's important because they those characters are remembered.

[00:01:27]You are able to go back in history and examine these characters because they still live today. Because they're so cool.

[00:01:35]Sherlock Holmes is a great great example. Practically everybody in the world has heard of Sherlock Holmes and knows roughly who he was and what he did.

[00:01:48]Now, there are a number of real Sherlock Holmes nerds who will tell you plots of different stories. But if you step outside the nerd world into the regular world of ordinary readers, very few will be able to remember exactly what happened in any of the stories. They might be able to say, "Oh, well, it was the one about a dog or a hound or something, and was the one with the snake, or they will have a jumble of images in their mind, but front and center will be the character of Sherlock himself. Character is always supreme.

[00:02:25]And when I started out writing, again, like I'm suggesting you do, I figured, well, I know what I I need to do. I know that for a series, the character is going to carry all the weight for hopefully years to come. So, the character had better be right, and the way to make him right is to lean on what I already know from having been a reader, from having reacted to other characters, from having thought about it throughout history, the type of characters that show up in stories all the time, all the way back thousands of years to the the most basic and ancient of our myths, always about character. And I'm going to make a confession here that that may be well you'll be feeling the same thing. I remember sitting down to write my first book.

[00:03:24]And as I said before, for me, it really mattered. I was broke, I was out of work, I had to get it done, and it had to work.

[00:03:33]So, it was really important and really urgent. But, even so, I was a little nervous about starting. I was like the guy who's balances on the edge of the swimming pool before jumping in. I was balancing there for a day or two.

[00:03:50]And what I did to sort of I thought prepare myself, but looking back on it, it was clearly a kind of procrastination method. I was bit nervous about starting, so I wanted to delay starting.

[00:04:06]That's all I can say. I wanted to delay it for a day or two because I was nervous about jumping in.

[00:04:13]So, I made some notes about what I needed from my character.

[00:04:19]I jotted them down on a piece of paper and as a matter of habit, I always keep every piece of paper. I just always save everything with the idea that maybe later I when I'm old and gray, I can look back and and reminisce about what was happening when.

[00:04:36]But, there's a university called UEA, the University of East Anglia in Norwich in the UK, and they operate an archive of contemporary fiction.

[00:04:48]And they asked me, could they have all those scribbled notes, all those old manuscripts, all that kind of stuff, anything that related to my writing, could they have it for their archive so that students could use it as a resource, could consult it, and so on.

[00:05:05]And I was very flattered, so yes, I I amalgamated all the writing stuff into about, I don't know, by that point 20 or 30 boxes, and they came and collected them, and they are in the archive. And I went up to take a look at it, and sure enough, included in one of the boxes was that piece of paper on which I had made that delaying note to put off starting for a day.

[00:05:32]I'm going to read them out for you, but I want you to remember this was not me inventing it in that moment. It was me reminding myself that I already knew that I could rely on archetypes, I could rely on what had satisfied me before about characters. So, it wasn't an invention, it was a sort of confirmation. It was a reassurance to myself that I knew what I had to do.

[00:06:01]These characters live forever. They come back time after time. The reader needs to be able to rely on the characteristics that they carry.

[00:06:17]So, these are the notes that I made during that day or two of procrastination, putting it off before I wanted to take the leap.

[00:06:28]I put character of H. H stands for hero, obviously, the hero of the story. I hadn't decided what his name was yet.

[00:06:38]But, um I put character of H.

[00:06:41]This is vitally important.

[00:06:43]It will be make or break.

[00:06:45]Must be such that it arouses envy in male readers.

[00:06:50]They must admire him and want to be him.

[00:06:53]Women readers must be fascinated by him.

[00:06:57]They must want to be with him.

[00:07:00]Must be some moral base, albeit probably bleak and cynical to a degree.

[00:07:06]Needs to be alienated, outsider, loner, tough, resourceful.

[00:07:12]There must be a very subtle portrayal of Superman powers.

[00:07:17]Must be unfeasibly tough and strong and invulnerable to provide escapist identification. Gets away with things, possibly unrealistic, but serious and convincing. Always knows better.

[00:07:31]Things turn out okay.

[00:07:38]So, those were my I jotted notes about the character that I needed to incorporate. I already knew them. It was a kind of uh reassurance, reaffirmation that I knew them. I listed them, and then a day or two later I jumped in and started writing. And I think those characteristics are in the book. They are in Reacher.

[00:07:58]I was very clear about what the hero had to include well before I had a name. And he didn't get his name for uh quite a few days because it was a first-person narration um in that book, and therefore it was I I this, I that. I was arrested. He gets hauled to the police station.

[00:08:21]Uh he's fingerprinted, thrown in a cell, dragged into an office for the interrogation.

[00:08:28]Uh the detective sits down and says, "Name?"

[00:08:32]And that was the very first time that I'd had to name him. I hadn't thought of the name at that point. I was aware hoping that this was going to be a successful, long-running series. So, not only the characteristics of the guy, but his name had to be enduring. It had to be something that would last. It'd have to be something that would be simple enough, not weird or complicated or cutesy. Just a good, plain name that could endure, hopefully, for a very long time. And I had no idea. I had really no clue what to what to call him. Although, when I say that, maybe I'm not being 100% truthful. Deep down, in the back of my head, I certainly did not know in the front of my head. And then what happened was, as as I've said before, I was broke, I was out of work. Our daughter was 15 at the time. We had a mortgage.

[00:09:29]We had a car loan. All those normal things that you have. And so, my predicament was not solely personal. It was a family predicament. You know, my family was involved. They were kind of anxious to know what was going to keep a roof over their head and food on the table.

[00:09:47]And I told my wife, I'm going to well, I'm going to write a book. And uh she took it very well. Probably bit a lip a little bit, but she was supportive and said, "Okay, let's see how it goes."

[00:09:59]And then I was with her on a trip to the supermarket one time. And every single time that I'm in a supermarket, literally every single time, I walk around and I'm a tall man and there's always a little old lady who comes up to me and says, "Oh, you're a nice tall gentleman. Could you reach me that box?"

[00:10:19]And so on that day my wife said, "You know what? If the writing gig doesn't work out, you could be a reacher in a supermarket."

[00:10:26]And I thought, "Wow, that's a great name." And so I That's the name I used.

[00:10:32]Purely from a off-the-cuff jokey comment from my wife. It's another example of how you already know this stuff. It's in there. Just find a way of getting it out and using it.

[00:10:45]So when it comes to thinking about it, how important is the character?

[00:10:51]That's already kind of a a wrong question. Unquestionably, the character is absolutely the most important thing.

[00:11:00]Without a great character, without a good supporting cast, the book will fail. Therefore, character is not just a matter of relative importance, how does it fit in?

[00:11:15]Character is absolutely king.

[00:11:18]Character is king. That's what you got to remember.

[00:11:22]Put everything you can into your main character. He or she will carry the story. And then for a series, he or she will bring the reader back for the next installment and the next and the next because what a great character gives a reader is that promise of spending more time with him or her.

[00:11:49]Like an old friend, like somebody you see once a year and you're really happy to see him, you really want to catch up with them. It's an absolute pleasure on the personal level and at the same time you're getting the excitement of a different story. Same character, different story. That is the appeal of a series. The different story is subordinate to the great character. A great character will carry a series as long as you need it to. So, just make sure you make a note, make your own little piece of paper and eventually donate it to a university archive. Character is king.