Everything begins with energy.

People are like colours; and, like colours, their personalities come in every conceivable shade and variety and hue. But imagine an artist who has only reds and browns available on his palette. He will be more inclined to paint autumnal scenes or fields of poppies than he will seascapes. In other words, particular colours lend themselves to certain types of picture. In just the same way, people who have a particular type of energy will tend towards a certain type of personality.

And, just as there are only three primary colours – Red, Yellow and Blue, which all the others derive from, we can think of peoples’ personalities as having a basis in just four primary types of energy. These correspond to the elements of Earth, Air, Fire and Water.

When creating characters it’s a useful (if seemingly obvious) point to remember that people will do what it is in their nature to do. And a character’s nature can be very usefully described in terms of which of these four types of energy he gravitates most towards.

What this book aims to do is give you some insight into what drives characters from the inside. Whilst there may be dozens of ways that a writer can build up a character profile, if a character isn’t ‘working’ it could well be because he/she has been built up rather like a cardboard cut-out dolly, the sort little girls used to ‘dress up’ with different cut-out clothes. You can dress the dolly according to whatever your mood dictates (e.g. your character notes may run along the lines of; green eyes, brown hair, likes cheese, grows daffodils in pots in the spring…) but if you want to create a living, breathing, self-directing character (and you do, don’t you?) you’ll have to go one further than that.

If you start by having an understanding of your character’s energy then you’ll have a line into their pulse, into their heartbeat. You’ll have an intuitive sense of what are their most pressing needs, their deepest motivations.