Here is an illustration for creating a character.

You draw a child on a piece of paper. You color his hair a certain way, the light shines on his face just so, and you can see a twinkle in his eyes and wonder what he is thinking. He is only nine years old, so you draw his parents beside him. They may smile, they may frown, but you have drawn them there and their presence changes the way you see the character.

This character is an orphan now. For whatever reason, his parents didn't survive to the beginning of the story; however, they are still real. To write an orphaned character, you cannot leave the page blank. You must draw the family in and then take your scissors and cut them out because they still existed.

These are what I call void characters. Even if nothing is ever known about them, they still have a felt presence because you see the place that they should be filling. A recently lost void character is usually well developed, but an unknown would still have a presence, if only as the idealistic dream of a child.

Sometimes a void will fit as a part of a single character's personality, but they are photo negative characters of their own in a way, so developing them as such could give your story an extra layer of depth.

I have a few of these in these in the book I just finished writing. I have the art phase to go through....but anyways.... there are a few scenes where my characters are taken out of the picture. but the cool thing with this is, once you do that, you can make them come back if you want them too. You can fool the reader into thinking their "dead" when in the end a surprise is sprung and they really are not! And then there are some that die for a cause, and some that die because of execution. But that's the thing with magic or miraculous usage, (there is a difference) wonderful things happen!

Ooh! That's a marvelous concept! I've actually thought about this in context to a character I created for Prince of Yen. She's dead long before the story starts but she's just as much a character as anyone alive because she lives on in their memories, influences their actions and decisions, is described and talked about, etc. Void characters--I like that. It makes sense.

Thank you for the reminder! I have multiple orphan characters, some old, some young, but I haven't really thought about the void. Now, I must do so...

Oooooohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh I love your illustration....mmmmmmm.......yes......*grins* I like.

*must create a story now*

Hm... It's a really interesting concept. And a beautiful illustration.

So what you're saying is that even if the character (in this example the parents) isn't still alive, their presence is still felt? Or something like that?

If anyone's ever watched the film 'Rope', I think it's brilliant instance of what Kitra is talking about. The 'Main Character' (as I like to call him) is dead. But all of the characters know him, and a lot of the dynamics of the story is your discovery of who the person was, and the kind of affect he had on the people around him. The blurb is 'Two young men strangle their "inferior" classmate, hide his body in their apartment, and invite his friends and family to a dinner party as a means to challenge the "perfection" of their crime.'

Am I understanding what you mean by void characters, Kitra?

There is a kind of people in Ccwiicc who live longer than the others, and they usually keep more or less to themselves for this and other reasons. But when they do mingle with the shorter living people, they end up being almost made out of the influences of void characters. So very, very many of the people that mattered to them, over the years, are gone or dead. But those are the people they think about and care about still, and it shows. They're hazy with ghosts. In order to make them be the way I need them to be, I have to find out about a lot of those voids, and who they were, and what they did. Otherwise they miss something about them that must be there.

Yes, I think we're on the same page there.

Tanner has three voids when he gets to Lor-Amar; the most obvious is Luke, but he also remembers his parents rather often and wishes he had their guidance.

Interestingly, Timothy didn't really have voids for the longest time. Growing up the Guilo for family, he never felt a void until he finds out about his family. When that happens, he spends several days with the voids before he can mentally mix the two worlds and return to his chipper self.

Almost everyone has a void, whether it be in characters, or in real life. They could be someone that their parents told them about, like the grandparents who are already 'dead' at the beginning of your story.

Everyone in my story has the concept of a void, although I never really thought about them as voids.

A great example of a void is in "Son" the Giver series by Lois Lowry. Gabe always wanted to know who his mother was, if she loved him, etc. Gabe kept thinking about her that he had already created a mental image of what she looked like.