Farah Ashraf’s Guide to Writing Complex Characters

Words: Rob Corsini

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Like any up and coming actor, Farah Ashraf knows that you can’t always wait for work to come your way - sometimes you need to create your own. That’s why, for as long as Farah’s been honing her acting craft, she’s also been performing spoken word, producing shows, and writing her own plays. 

Her new one-woman show Pink Rabbit, which Farah is taking to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in August, is the result of this multi-pronged approach. At its heart, Pink Rabbit is a show about performance. The show’s protagonist, Amna, leads a double life - online she performs as PersianBaby on OnlyFans - and at home she performs as the good Muslim daughter that every mother dreams of - and underneath it all, she’s trying to work out who she really is when no one is watching. 

Amna is a complex protagonist: the kind of character who could too easily fall into the territory of tropes. And so, to make her feel real, Farah spent time getting to truly understand Amna, building layer upon layer, imbuing her with contradictions and complexities. With that in mind, here’s Farah Ashraf’s guide to writing complex characters.

Watch Out For Life’s Patterns

Even though my writing isn’t always autobiographical, my biggest inspiration does come from lived experience and real life. The people that I know, people that I've interacted with, stories that have really resonated with me and the world that we live in. I think once you find things that you can recognise in society, you can spot the reoccurring patterns. With Pink Rabbit the main character is a South Asian daughter who is leading a double life and not being fully open with her mother. That’s a motif that I've recognised quite a lot in my own upbringing, but also in other people's. And then as time goes on, it's really allowing your brain to stretch those tropes where it can - there's something in taking them to the most extreme.

Spend A Lot of Time With Your Characters

Because Pink Rabbit is a solo show, it's naturally a character-led piece. I needed to make sure that this character is someone that the audience is going to want to sit with for a whole hour. To do that, I had to make sure that I really knew her inside out so she felt exactly like a real person. I had a writing exercise where I just wrote everything I could think of. I'd be thinking: what do I know about this person, how would she react in this situation, how would she pleasure herself! Sexuality is a big part of the show - and I remember sitting on a train and writing this really long, free-written monologue that was almost like a poem about how pleasured herself. Even though 95% of it hasn’t made it into the show, it helps really understand who this person is, what drives them, and their motivations.

Don’t Rely Too Heavily on Archetypes

Making sure everything feels authentic, that every line feels crafted, that there’s the correct intonation and speech patterns is what will make your characters feel real. Once you’re grounded in the reality of it, you free yourself up to play with your characters - showing all of their different sides, showing their ugliness, all while understanding that people are flexible, multilayered, and that they can change! One of the easiest ways that a character can feel flat is if they’re just written as an archetype - because people aren’t just archetypes! Sometimes I’ll read my words out loud and ask - does this feel like a playwright who wants to write a message about something, or does it really feel like a human?

Your Characters Don’t Just Exist When They’re On Stage

Crafting a backstory really helps. I write a detailed backstory - a timeline from their birth until the moment of the play. Sometimes I even think about the future of the character - who will they be in five year’s time! If you know that, you can almost shape what happens in the play to get to that result. We see them within the 60 minutes you see them on stage, but they exist in a world - and seeing it as an intricate world that exists will make it feel genuine. They’ve got a whole life outside the show, let them have it!