Sometimes creating a character involves research. Sometimes it involves imagination.
And sometimes you realise your own brain has been providing free character-development material for years.
That was partly how Benjamin Mumbles came to life.
One Man. Two Voices. Absolutely No Cooperation.
Benjamin Mumbles is an ordinary, rather unlucky bank worker who enjoys beach casting in Cornwall.
Then he acquires a problem: a dead pirate called Jethro Tucker.
Jethro needs Benjamin's body to recover treasure buried with his brother, Talan Tucker. Unfortunately for Benjamin, Jethro is not simply a ghost following him around and offering helpful pirate commentary.
He is inside him. They share one body, hear each other's thoughts and argue over almost everything.
On particularly bad days, Jethro can take control—which is not ideal when the other person is a centuries-old pirate with unfinished business and no respect whatsoever for modern manners.
My Brain Already Knew the Feeling
My own mind rarely produces one calm, tidy opinion and leaves it there.
One part wants a sensible plan, a proper list and a clear order for doing things. Another part has already wandered off with seventeen new ideas, decided the original plan is boring and started Chapter Twelve before Chapter Two exists.
They interrupt each other. They negotiate. They occasionally stage a small internal coup.
I did not have to invent the feeling of two voices fighting for the steering wheel. I only had to turn the volume up.
That familiar internal tug-of-war gave me a way into Benjamin and Jethro's relationship. Benjamin wants routine, dignity and a quiet life. Jethro wants action, treasure and immediate results.
Neither understands why the other cannot simply be reasonable.
The Argument Became the Story
Once I understood how it felt inside Benjamin's head, the comedy began to arrive naturally.
Benjamin can try to remain polite while Jethro says exactly what he thinks. He can attempt to make a careful decision while a pirate demands they do something reckless. He can be embarrassed by behaviour that came from his own body but was not entirely his choice.
The rows are funny, but they also push the story forwards. Every disagreement reveals what each man fears, what he values and how badly he needs the other—even when neither of them would willingly admit it.
That is where the pair stopped being a comic idea and began to feel like people.
Benjamin Is Not Me—but the Machinery Is Familiar
I am not a bank worker possessed by a dead pirate. This feels worth clarifying.
But writers do not need to live through the exact events in a book to write something emotionally true. We borrow the machinery: the frustration, the contradiction, the sudden change of direction and the sense that one part of us is forever trying to explain the plan to another.
Then we give it new clothes, a Cornish shoreline, a buried secret and one very stubborn ghost.
My internal arguments became Benjamin and Jethro's spoken ones. The things that can make an ordinary day feel chaotic became useful on the page.
Sometimes the oddest parts of the way your mind works are not obstacles to creativity. They are the raw material.
Why the Pair Work
Benjamin and Jethro begin as reluctant passengers in the same body. Each sees the other as the problem.
But beneath the bickering, both are carrying something unfinished. Benjamin needs courage. Jethro needs a chance to put the past right. Their impossible arrangement forces them to listen, adapt and eventually understand each other.
That is what made them such fun to write. They are opposites, but they are not empty opposites created only for jokes. Each has something the other lacks.
They simply have to survive one another long enough to discover it.
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Read the book
Benjamin Mumbles and Jethro Tucker
A funny, strange and gloriously chaotic paranormal adventure about unlikely friendship, courage and the trouble that old secrets can dig up.
So that is how part of my own brain found its way into a bank worker, a dead pirate and a thoroughly inconvenient hunt for buried treasure.
Waste nothing. Especially the arguments.
Author of Benjamin Mumbles and Jethro Tucker