Bahar Momeni on Character Building: “Small Choices Reveal a Worldview”
We sat down with Bahar Momeni to talk with her about characters, her own creative process and her upcoming workshop at The Writer’s Garret.
How long have you been creating characters and/or writing? Tell us a little about how you got to where you are now as an artist.
I’ve been writing since my teenage years in Iran, but my creative journey deepened after immigrating to the U.S. twelve years ago. I felt a void in my soul—a sense of dislocation that led me to seek refuge in storytelling. A few months later, I found myself in creative writing workshops, slowly shaping short stories that were eventually published.
Academically, I chose to study literature and am now completing my PhD with a creative dissertation: my debut graphic novel, The Trees We Carry. This project has become a way to process the experience of displacement and to interrogate a central question that haunted me: Why did I have to immigrate? The answer, I realized, wasn’t simple—it unraveled into a web of personal and collective histories shaped by war, revolution, censorship, and the complex legacy of the place I came from. Writing became my way of making sense of it all.
Do you usually create characters first and develop a story around them, or imagine a plot and then develop characters to act it out?
It depends on the story, but most of the time, a character comes to me first—someone whose experience intrigues me. I begin by trying to frame a snapshot of their life, which often grows into a short story. For longer projects like a novel, I’m more interested in tracing a character’s arc over time—watching how they evolve, struggle, and adapt.
In a way, it’s a quest to understand myself as a character, too. Since self-understanding is elusive, I often channel it through others. Sometimes, I want to escape the limits of one life and one identity, so I create characters who are nothing like me and others who carry parts of me in unfamiliar forms. Everything starts with character. A compelling character can transform even the dullest plot into something unforgettable.
Who are some of the most memorable characters you’ve ever read?
José Arcadio Buendía and Remedios the Beauty in One Hundred Years of Solitude have stayed with me for years—one grounded and obsessed with invention, the other mysteriously ascending into the sky. Momo, the child narrator in The Life Before Us by Romain Gary, also stands out, as does the melancholic voice of the clown in Heinrich Böll’s The Clown. They each offer something unexpected—tenderness, absurdity, defiance—and I return to them again and again.
What can people expect from the workshop?
The workshop is about learning to build character by paying attention to the everyday people we encounter in our lives and observing people’s gestures, language, and contradictions. We’ll talk about how to use real-life observations to craft vivid characters: how someone orders dessert, how they respond when embarrassed, how they carry grief, or how they voice prejudice. These small choices reveal a worldview. We’ll explore how to blend those observed patterns to create complex, memorable characters that feel alive on the page.
Interesting People At Parties: Creating Rich Characters with Bahar Momeni happens Saturday, July 12th from 2-4pm at The Writer’s Garret. A $30 donation is suggested.
