Where Have All the Big Moments Gone?

Okay, maybe it's just me, but lately I've noticed there's not a lot of big moments in movies and books. 

At least, not in the last few published novels I've read or movies I watched on Netflix. I know this is subjective, and I can still think of a bunch of movies and books that are exempt from this observation, so they are excused from class.

Perhaps I should explain what I mean by "big moment" so the rest of you at home can decipher my meaning.

Simply put, it's a turning point. It can be a major change of direction for the plot, or when some of what character is working towards pays off, or a major set back. The most obvious example is the climax of the plot, but there should be other, smaller climaxes. 

And yeah, there were turning points in the offending books and movies, but they felt really small. Little Timmy made a B on his math test. Rhonda found her lucky penny. Events that progressed the plot, but they didn't feel like much. It was "meh" instead of "Wow, I can't wait to find out what happens next!"

Think about big moments. Harry Potter discovers he's a wizard. Po finds inner peace. A coach gives an inspiring speech in innumerable sports movies. John McClane walks across broken glass shoeless. Johnny gets Baby out of a corner. Frodo is entrusted with the One Ring.

There's a cathartic effect from these turning points, whether things are better or worse for the main character. Something important has changed, and life can never be the same again. 


Not every moment in the movie or book needs to feel like this of course, but turning points should make you feel something. They should stir you, throw you towards the remaining turning points until the inevitable climax occurs and you feel the biggest release of all: the resolution (or conversely, you feel the most pissed off you spend X number of hours of your life on this piece of crap and can never get them back).


I'm not saying every turning point should be POW POW EXPLOSION OMG THE KILLER BEES ARE IN MY RACCOON WOUNDS!!!!!!!!!! but unless they are more dramatic than the events around them, they don't feel like anything at all. 


I really believe that a movie that keeps you on the edge of your seat or a book that is physically impossible to put down has among other things, a dynamic plot. There's twists and turns and high and lows and you're always emotionally engaged. 


But that's just me. My attention span is currently that of a coked up squirrel, so I am harder to entertain at the moment. It might be why I've noticed it more, but it's still something to keep in mind. 


What say you? How you do feel about turning points and how they relate to your own work?

When Life Gives You Lemons

You often hear that writers should borrow from their personal lives (and sometimes the lives of others) to fuel their writing with a sense of reality. After all, truth is stranger than fiction. I've heard a lot of stories from people over the years, partially because I ask the right questions, and partially because most of the time people find me easy to talk to, so they are confessing things to me they say they've never told anyone before. 

I know this shared knowledge of pain, joy, anxiety, hunger, and ecstasy helps my writing. It helps me shape characters with realistic emotions and believable problems. But for me, the best occasions that I mine for emotional dept are my own experiences.

Saturday night I went to bed having some chest pain. I figured I was just sore from work, and went to sleep. When I woke up, the chest pain was still there. Worse, even. It started underneath my left breast and cut diagonally up to my left shoulder. It felt like someone was stabbing me with a knife, and I couldn't inhale deeply, cough, sneeze, or laugh without making the stabbing pain infinitely worse.

Since I am a writer, I went immediately to the worst case scenario. "I am having a heart attack. Pain in my left arm, classic heart attack. Or it's an ectopic pregnancy." (you're thinking, how can you have a normal pregnancy (where the egg is fertilized in the uterus) AND and ectopic pregnancy five months later? But my panicked brain was convinced I'd had twins and one got stuck in my fallopian tubes. It had now ruptured, and I was bleeding internally. This makes no sense, I realize that. But when you're having weird pain, your mind wanders. And in my case, sometimes knowledge just fuels the fire.).

But on the other side of the panic, was me thinking it was nothing. Pregnancy does really, really weird things to your body, and I know that. I didn't want to be one of those woman who freaks out when she has a slight twinge in her stomach. My body is doing it's werewolf impression: ligaments and muscles are stretching. I've gained weight, and I am a tiny person to begin with. So I also thought it was nothing. 

After talking to a friend of mine, I called my midwife's office. The midwife says to take some Pepsid AC and tums. Sometimes heartburn can manifest as chest pain. Heavens knows I've had some wicked heartburn lately; sometimes it feels like I've swallowed a volcano. She says wait two hours. If the chest pain hasn't gone away, then I need to go to the ER to get checked out.


See folks, chest pain is sort of a big deal in the medical community. There are plenty of normal reasons why someone might have chest pain, but there are also lots of immediately life threatening causes behind chest pain, a blood clot being at the top of the list. Especially in pregnant women, blood clots can be an issue because you literally have more blood in your system. You can increase your blood volume up to 50% of what you had prior to becoming a baby incubator.

Two hours later, it still feels like a knife has magically found it's way into my ribs. My best friend (who also happens to be a nurse, lucky me) takes me to the ER to get poked and prodded. The only upside to going to the ER is "pregnant" and "chest pain" gets you back pretty quickly. They take a bunch of blood, do a chest X ray, and then I get to sit and wait for the results. 

While we're waiting, the ER doctor comes back to tell me this blood test they've done to check the likelihood of a blood clot is almost always high in a pregnant woman, blood clot or not (it's back to that increased blood volume). In the event this test comes back positive, they will recommend a CAT scan. She then says that plenty of pregnant women who have had CAT scans give birth to healthy babies.


My brain completely stops at this point. I felt like I needed to press pause or something. Wait, what? She explains there's minimal risk to the baby, and even says she's pregnant herself. The risk of having a blood clot that will rupture and kill me is bigger than the risk of all that radiation and the dye they inject into my blood stream to see the blood vessels to the baby.

The doctor leaves and I proceed to cry. I was terrified. I was between a bottomless pit opening up to swallow me, and going numb. Suddenly I had this major decision to make. I hate making quick decisions like this, especially based on fear. How much of a risk is "minimal"? The same risk caffeine poses? Or the same risk, as say, crack cocaine? Crack addicts also give birth to perfectly healthy babies, as people like to tell me when I worry about something affecting the baby. But people, I am shooting a little higher than "baby born not addicted to crack".

I left a message with my midwife so I could find out more information, but the meantime was hell. I didn't want to hurt my baby. I also didn't want to be stupid and refuse some test that might find a blood clot. I also wondered what the chances that I actually had a blood clot versus the risk to the baby was. I would feel awful if it turned out I didn't have a blood clot, and I put the baby at risk for nothing.

It was awful to realize absolutely everything that happens to me happens to my little boy. I knew that already. It's why I am taking prenatal vitamins every though the fish oil makes my burbs taste way nasty. It's why I am avoiding tuna fish, sushi, and sweet tea. 


But those were all things I could personally control. I couldn't control these chest pains, they were just there.


Added to the confusion was my prior ER experiences. I've had great ER doctors. I also have TMJD and a few years ago when I yawned, my jaw dislocated itself (yes, that can happen. Fun thought!). I went to the ER where the doctor was CONVINCED it was a muscle spasm. No amount of me telling him I literally cannot close my jaw, and I know what a muscle spams feels like, made him believe me. He said wait three days and then see an Ears, Nose, and Throat doctor. He gave me some muscle relaxers (which did NOTHING) and some heavy narcotics for the pain (which made me hallucinate) in the meantime. So for three days, my jaw stays locked open. I go see the ENT guy who wants to know why the hell the doctor didn't send me right away, or to better yet, an oral surgeon who's job is to deal with TMJ.

So I also have this scenario playing out in my head as I weigh the risks and benefits of having a CAT scan while 5 months pregnant (for those of you wondering, the ENT doctor manually put my jaw back into place, which hurt like nothing I've ever felt before. I imagine labor will be worse, but until then...). 


The happy ending to this story is the blood test came back normal, despite my current state of baby incubating. So I didn't have to have a CAT scan. They figured I must have pulled something at work and told me to take it easy for a few days. 


It was awful to experience that sort of indecision, fear, and worry, but let me tell you, it makes great writing. You take experiences like I just had, and you give them to your character. She doesn't have to pregnant with a possible blood clot for it to work. I've never felt that mixture of protectiveness over my baby, anxiety, indecision, and fear before, but that doesn't mean a character wouldn't feel the same way when faced with a tough decision regarding her child, sister, mother, or best friend.

Likewise, you can go through your life. Did you ever make a really big, dumb mistake? How did you feel? How did you try to fix or cover that mistake? Have you gotten married? What did it feel like the exact moment you stood at the altar? Have you ever feel deeply in love with someone who didn't even like you? How did you deal with the joy of love and pain of loneliness at the same time? These are experiences that we've all felt in one way or another. You don't have to copy the exact event in your life to apply it to your character, because emotions are universal. Maybe your mistake played out okay in your life, but in the character's life it's just made everything worse.


Red Smith once said, "Writing is easy. You just sit down at the typewriter, open up a vein, and bleed it out drop by drop."


I feel like that's what he meant. You take your life, your happiest moments, your deepest sorrow, your greatest pain, and you put that in words on the page. If you do it well enough, your reader bleeds along with you.

Why Your Main Character's Age is Important

I was talking with my friend Liz the other day about genres among other things like her cats, my baby, and our books. 

She mentioned the reasons why she enjoyed writing about YA. She included things like the main character having to deal with parents, and feeling like an adult and having responsibilities, but also being stuck as a kid in many situations.

Which got me thinking about why I like to write about main characters who are in their early twenties. I like writing about character who vividly remembers being in high school (or the fantasy equivalent thereof) but now they are considered adults. They are suddenly in charge of their own lives, but often feel really unprepared. In my experience, most teenagers don't spend a lot of time learning how to budget, how to balance their bank accounts, and don't actually realize how much stuff costs. 

They are in college or just starting their new job. As a senior in high school, you're at the top of the heap.

As a young twenty something, you're right back at the bottom.

Their love life can be tumultuous. Maybe they had some significant others in high school; maybe not. Maybe they are trying to reinvent themselves, as they realize no one no longer cares if you were the class geek or the captain of the football team. Maybe they still don't know what they want their career to be, and they're feeling a lot of pressure to figure it out soon. 

And their family. As a new adult, they are suddenly no longer bound by what their parents say (if they obeyed as teenagers), but there's a long history of obligation to do so. Some people still fall in lock step with what their parents want, while others go in the opposite route and rebel now (this seems even more likely if the new adult didn't rebel as a teenager, and is attending college). 

To me, writing about "new adults" has every bit as many interesting challenges and obstacles as writing about teenagers. It's just a different set of problems and expectations. 

And I don't think it stops there. Writing about a character who is thirty carries it's own host of expectations. It says as much about a thirty year old if he's still living in his parent's basement as it does if he is instead is married with 2.5 kids, one dog, and has a house with a white picket fence. 

Same goes for any character at any age. You can mine the age of the character for minor conflicts (or entire book ideas, a la Literary fiction) at any point. What's more, I feel like it makes the book a richer experience. I've read tons of urban fantasy where the main character is a woman in her late twenties, early thirties, but it feels forgettable. She has her own place, has a job, and might be dating, but there are no other markers of her age. It's forgettable.

Sometimes this is the desired result, but perhaps consider your character's age the next time you're writing. After all, why should the Young Adult authors have all the fun with the challenges that come with a certain age?

Never Write About Wimps

Song Playing: Soldiers of the Wasteland by Dragonforce

Deep confession guys. Bearing my soul over here.

Did you ever read a book or take a class, read a passage/hear a statement, and think blithely “Nope, that’s not me.”

You read a part about characters think, “I might have issues with pacing and length, but definitely no problems in the character department.”

I think we’ve all done that to one extent or another. Pass over some advice because you think it doesn’t apply to you.

BUZZ! Wrong!

Hubris was the fall of Dr. Frankenstein, and hubris will be the fall of a great many writers. Sometimes you read a book about writing, or talk to another writer, or a helpful blog post (like this one!) and they mention a problem. A problem you think you already have covered.

You could be right.

But you could be wrong. Very wrong. It could be a part of the problem with your manuscript that you were vainly searching for.

There I was, reading my book in the break room at work. It’s called “Thanks, but This Isn’t for Us” by Jessica Page Morrell. I almost skipped this chapter, honestly. It’s called “Never Write About Wimps.”

I have many failings as a writer. Many. There are plenty of areas that I struggle with. Characters is not one of them. I am confident in that. I can create vivid, realistic characters that have three dimensions (my blogfests may or may not reflect this depending on how much editing I have done). It might take several tries and some time to develop said characters, but this is one of the areas of writing I really love. It’s actually the reason why I write: to give my character somewhere to play.

So yes, I almost skipped that chapter, thinking I was A-Okay. My main character for my WIP Masquerade is a lot of things—arrogant, high maintenance, shallow—but weak isn’t one of them. She is not wimpy.

And yet, something was off. The scenes just weren’t working the way I wanted them to. And *gasp* my other secondary character was more interesting.

For the longest time I couldn’t figure out why.


Then I read that chapter, and this passage “Motivation, based on a character’s beliefs, family, and environment and cultural background, provides a trajectory for characters to act and grow on. Motivation compels action, create goals in scene, and drive characters to achieve goals. Thus, motivation provides characters with credible reason for their actions, and they should carry out those actions with plausible skills or acquire skills along the way.”

After I read that part, I did a quick check with my characters. I asked myself what the motivation of my main character is, and then I asked myself what the motivation of my secondary character was.

It hit me like a lightening bolt then, putting the motivations right next to each other, that the motivation of my secondary character is greater than my main character. My secondary character had more at stake, at least at first, than my main character.

How the heck did that happen?! (behind my back, while I wasn’t looking)

No wonder I have been having problems with my main character. My secondary character is more interesting than she is!

This is a good news/bad news situation for me. The good news is now I know what’s going on, I can fix it. The bad news is it’s going to take some rearranging to implement said fixes. And figure out what those fixes might be.

My point? Go over your manuscript with a fine tooth comb and question everything. And I mean everything. Even if you love the character, and the plot, still run it through the wringer.

Bar Scene Blogfest

Tara is hosting a Bar Scene Blogfest, and I had the perfect scene in mind. This is from one of my WIP. It's going to be the book I write after the mermaid book I am currently working on.

Here is Tara's blog:
Bar Scene Blogfest

This is the first page in my WIP, titled "A Dangerous Mind". I also plan to use another scene from this book for my Bad Girl Blogfest, because my MC just makes it so easy for me. ;)


A Dangerous Mind

“Before you embark on a journey of revenge, dig two graves.” Confucius

There is an urban legend that says your body completely replaces itself every seven years. If this is true, that means the skin I have now has never known my mother’s touch or my father’s piggyback rides. There’s no way I can restore the touch of my parents, so I hug Alex as much as I can. He was the only blood relation I have left.

My foster parents aren’t really the hugging sort, but I hug them as often as I can, just in case. It frightens me to think that my patchwork family might die someday, and I’ll grow out of them, like I grew out of my favorite pair of combat boots in high school. I had to peddle ten pounds of weed to be able to afford those boots, and when I grew out of them a year later, I was pissed.

I had returned to my hometown of Seattle a few days ago, like clockwork, for the fall and spring semester of college. Every summer I visited my foster parents, and every fall I returned to the city, to Jim and Caroline, to Alex. Despite my circadian rhythms, I still felt like I was perpetually one pace ahead or behind the rest of the world. Dancing to my own drummer didn’t typically bother me, but there were times I wondered what my life would be like today if my parents weren’t murdered by a serial killer while my brother and I hid in my bedroom upstairs.

I wondered how different my life would be now if I had stopped Alex from going downstairs to investigate the noise; I already knew what was making that awful sound. If I had just tied Alex to the bed or something, things might not have turned out the way they did. But he was six and I was eight; Alex never listened to me.

I stared at the moon, and crushed the unlit cigarette I almost broke down and smoked under my boot.

It started to drizzle. I would have taken it as a direct sign of God pissing on me, but this was Seattle. It was always drizzling.

I shook my head at my own futility. Wondering ‘what if’ never made me feel better. Only fantasies of capturing the man who ruined my life and making him pay eased the pain. If I could find him, and make him suffer like I suffered, maybe my life would cycle back to even again.

I turned around and walked back into Joe’s Old Bar, my current place of employment. I was one of the best bartenders in the entire joint, but you’d never know it by the way the owner, a creep named Sam, treated me. Like I was one of his slave girls. If I didn’t have to work while I was in college, I would have walked out of the joint on a Friday night with a full house.

I grinned to myself. That would show him.

Sadly, my landlord didn’t accept I.O.U.s or cookies in lieu of money for rent, and I wasn’t about to take him up on his offer for “something else”. Gross.

I returned to my noble post at the bar, and started to stack the glasses underneath the bar. Frank, the daytime bartender, never put them back correctly, so the glasses were one hard shove away from getting knocked over, a catastrophe I would surely be blamed for.

“Heeeeey, Jade, you’re back,” A regular named Bill slurred. “Good to see you again, hot stuff.”

I nodded in Bill’s general direction and continued to work. Drunks were so needy.
“How’s about you and me go out on a date?”

I leaned my elbow onto the top of the bar. “How’s about you pay your tab and get lost?” I asked.

Bill muttered disparaging things about me under his breath.

I ignored him, and turned to another regular of mine, Mr. Chen. He was an older Asian man who always ordered a Tom Collins, and spoke broken English. He was in the process of opening his own night club, and I had no qualms with telling him what exactly sort of set up he needed for the bar. It was a match made in bartender heaven.

I’ve tended my fair share of bars, and none of them were designed by a bartender. Some bars were way too long, or the drain in the floor wasn’t angled properly so when you washed the floor some of the dirty water ran back over the clean tile or any other hundred of little details that over time add up into a bar that was a pain in the neck to tend. I knew some bartenders who wouldn’t tend a poorly designed bar, but I couldn’t afford to be picky.

Mr. Chen took a sip of his Tom Collins. “You make the best drinks,” he said in Mandarin. “That’s why I always come here.”

I grinned at him. “I know.” I am sure the fact that I was fluent in Mandarin Chinese didn’t hurt either. I can also speak passable Cantonese. My foster parents are both first generation American citizens, children of Chinese immigrants who still preferred to speak Chinese over English. “How’s the nightclub coming? Did your financing come through?”

“Hey, hot stuff, I need another one,” Bill said, burping. Bill was the sort of guy who worked out every day to make up for his ugly face. He thought he was God’s gift to woman. I thought he was a plague in holey blue jeans.

I looked up and checked the clock. Midnight. I was officially done for the night. “Don’t call me hot stuff,” I said, glaring at Bill. “We’re closed.”
Bill leered at me, and I clenched my jaw. “Come on baby, why you gotta do me like that? Come home with me, I could—“

I walked around the bar, and grabbed Bill’s forearm and twisted it hard. Bill squealed like a pig and tried to break my grip, but I used his body weight against him, and sharpened the angle I held his arm.

“I said no,” I said, resisting the urge to punch him in the face. Even though it was afterhours, I was still not allowed to beat up the customers. Unless it was in self defense. Maybe I could make it self defense…

“Fine, fine,” Bill said, trying to stand up, “I’ll leave you alone.”

I loosened my grip on him, and stepped back. “I wouldn’t date you if you were the last man alive. Your face makes me want to vomit.” I pointed at the shirt I wore. It was blue and had a picture of a cartoon bunny on it. The caption below the bunny read: Hey, you make me throw up a little. “I wear this shirt because of losers like you. Now get lost.”

Bill scowled at me, and took a swing, like I knew he would. I couldn’t insult him and his pride let me get away with it.

Mr. Chen cried out, but I ducked Bill’s swing, and tripped him.

Bill caught his balance on a table, and whirled around, swinging for me again.
I sidestepped him quickly, grabbed Bill’s wrist, and used it to bring him around. Bill jerked away, trying to break my hold. He was physically stronger than me, but I was trained. I knew how to use his momentum against him. If you had a good hold on someone’s wrist you could move them around as you wished. I stepped forward, and flipped Bill onto his back with a loud thud.

Bill groaned and rolled over.

“Are you done?” I asked, nudging him with my foot.

Bill tried to stand but it took him a few tries. He glared at me, but stalked out of the bar.

I sighed. I was itching for a fight, but that could hardly be called a fight. I wasn’t even sweating.

“You are trained in Martial Arts,” Mr. Chen said.

“Yes,” I replied, picking up the chair Bill overturned and set it down. “Wushu. My father is a master, and ran a dojo.”

Mr. Chen regarded me for a minute. I wondered what he was seeing when he looked at me. The whitest girl on the face of the planet? My brown hair? My jade green eyes, which were the source of my nickname? I looked like every normal white girl in America. Hardly anyone knew I had Chinese foster parents. Mr. Chen had commented on how well I spoke Mandarin when I first talked to him, but he didn’t pry. “Would you like to work at my nightclub?”

I blinked. I wasn’t expecting a job offer. I was expecting to be told a nice girl like me shouldn’t know how to beat people up.

“I would pay you well. You’ve been most helpful with the plans. I wanted to ask you, but it’s in a rough area of the International District, in the middle of gang territory. But I see you can handle yourself. You could help protect my club, without people realizing that you can also be a bouncer if needed.”

I looked around Joe’s. Continue to work at a crappy dive or work for Mr. Chen, who wanted me to work at a nightclub, be a silent bouncer, in the International District, and pay me more money? Sold!

“When can I start?”

Characters Who Need to Be Shot

Song Playing: Anthem by Kamelot

Happy Friday!

A quick note before I forget, I will not be blogging on Monday, Tuesday, and possibly even Wednesday next week. Instead, I will be at class for my massage therapist Continuing Education Units (CEUs). In order to keep my license I have to attend a certain number of accredited hours, and since I would like to keep my income, off I go. Normally this requires tons of money and taking time off to attend a weekend class here, and seminar there, but I lucked out and found a program that lasts four days and gives me more hours than I actually need. So from early tomorrow until Tuesday I will be attending this class, bootcamp style.

All that to say, I don’t know when I will be home and it will probably be only long enough to eat and then crash into bed.



So no blog posts. I know, you’re all going to be besides yourselves with grief. Feel free to caper about in the comments section while I am gone.

Also, there’s a squirrel outside the size of a terrier. Yes, Mom’s still feeing the squirrels. Since I live a few houses down from my parents, I assume this is one of the ambassador squirrels. Nutter Butter is what Mom is calling him after I told her about all of your comments about the squirrel whispering, and Michael Emeritz’s comment about Ambassador Nutter Butter in particular.



Today I have characters on the brain. Between revision and my WIP, I have been working with my characters a good deal, and I noticed I tend to have a diverse lot. Some authors seem to prefer to only write about terse men who smoke and drink too much, others prefer spunky heroines who mess up as much as they help the conflict, and still others prefer the tough, combat boot wearing female who doesn’t take lip from anyone.

A brief digression on those types of tough heroines: they get on my ever-loving last nerve. I am not saying they can’t be done well. I really enjoy that sort of heroine on TV or in books when she’s portrayed well, but I noticed a trend towards this type of female, and I always get the urge to smack her in the face more times that not. It’s like the author says, “Well, this is her flaw. She’s tough, masculine, and doesn’t like to wear pink. She’s one of the guys.” And said author goes on to write about the trouble the character gets into.

All of this is fine. That’s not the obnoxious part.

The obnoxious part is when said mouthy heroine acts out of character, or has no consequences to her character flaw. When she runs into the Big Bad Guy she doesn’t mouth off to him, even though every situation up to now points to she speaks first and thinks about it later, thereby breaking her character. But the author knows if she mouths off to Big Bad Guy, he would just shoot her in the head. End of story. So the author has her break character, and bite her lip. “I wanted to give him a piece of my mind, but I knew he would shoot me where I stand if I did.” The author also substitutes her mouthing off to the bad guy by having her glare at him too. All of this to cover up the fact that she just breaches character. I am not saying that your mouthy characters should be suicidal, but don’t show them mouthing off to everyone without forethought up to now, and then suddenly they have found restraint.

OR she does mouth off to Big Bad Guy and one of two things happens.
a) Big Bad Guy respects her spunk, and pats her on the head. No one seems to care.
Or
b) She mouths off to him, she and her comrades get tossed into the dungeon where they make a daring escape, and it’s back to business as usual. None of her comrades seem to care she can’t keep her mouth shut when it would be suicide not to, and no one even gets ANGRY with her. They just saunter off and congratulate themselves for a job well done.

HELLO?

If I hung out with someone who constantly got me into trouble because they couldn’t keep their mouth shut because “I don’t let anyone boss me around” I would drop them in a New York Minute (which is quicker than a regular minute).

Again, I am not saying there’s anything wrong with a tough heroine. I have several. I am not saying there’s anything wrong with having them act according to character, and mouth off to people they shouldn’t, if that’s the sort of person you’ve shown them to be.

I am complaining about character traits that magically go away or are inconvenient to the plot. And I see it most often with the tough heroine. People want her to be cool, but they don’t think about the real life consequences that sort of person would incur.

Okay, I am done ranting…for now.



I noticed in my own work that my characters run the gamut between out spoken and quiet, gutsy or mousey, cowardly or brave. It’s not intentional, I don’t say to myself, “Okay, I had an outspoken guy with authority issues last time, now it’s time for a mousey, shy girl who blushes when people look at her.” It just sort of happens. Mostly because I try to make the character directly relevant to the plot, but also because it’s just the character that pops into my head at the time.

I think if you’re only comfortable writing a certain character type, then there’s nothing wrong with that. I would recommend challenging yourself with different types of character once in a while, but that’s your call.

If I had to say, I have a slight preference for females over male, but only because I worry my male characters come across as too feminine and/or unrealistic. But I haven’t had any complaints and some of my best characters are guys, so there’s that. I am also the sort of girl who has more guy friends than girl friends, even though recently the number is balancing itself out, so I think that helps with the guy characters. And I don’t believe that guys can’t write convincing girls or vice versa. Hello, She’s Come Undone is one of the best books I’ve ever read, from the POV of a girl, and written by a guy (Wally Lamb is the author).

One thing I do struggle with is weeding out characters. Every time I start a book I have several characters that try to cram themselves into the work. So they all duke it out thunderdome style, until the winners crawl out and get to be in my book.



It doesn’t make cutting them any easier. I have read advice on combining characters when this happens, and I can manage that sometimes, but most of the time, I can’t. The characters have a specific job or race directly tied to their persona, and combining the two normally means the absolute death of one. This means I have a lot of characters lying around, waiting for their book to be up. I suppose it’s a good problem to have, but frustrating at times.

So what about you guys? How do you feel about tough heroines? Any character pet peeves in books? What about your books, do you have problems with over or under population? Any preferences for character types? Any worries about cross gender characters?

How to Write a Novel 3: Characters, Part I

Quote: “I would never write about someone who is not at the end of his rope.
--Stanley Elkin

Song playing: My Hero by the Foo Fighters

I hope you all enjoyed my Love at First Sight Scene! It was a lot of fun to write.

Today is Progress Report Day. I am still doing the editing slog, that seems like it will never end. Of course, it will end someday, but right now there is no end in sight. *sigh* It will get better.

I had a great Valentine's Day. I saw Legion yesterday with my finace, and it was awesome! I LOVE Paul Beatty (Chauncer from A Knight's Tale, Silas from the Da Vinci Code). It's about angels coming to Earth to bring the apocalypse as directed by God, and Micheal (played by Paul Beatty) decides instead to protect the unborn child of a waitress. If he is born, mankind has a shot. If not...

Anywho, without further rambling from yours truely, here is the next installment of "How to Write a Novel":

You could chose to develop the plot next (more so than what I talked about in How to Write a Novel 2: From Idea to Plot) depending on the idea you have. If the idea is a situation (what if there was a hostage situation in a bank?), I normally continue to work on the plot. If the idea I have stems from a character (a woman is pregnant and her best friend helps her through the pregnancy), then I delve further into the characters.

I am going to talk about characters first because a) because it’s my blog, and my reign here is great and terrible, and b) because most (read: 99%) of my ideas have at least the inklings of a character in them. I actually had think really hard about the example I use for a situational plot that didn’t have a least a little bit of a character in them (the half and half ideas are something like: what if two friends are racing cars against each other and one of them gets badly hurt? The situation of the accident is there, but there is a strong suggestion of character as well (the two friends).

Due to the length of the post about Characters, I am breaking this sucker up into two posts. So here’s Part I:

1. Characters and Plot

Characters and plot are conjoined twins. You might work on one separately and then the other, but in the end your readers really shouldn’t be able to tell which came first. The plot serves as a vessel which you test your character in. Basically, think of the plot as a large swimming pool, and you, the writer, are tossing your character into it, in order to see how the character gets out. Does he swim? Does he let himself drown? Does he grow gills, and make a home in the pool, ruining your summer block party plans?

But, if the character is underdeveloped, no one is really going to care who gets tossed into the pool. You can tailor your plot to really bring out your character, but you need to know first what would get a rise out of them to begin with. If your character is indeed a mermaid, tossing them into a pool really isn’t going to test them. Yanking them out of the pool, however, will.

A novel is about someone getting into trouble, and finding their way of out it. Even the classics have some character in some sort of trouble, and detail how the character finds a solution. The trouble doesn’t have to be external, like being tossed into a pool. It could take place entirely within one room. But the character is still being tested, still pushed to their limits. And if we don’t care about the character, we don’t really care what is happening to them either.

So first we need to make a character, one that you can stand being with through hundreds of pages, and many revisions, and one that your readers will enjoy reading about.

2. Creating a character

If you start out with a character in mind, great. If you don’t, no problem. Remember, nothing during the process of writing it set in stone, no, not even after you write the first draft. Getting the book published is as close to being set in stone as there is, and even that isn’t as permanent as you think.

I’ll give you an example, just to hammer the point home: Years (and several more books into the series) after publishing the Dark Tower 1: the Gunslinger, Stephen King ret-conned (a geek term to mean that someone changes what was previously established to make it fit with the most current material. TV shows do this A LOT) the first book. After he had the series developed more, the first book didn’t seem to fit quite as well, so he released another edition of the first book, to include the new ideas that he came up with in the later books.

This is not an excuse to be lazy, and say you’ll just fix that issue later, just an example to help you understand that things will change as you work on your novel, even after you write the first draft.

So let’s say you don’t have an idea for a character at all, your story idea is almost entirely situational. We will use the hostage situation at the bank scenario, because who doesn’t love a good Characters Force to Be with Each Other conflict? I know I do! First, figure out who has to be there. Since it’s a hostage situation, there will be robbers, hostages, and probably bank employees and the police outside. Depending on what sort of book you want to write, you might chose from any of the above characters, or someone who isn’t listed yet. With each choice of a main character comes a different focus for the story. A main character from the hostages will bring the focus on being trapped in a dangerous situation, and what a person might do to get out of it. A main character from the robbers will bring the focus on what reasons a person might commit such a crime. Your main character doesn’t have to be a good guy, but the reader should be able to relate to him. Chuck Palahniuk is very good at creating main characters that I don’t necessarily like, but are interesting enough for me to want to know what happens to them. Your main character could be a cop, and the focus could shift to the outside of the bank, and his attempts to negotiate with the robbers. You could chose a main character who has nothing to do with the immediate situation, like the mother of one of the hostage victims, and the focus shifts to how helpless and powerless she feels, and what she does about that.

Or, you could have more than one main character, and shift from one character to another. Whatever choice you make will impact the sort of story you tell, so try to keep that in mind. It’s not that you can’t tell the same story with any one of the characters, but there is normally a better choice for the main character who can best gets across what sort of story you want to tell.

That choice is: the person with the most to lose.

Who would be the most devastated by the events of your story? Who would stand the most to gain, to lose? The answer to that question is normally the best choice for the main character. Of course, you might have a brilliant idea that defies all conventions, and if so, God speed good fellow! Remember, take what you find useful from these posts and discard the rest.

So, let’s say we’ve decided to write from two different people’s point of view (POV for short): the cop and one of the hostages. Now you start figuring out what sort of people they are. You do the same sort of brainstorming process you did with your idea, asking yourself what if? and trying to figure out what you find the most interesting. My first thought for the cop was he just got out of hostage negotiation school, and it was his first day back. Ouch. I could decide to put that idea aside, or just go with my first thoughts. Depending on my mood, I might do one or the other. Sometimes the character pops up in my head, I can see them perfectly and hear them talking. If that’s the case, I leave the character concept alone, figuring that this character has decided to adopt me (I am picturing a young detective in a beige trench coat). If the idea is still sort of hazy, I usually continue with the questions, just to be thorough.

Usually when I have a character in mind, I am like a terrier with a chew toy. I work on the idea or element that feels the most real to me, and let things spin out from there. In this case, it’s Detective Brewster, and his Very Bad Day. I could vaguely flesh out some of the other characters, like figure out the robbers, or who the other hostage is. Here is something neat: your character choices will directly influence the genre and sub-genre of story you are telling. If I wanted a romantic story, I could make the hostage character a female, and she uses her cunning to get the robbers to let her talk to Detective Brewster, and at the end, manages to help diffuse the situation. If I wanted a book closer to a buddy cop story, I could make the hostage character a Regular Joe, and he and Detective Brewster go have drinks at the end. If I wanted to really put Detective Brewster in a bind, I could make one of the hostages, either the other main character or one of the other hostages, someone he knows personally, like his sister or daughter.

3. Character Sheets

At this point, I usually start with a quick character sketch for the main characters. Ahhh, character questionnaires. Another topic of hot debate for writers. Despite their existence, I don’t actually know a writer, outside of myself, that uses in depth character sketches. Most of writers I know, and have read about, feel like they are too stifling, and a waste of time. I can see where they are coming from.

But, indulge me and my soapbox: I LOVE character sheets. I used to feel they were a waste of time too, who care’s what my character’s zodiac sign is?, until I read Noah Lukeman’s The Plot Thickens. Talk about life changing.

Lukeman has three ENTIRE chapters on characterization. He has pages, and pages of questions for your characters, but the point of those questions isn’t to just check off some boxes, or fill it out, and then never look at it again, but to think about how a trait will affect your character. I feel like this is where the point of character sheets gets lost. It’s not that you fill out a laundry list, but you are trying to dig deep into your character, to find out who they are. At the end of the major sections in Lukeman’s characterization, he asks questions about how the decisions you just made about your character (Detective Brewster is a republican, but his parents are Democrats) will affect them.

Even if you don’t answer all of the questions, just thinking about how character traits will influence the plot is helpful. Maybe your character moved from the mountains but has a thriving business in the Keys. She longs for the mountains, but doesn’t want to move her seashell business, where she knows she won’t do as well. This detail might not be important to the story, it might not have any bearing on the outcome of your plot, but if you have that in mind while writing about her, it will deepen your understanding of her. It might only be mentioned once that she grew up in the mountains, but if this detail helped YOU the writer see her as a person, than it did it’s job.

Character traits are relative. Most authors know a lot more about their characters than ever makes it into fiction, but the point isn’t to cram every character detail into your story, or conversely, to only use the details that apply directly to your story. The point is to feel like your characters are living, breathing people. Because if they aren’t real to you, your readers aren’t going to believe they are real either.

Some authors can write perfectly real, fleshed out characters without ever using a character sheet, and some authors (holds up her hand) think that character sheets are little gifts from heaven. Whatever works for you.

This covers the basics of who your characters could be. There is loads more information about your characters, but I have tried to stick with what I felt was the most pertinent.

Tomorrow we’re going to talk more about the psychology of your character, the inner workings that really makes or breaks a character.

If anyone has any questions, or comments, feel free to post in the comments section. How do you come up with your characters? How do you make them seem real?