Tag: characters

Who’s In Charge Here?

~ janispattersonmysteries ~ 2 Comments

by Janis Patterson

Every so often one of my writers’ groups will conduct a workshop on ‘how to create a character.’ I’ve taken a few of them and the methods range from a half-dozen point checklist to a six page questionnaire that goes into such depth as the character’s favorite flavor of Jello, the schools he attended, what kind of pet he had as a child…. You get the idea.

I’ve tried them all, and each time created a deep, multi-faceted character. A completely dead deep, multi-faceted character. They had all the proper points, but they never came to life on the page. Working with them resulted in all the joy and sparkle of Silly Putty. Oh, they moved from Point A to Point B when I directed them, and spoke the words I put in their mouths, but they were reminiscent of nothing so much as Gumby or King Kong – their movements were obviously stop-animation instead of really coming to life.

So I quit taking classes and went back to what I’ve always done – letting the character come to me. Almost every writer has snorted with disbelief when I tell them about the birth of my characters, but – other than my occasional forays into how-to-create-characters classes – it’s always worked for me.

So what do I do? Nothing. My characters simply walk in, tell me their name, and start fitting into the vague storyline that I’ve started with. And yes, they tell me their names. Once I really didn’t like a character’s (the hero!) name and changed it. He didn’t like it, so he shut up and refused to speak to me again until I changed it back to what he wanted some three weeks later. Then the writing simply flowed because of his cooperation.

Who said writers had complete control in their own world?

I know this technique (technique? maybe dictatorship?) wouldn’t work for all writers. Huh, it may not work for any writer besides me, but that’s the point. Even if I’m the only one it works for, it does work for me. I know the character’s-favorite-Jello system works for some people. It doesn’t work for me, but I’m glad it works for them.

What I’m trying to say is that there is no one singular this-way-only technique for writing a book. The only thing that we all should do is write a good book. How we write that book is up to us. There are many good techniques, probably some I’ve never heard of. The important thing is that each writer has to find the one that works for him. Or which ones work for him. There’s no rule saying you can only use one technique. As long as you turn out a good book, it doesn’t matter.

Silk Road Inspiration

~ susanoleksiw ~ 6 Comments

Recently a friend told me about a trip her mother wanted to take with her to India, and asked me about some of the sights and events planned for them. I found a description of the trip online and skimmed through it thinking how I would answer her questions when just below was another trip that threw all my travel plans and budget for the year into the trash can.

When I was perhaps eleven or twelve years old I came across a book about a trip to Central Asia. After You, Marco Polo by Jean Bowie Shor describes a journey she and her husband made following in the footsteps of the explorer on his travels from Venice to China in the late 13th century. The book was published in 1955, only a few years after their trip in the late 1940s. The author is the definition of the word intrepid, and I don’t believe anyone alive today would even consider taking the same trip so dependent are we on cell phones, public transportation, emergency services, detailed maps, and reliable guides, not to mention translation programs on our cell phones and a general sense of peace and safety (now perhaps ebbing). I reread this book recently and it is still one of the most incredible survival stories of any traveler on the Silk Road in Central Asia I have encountered.

This book sparked my love of Asia, as a result of which I ended up living in India for a year doing research, and then returning for a second year for more of the same. I’ve been back several times to visit friends, and even though I’m no longer any kind of scholar, I’ve maintained my interest in India in the Anita Ray series and several photography projects. The author, Jean Bowie Shor, inspired numerous characters with her impetuous forays into forbidden areas and unbelievable luck in surviving and even thriving, as well as her fortitude in traversing a 20,000 foot mountain pass with her fever-stricken, delirious husband and two guides who were hoping to fleece their dead bodies of more money than the entire community would see in a hundred life times.

I don’t plan to write during the trip, but that’s a plan that can quickly evaporate. I do plan to take a lot of photographs, and as I often do when working on an Anita Ray story, I’ll line up the most interesting along my desk to glance at while I work after I get home. Some people like music in the background, some like a particular bit of clutter, I like photographs.

Now, after many years, I’m finally taking my dream trip—to the Silk Road. I’ve signed on for a tour with about a dozen others to visit three of the Stans—Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and Kyrgyzstan—along the Silk Road. After a lapse of many decades, I will be part of the kind of  ensembles of tourists that I find so stimulatingly murderous in my Anita Ray series set in South India. I’m doing a lot of background reading so I’ll be ready for my characters when they show up. The trip is scheduled for the fall, so I have a lot of time to enjoy one of the best parts of travel—anticipation.

I’m not sure what this post is about, but I’m booked for a trip I’ve dreamt about for years and taking it now seems fitting.

Reframing

~ susanoleksiw ~ 6 Comments

Reframing is a well-established psychological tool for tackling problems that may seem intractable, and I found myself appreciating it recently.

For the last three years two other writers and I spend much of the spring and summer working on the annual anthology Best New England Crime Stories published by Crime Spell Books. All three of us read and select the stories, and all three of us edit. All the other duties are split. Ang Pompano sends out the acceptance or rejection emails and works on promotion, developing ads and the like. Leslie Wheeler manages the books, and works on sales opportunities. I get to write jacket copy, and lay out the book for POD. We have a great cover designer, and all three of us weigh in on the art and design. We review each other’s work, offer suggestions, and manage to put out a book we’re proud of every year while also having fun at our launch at Crime Bake in November.

Writing jacket copy is perhaps the least onerous job of a writer with a book going to press. My practice has been to look over the list of stories, arrange them in loose groups, and talk about the kinds of crimes they contain. I wrote the copy this month and sent it around to Ang and Leslie. Both liked it but Leslie had a response I hadn’t expected but found provocative. With all the talk of crime in the news today, depressing for everyone, perhaps we could focus on the characters who are fighting back, challenging the criminals or the system. This immediately appealed to me, and I ditched the first draft and reshuffled my note cards.

Looking at these stories from the perspective of the range of characters caught up in circumstance of crime and its consequences changed the way I viewed them and let me see beyond the cleverness of the plot, the range of characters swirling around incidents, the grounding bit of information, the unexpected twist. Most were ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances finding something within they didn’t realize they had. They were sometimes stymied by their situations, tripped up by bad luck or trapped by betrayal, but they were a match to the challenge, though not all succeeded in bringing about justice.

By reframing I also got closer to a different view of the crime. When a crime is committed it is most often by a person shriveled by life and seeking an unimaginative solution. An ordinary scam inspires a docile matron, and a drug addict discovers how far he has gone on the path to a. new life, and what his world is really like, something most readers will never experience. For others, following clues and solving a crime leads to a painful reckoning. Rewriting the jacket copy turned out, also, to be more challenging than cataloging a variety of crimes. As expected, the protagonists in these twenty-four stories were a varied lot.

With every year, we three editors choose stories that we think are well written, well thought out, and interesting as fiction. Because it’s crime fiction there is an understandable emphasis on the structure, the plot with a crime and its solution. But with a change in perspective, a reframing, I find myself appreciating the range of personalities grappling with life’s body blows. There is a richness not as easily appreciated otherwise. I hope our readers will feel the same way when the book is out in November.

Keeping Track of Details by Karen Shughart

~ kshughart47 ~ 3 Comments

Well, I’m almost there. I’ve been slogging away at writing book two of the Edmund DeCleryk mystery series, Murder in the Cemetery, for upwards of a year and now I’m in the editing, polishing and cut-and-paste phase of the book. There are more details in this one than Murder in the Museum, so way more things to keep track of:

For example, in an earlier chapter, Annie DeCleryk, wife of sleuth Edmund DeCleryk, invites a friend of hers to speak at an evening event sponsored by the Historical Society where Annie works. Low and behold, a later chapter indicated that it was a luncheon event. Boy, was I glad I discovered that one!

At another point I write about an unidentified set of tire tracks at the murder scene, that’s early on in the story, but as I reached the end of the first draft I realized I’d never come back to it and explained why they were there.

There are a set of historical letters written into the plot, they take place in the 1800s. I have them interspersed throughout the book in chronological order. At least now I do. When I scrolled through the manuscript, I discovered that in a couple places they were in the wrong order.

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Then there are chapters. As I write and revise, I sometimes remove chapters or move them to another location. Sometimes I divide one chapter into two. I spent one afternoon making sure the chapters were in order and correctly numbered. In a few cases they weren’t.

I also try and eliminate redundancy. Ed and Annie take a trip to England, you’ll learn why when you read the book, and they discover there’s a connection with something that happens on that trip and the murder in Lighthouse Cove. I explain it fully in that chapter and yep, I had Ed explaining the same scenario, multiple times, to other characters who were helping solve the crime. You, the reader, probably don’t want to revisit the entire story more than once, so in subsequent explanations I went back and had Ed summarize.

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

I was a journalist once and as a result, my fiction writing, at least those early drafts, is typically very succinct. So, then I go back and expand the plot. Once done, I usually realize I’ve written more than I need, so then I cut.  What that means is that sometimes I get rid of a chapter I’m emotionally attached to, because as much as I like it, it really doesn’t enhance the plot.

Writing a novel takes a lot of work, not just making sure the plot makes sense, but also keeping track of all the details that make a book flow the way it’s supposed to. I do that on handwritten notes, charts, notes in my computer and, also, in my head. Phew! But I’m gratified when the finished product finally goes to print.

 

The World Through My Eyes

~ janegorman ~ 1 Comment

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The fifth book in the Adam Kaminski mystery series will come out this summer. I am so excited to share it with you! I’ve spent the past two years working on this book that looks at the world through the eyes of a photographer, while also telling the story of a cruise in which everyone is pretending to be someone they’re not.

One of the things I enjoy most about writing is the opportunity to look at the world through other peoples eyes. Because my series has one main character– Adam Kaminski – who always finds someone to help him out, I have the pleasure of creating a new point-of-view character for each book (that is, a character whose thoughts you, the reader, get to hear.)

In this book my second leading character is Julia Kaminski, sister to Adam. Julia has appeared in most of the other books in the series, so I’m not creating her from scratch. But this is the first time I’m writing from her perspective, describing the world through her eyes. In this case, the eyes of a photographer. There can be no doubt, we all see the world a little bit differently.

 

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A very blurry suggestion of the cover for A Pale Reflection  – the world as I might see it!

Personally, I’ve been wearing glasses since I was five (and probably needed them before that). The world through my eyes looks very different. Terribly near-sighted, without my glasses I see blurs of color without distinct shapes. Every pin prick of light becomes a giant, glowing snowflake. It’s actually quite beautiful! As long as I don’t need to see clearly. These days, I wear bifocals, so I get two different views of the world depending how I hold my head! (And does anyone hate progressive bifocals as much as I do? I couldn’t stand them.)

As an aside, I recently saw a video about very young children – one year or younger – getting glasses and being able to see their mothers’ faces clearly for the first time. The expression of joy on their faces was indescribable. How the doctors were able to figure out a) that they needed glasses and b) what their prescription was I have no idea. But it is remarkable.

 

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Bifocal and near vision only – just two of the many pairs of glasses in my life!

My husband, on the other hand, is farsighted. How strange! After a lifetime of holding things next to my face to read them, I can’t imagine only being able to see clearly when things are far away. The world he sees is very different from the world I see.

I’m pretty sure the same holds true for reading. I write a book and let it out into the world. Now it’s up to the reader to see whatever he or she sees in it. I love hearing other peoples perspectives of my books — don’t get me wrong — but I admit there are times when I hear someone describing one of my characters and I think: can’t I just give you a prescription that lets you see it the way I see it?

A Pale Reflection, my book about seeing the world – and other people – clearly, comes out this summer. Check out my Facebook page or sign up for my newsletter at my website to see the full cover soon. And follow me on Instagram to see photos of my world. I hope my perspective of other people’s perspective will keep you entranced – and wondering who the killer is!

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