Writing characters from one series into another...?

by Carola


I'm writing about lifeboats at present--a rescue from a cave. Both these types of boat are involved.

D-class inflatable inshore boat

I've had a lot of discussion on Facebook and on my website as to whether it's kosher to name the three lifeboats in my Cornish series mystery after characters in my Daisy Dalrymple series: the Daisy D., the Belinda, and the Lucy. These people, from the 1920s setting, would be in their 50s/70s by the time of the Cornish series.










The Royal National Lifeboat Institute is a volunteer organisation. RNLI boats are usually named after the donor(s) or fundraisers of the donations that paid for them. Daisy, her friend Lucy, and her stepdaughter, Belinda, could well have done this.

This is the actual Padstow lifeboat at the time of my story, now retired to Land's End.

The Oakley class--this is a 37'; Padstow actually had a 44', as pictured above.

Lots of readers liked the idea of a nod to the Daisy series. A few didn't like it, but those few had very strong opinions on the subject.


What do you think? Is it a mistake to intrude one series on another, in such a minor way? Maybe next I'll have an older Daisy turn up in Cornwall and meet Eleanor...

All photos courtesy of RNLI

The Mystery Writer's Challenge

By Chester Campbell

Writing mysteries is a bag full of challenges. First, you need a situation that can lead to dire consequences. Or, to put it simply, somebody's gonna get murdered. When I start writing a story, I usually have a simple idea of who's going to wind up in the morgue and basically why. Then I get into the details and it isn't so simple any longer. I have to know exactly why this person got himself done in. At that point, I often find the original idea doesn't quite get it. Time for more thought about both characters and their motivations.

If you're writing a series, as I do, you have one or two characters you and your readers are well acquainted with. So you have to find a realistic way to get them tangled in the plot. That brings on more challenges. I write PI mysteries, and everybody knows private investigators (except in rare cases like The Marathon Murders) don't get hired to solve murders. So their involvement with the homicide must be a natural outgrowth of some other plot point.

The next big challenge lies in the area of creating characters who might have done it (or whodunit). You need multiple suspects to keep things interesting. And all of them must be capable of committing the crime. If there's a little old lady involved, she'd better be a pistol packin' mama. It takes a bunch of red herrings to make the plot really fishy.

If you're using subplots, and most of us do, the challenge is to invent a scenario that fits into the main story without hijacking it. Sometimes a bit player in a subplot will try to take the spotlight away from the protagonist. When that happens, you have to put him or her back in their proper place as supporting actors. If they're really Oscar material and won't behave properly, pull them out and give them a book of their own.

Now comes the really big challenge, filling up that vast wasteland known as the middle of the book. Unfortunately, we can't accomplish it by throwing in lots of ands and buts and the's and thou's. It must be interesting stuff that moves the plot and draws out the characters, tantalizing details that will keep the reader reading the book rather than  doing the old fast pitch against the wall.

Finally, the last, and probably most important, challenge is to pin everything on the bad guy and bring down the curtain with a finale that is both surprising and satisfying, one that grows naturally out of the action and makes the reader think I should have known that all along, how else could it have ended?

That's why I enjoy writing mysteries. Nothing like a bundle of challenges to get your juices flowing. How about you?

Getting Re-Acquainted with Characters

By Chester Campbell

An interesting facet of series writing is dealing with characters who wander in and out of the stories as the protagonists face a variety of circumstances. I’m working on the fifth book in my Greg McKenzie series, about a retired Air Force OSI agent and his wife, and the Gannons have just turned up again. They took a prominent role in the first couple of books as Greg and Jill McKenzie’s best friends. After a minor role in book three, they pulled a disappearing act in the last one.

It wasn’t anything planned. The story just moved in a way that didn’t call for any interaction with the folks who normally make contact with my main characters, particularly on weekends. My books take place on a pretty tight schedule, usually over a span of no more than a week. If the action doesn’t call for a little leisure activity, close friends get crowded out.

The Gannons, Sam and Wilma, took a prominent role in Secret of the Scroll as fellow travelers on the Holy Land tour where the trouble began. A retired Air Force pilot, Sam helped plan the trip for their Sunday School class. It was a mix-up that left the “souvenir” scroll at the Gannons' house that resulted in Jill’s being taken hostage by local cohorts of a Palestinian terrorist group.

In the second book, Designed to Kill, the Gannons' son died at Perdido Key, Florida in what police chose to call a suicide. Sam asked Greg to go down and try to find what really happened. As you might guess, it wasn’t suicide. But it was that investigation, and Jill’s participation in it, that led to the establishment of McKenzie Investigations shortly before the opening of book three, Deadly Illusions.

The Gannons played a minor role in Illusions, but the next book, The Marathon Murders, moved at such a pace that they got squeezed out. It involved a character who played a crucial role in the latter part of Secret of the Scroll. I suppose it’s a case of having room to deal with only one close friend at a time.

The new book, as yet unnamed, takes place around Christmastime. My characters, being good church-goers, take a break from the current case to attend the Sunday School class Christmas Party, part of which takes place at the Gannons' home. I have no idea how it will affect the plot. It will be as much of a surprise to me as to anybody. My current task is to re-introduce Sam and Wilma with enough background to satisfy new readers to the series without boring those who’ve been around from the start.

As a side note, the ranks of those starting with the first book grows each time I do a signing with all of my backlist on the table. Two people bought all four McKenzie books last Saturday when I signed at the Cheatham County Public Library. Ya gotta love those folks.

And it’ll be interesting getting re-acquainted with the Gannons.

The Many Faces of Sid Chance

By Chester Campbell

Well, maybe not all that many faces, but you get the idea. Characters are created from a smorgasbord of features that emanate from many sources. In the case of Sid Chance, the protagonist in The Surest Poison, I pulled him together from lots of different places.

The first thing you notice about a person is outward appearance, mainly size. For Sid, think of my Murderous Musings colleague, Ben Small. If you’ve ever met him, Ben is a large presence. I modeled Sid’s size after him. Sid is six-foot-six and wears a number 16 shoe (it’s featured in the story). But unlike Ben, I gave him a black beard. He had been living like a hermit in the backwoods the past three years, and hermits don’t fool with shaving.

Sid’s love of the outdoors, along with his homemade cabin on the hillside, came from my younger son, Mark. Like Sid, Mark served in Army Special Forces, though his service was post-Vietnam. That’s where his early-rising habit originated. Though nearly twenty years out of the Army, Mark (like Sid) still gets up in the wee hours. The cabin idea and its location came from Mark. Several years ago he bought 85 acres of hillside in Smith County, east of Nashville. He hauled the materials, including plywood sheets and 40-pound sacks of Quikrete, up the hill on his back, with some help from his two sons. Mark’s cabin is not as commodious as Sid’s, but he only stays there a few days at a time.

Sid’s background as a National Park ranger came courtesy of Tom Howell, a former ranger at the Gulf Islands National Seashore at Perdido Key, FL. I interviewed Howell while working on the second Greg McKenzie mystery, Designed to Kill. He gave me a basic understanding of what the job entails.

I didn’t do anything with it in this book, but the fact that Sid’s mother insisted he learn to play the piano may be followed up later. That part of his character came from my own experience. My mother’s sister was a piano teacher and organist at our church. My older brother and I got mandatory piano lessons as youngsters. Playing in recitals was my worst nightmare. Aunt Rosie wanted to teach me organ, but I was getting into my teens and didn’t want to bother with that. Of course, now I dearly wish I had. I haven’t played in ages, though I have an electronic keyboard (I gave my piano to my younger daughter).

The final character trait I had to consider was the way Sid thinks. He isn’t totally me, but a lot of his philosophy on life mirrors my own. I suspect most writers imbue their protagonists with much of their own views. Of course, a lot of his thoughts and actions reflect the way I would like to be. I am not so bold or confrontational. I would not likely have made a good cop.

My characters are pulled together from lots of people I know or know about. They’re not close enough for anybody to sue me (I hope), but they come across as real people because they’re a hodgepodge of actual people.

Character Creation and the Enneagram

By Beth Terrell

When I was a teenager, I discovered a book called Linda Goodman's Sun Signs. Despite being a rather stereotypical Taurus, I never bought into the idea that everyone born in a certain month would behave a certain way, but I loved the part of each chapter that described the strengths, weaknesses, and characteristics of each sign. I would devise various characters of each type, then put characters of different types in the same situation and explore how each would react.

Looking back, I realize those characterizations worked because they were based on the idea that people who have certain qualities generally have a specific constellation of interrelated qualities. In essence, I was using the Sun Signs descriptions as a rudimentary way of personality typing. There are a number of more scientific ways to classify personality. The Meyers-Briggs method of personality typing divides people into categories based on the following categories: introversion vs. extroversion, intuiting vs. sensing, thinking vs. feeling, and judging vs. perceiving.

My favorite method of typing personality is the Enneagram of Personality. Many writers have found this system helpful in creating complex, multi-dimensional characters. Cindi Brown, who co-teaches an Enneagram class with Mary Beth Ross and authors a blog called the Enneagram Agency (http://enneagramagency.blogspot.com), says, "The Enneagram is good for developing realistic characters for the same reasons it is good for understanding real people -- it's a complex and nuanced model of the human psyche that is amazingly predictive. It can tell you how a certain type of person will likely change, for better or worse, over the course of their 'story arc.'"

According to the Enneagram Institute, the nine types are as follows:

One: The Reformer (principled, purposeful, self-controlled, perfectionistic)

Two: The Helper (demonstrative, generous, people-pleasing, possessive)

Three: The Achiever (adaptive, excelling, driven, image-conscious)

Four: The Individualist (expressive, dramatic, self-absorbed, temperamental)

Five: The Investigator (perceptive, innovative, secretive, isolated)

Six: The Loyalist (engaging, responsible, anxious, suspicious)

Seven: The Enthusiast ((spontaneous, versatile, distractible, scattered)

Eight: The Challenger (self-confident, decisive, willful, confrontational)

Nine: The Peacemaker (receptive, reassuring, agreeable, complacent)

The thing I like best about the Enneagram of Personality is that it doesn't stop at describing a person's basic traits. It also explores how each type thinks and behaves at each of nine levels of mental/emotional/spiritual health. For example, an Eight at the highest level of health might be the noble protector, using his strength to defend the weak. An Eight at the lowest level of health might be a terrorist or mass murderer, striking out viciously at others . Robert Crais's beloved character Joe Pike might be an example of a healthy Eight. At the extreme low end of the Eight continuum, we might find someone like the BTK killer.

Judith Searle, the author of The Literary Enneagram: Characters From the Inside Out, says, "Unlike standard typologies, which provide only static lists of traits, the Enneagram of Personality offers insights into the ways individuals of different temperaments change under stress and when feeling secure."

Susan Reynolds and Paula Munier have written a book called The Enneagram for Writers: Using an Ancient Personality System to Create Unforgettable Characters. The book explains how to use the nine Enneagram types to create characters with depth and realism. Unfortunately, as of this writing, it has yet to be released, but keep your eyes open, since it promises to be a good one.

While you're waiting, though, here are two very useful books on using the Enneagram to create three-dimensional characters. The first is Believable Characters: Creating with Enneagrams by Laurie Schnebly. The second, by Anne Hart, is targeted to writers of mysteries and suspense: Tools for Mystery Writers: Writing Suspense Using Hidden Personality Traits.

Finally, one of the most popular books for anyone with an interest in learning more about the Enneagram is The Wisdom of the Enneagram by Don Richard Riso.

Whatever your feelings about personality typing, even a cursory study of the enneagram is sure to inspire a host of intriguing characters and plots to put them in.

And my protagonist, Jared McKean? Healthy Eight with a Nine wing.

Speed Writing

By Mark W. Danielson

It’s been a while since I’ve written about writing, so today I’ll introduce my method that I call “speed writing”. Of course, this isn’t a novel concept, but rather two words that describe how I create my stories.

Before I ever sit down to the computer, I’ve spent months or years thinking about what I intend to write. I’ve also completed my research, walked the settings, and even photographed many of the scenes to engage my mind where it needs to be. In other words, what makes speed writing possible is I’ve thought out every aspect of the story, thus the subsequent writing becomes effortless. Now, all that’s missing are my characters, but letting them evolve is the best part of writing.

I wrote my next story in thirty days; half of which I completed in four. How is that possible? Simple – I was in Kazakhstan, couldn’t sleep, and had nothing better to do. In situations like that, I either produce or wither. But does speed writing work for others? Beats me. I do know that Dean Koontz spends sixty to ninety hours per week writing, and when you have that much uninterrupted time, you can churn out stories pretty fast.

Unlike many authors, I don’t spend much time outlining. However, I do jot notes as I go along, primarily so I can remember details. For example, I need to know my characters; where they live, what they do, what they look like, but these notes never give direction.

I’ve often linked writing to painting, and speed writing is no exception. In painting, you can only do so many brush strokes before the paint dries, and you only get so many versions before you’ve ruined the canvas. And so it goes for writing; too much thought and revisions will ruin a story. Thus my logic becomes, if I’m struggling with a thought, then it probably wasn’t a great one, so I should drop it and move on.

Bear in mind that speed writing doesn’t carry over to editing. Editing is like exiting the freeway into a school zone. It has to be slow and methodical to check for logic and inconsistencies, so enjoy the freeway for as long as you can.

The most important thing about writing is to get the story from my head into a workable document. I never stop until my first draft is complete. For me, writing fiction is no different than telling a story around a camp fire. So, when you think about writing in those terms, you’ll see why I believe anyone can write.

The ABCs of Writing a Book

By Chester Campbell

A few people seem to possess a sort of inherent compass that guides their minds into creating stories that satisfy all the requirements of good writing in one fell swoop of the pen, or a single foray across the keyboard. I'm in awe of the one-draft author. That's because I’m the polar opposite. I constantly edit and revise as I go.

Every writer must find what works best for him or herself. I don’t advocate that anyone follow my style of creating a book, but if you find something here that validates what you do or in some way intrigues you into trying a different approach, I’ll feel I have succeeded in some small manner.

I approach a new a novel with a basic idea for an incident that could lead to lots of complications. In my second Greg McKenzie mystery, for example, I considered what might happen if a penthouse balcony collapsed during a party at a new beachfront high-rise condo, killing two people. That presented the questions: what caused the accident, and who was responsible?

With the major premise in hand, I needed a cast of characters. I’m not a detailed plotter or an outliner, so I depend on my characters to dictate the direction of the story. I decided on a young architect/engineer from the previous book to bear the brunt of blame for the accident. For potential bad guys I picked a developer, a contractor, and an inspector. I later added a female real estate agent.

At that point I needed a little initial research to put me on the right track. Since I knew little if anything about condo construction, I consulted a couple of friends. One was a civil engineer, the other a structural engineer who dealt with concrete, the material of choice for building beachfront condos. That gave me enough information to start writing.

I began with a Prologue that, thanks to later revision, introduced all the suspects and most of the major characters, except for my protagonists, Greg and Jill McKenzie. I set it at the penthouse party and used a third person omniscient viewpoint so I could let the reader know the balcony was in trouble from the opening line. Starting with Chapter 1, the story is told in first person from Greg's point of view.

The architect/engineer is found dead the next morning of what the sheriff calls a self-inflicted gunshot wound. The young man’s parents are the McKenzies’ best friends, and his father doesn’t believe he would commit suicide. He asks Greg, a retired Air Force investigator, to look into it.

After the first few chapters in Nashville, the story moved to Perdido Key, FL. It was time for more intensive on-scene research. My brother had a condo there where my wife and I had stayed a couple of times a year, which is how the plot idea came about. We spent two weeks there checking out various angles. Since the so-called suicide occurred at the Gulf Islands National Seashore, I interviewed the National Park ranger responsible for law enforcement. Following up on what I learned from him, I talked to a sheriff’s investigator, a medical examiner’s tech, and a man in the building inspection office.

I also researched locations and backgrounds on Perdido Key, in Pensacola and around Escambia County.

Although I don’t outline, I did extensive character sketches for the major characters and typed up detailed notes from my research. And early on I plotted out where all the main characters were each hour on the night of the murder.

By this time I knew who the murderer was (or so I thought) and had a pretty good idea of where the story was headed. I sat down to write in earnest. But things happen. About halfway through the book, I changed my mind about the murderer. It required going back to make sure I had left enough clues to make the ending believable. That’s what I love about fiction. You’re free to alter the past anytime you like. Makes you feel like God tinkering with the universe.

As I mentioned at the start, I am a constant rewriter. Each time I sit down to write, I go back at least to the start of the last chapter, read through it and make changes where something doesn’t quite fit. Now and then I’ll start from the beginning and do a quick edit up to the point where I left off. Sometimes I may change a line back to what I had on the first try.

When I get to the end of the book, what might be called a first draft is really anything but. I take this opportunity to go back through the manuscript looking for places I can make the writing more colorful, more dramatic, more scintillating (okay, so I don't scintillate all that much). I also delete those too-cute phrases that I got carried away with in their creation. I try to smooth out the rough spots Chris Roerden cites in her book Don’t Murder Your Mystery.



The book I covered here is titled Designed to Kill and was published in 2004. You can read the Prologue and Chapter 1 by clicking this link to the Designed Opening. If you're interested, go to my home page for a 40 percent discount on purchasing the book.

And if you don't agree with my technique for creating your masterpiece, work out your own. But sit down and write it. That's a requirement.

The Editor - a Writer's Best Friend

By Chester Campbell

I just received the edited manuscript for my fifth novel, The Surest Poison. Some writers might think that’s an appropriate title for a bunch of pages with red marks scattered about. I view it as an opportunity to make the story more exciting and more compelling for readers.

I’ll admit I was a bit intimidated back in 2002 when I got the edit of my first published book from the editor. It looked like the Wreck of the Hesperus, figuratively speaking. Some whole pages crossed out. Three pages of notes referencing various points. It took two more revisions before I got the all clear.

But I learned a lot in the process, and the edit marks showed up less and less in the next three books.

I’ll have to confess I’m not the best of editors, except when it comes to grammar and punctuation. I honed my craft in that phase as a copy editor on a newspaper. That part of the process involves mostly superficial stuff. It’s the more subtle aspects of character motivation and relationships that sometimes pass me by. I don’t read with a critical eye. As long as the plot is plausible and the story is entertaining, I’m not disturbed by characters who get a bit quirky at times. If they get overboard ridiculous, that’s different.

Some readers are as critical as editors, however. They are turned off by characters whose actions don’t fit the picture of them that has been drawn in earlier scenes. So I’m headed back to the drawing board (or laptop) to make a few actions appear more in line with the dictates of logic.

One thing my editor appreciates is words and phrases that paint vivid pictures. I try to use them wherever possible, though I occasionally find I’ve gotten a bit too flamboyant and wind up applying the old delete key. It’s easy to fall in love with a beautiful phrase, but chances are it will end up sounding a little too cute. When that happens, it’s ax time.

Another of the editor’s jobs is to look at the big picture and decide if the story flows properly from beginning to end. Sometimes switching a couple of scenes can heighten the tension. Occasionally, a chapter might be switched to another location.

With my first book, I was a bit intimidated by the editorial process. I had to admit the editor was right on nearly everything he suggested, but I wasn’t sure what to do when I strongly disagreed. I talked to the publisher and was told, “It’s your book. Do what you have to.”

On those few points, I had my way, but overall the book was infinitely better for the editing it received. My friend Chris Roerden’s books, Don’t Murder Your Mystery and the updated Don’t Sabotage Your Submission, give lots of good advice on self-editing, which has helped improve my writing in many respects. But it takes the unbiased eyes of an outside editor to get the story ready for the printer.

Thank God or good editors.