The Shame of Forgetting to Take Your Own Advice

by Jackie King

There are two writing challenges I’m facing just now. The first is creating a protagonist (heroine, in this case) for a new series I’m trying to concoct. The second is working with old characters in order to get my current work to the publisher.

Creating new characters is pure fun. Playing with those who have been around for a few years can sometimes be a bit tedious. These fictitious folk have had time to develop an attitude. To add insult to injury, I fear they learned this unpleasant trait from me. 

Not wanting to write is sort of like a young woman with a would-be admirer she’s (at first) uninterested in. The guy seems dull to her, and she doesn’t want to go on the date she’s agreed to. She does it anyway, because she promised.

This is what I’m like when I don’t want to write, but have to. I type what seems to be one dull word after another. Then later I’m astonished (as is the young woman) when the dullard springs to life and becomes exciting. This is part of the magic of writing fiction.

Writer’s block has been jokingly described as, “When your imaginary friends won’t come out and play.” In fact, I have a T-shirt with that in scripted on the front. But the opposite is also true. Sometimes writers just don’t want to play with the people they have created, that day. This happens to me quite often.

We writers can find very creative excuses for this malady. One writer friend I know used this method:

“You told me to make sure you wrote on this trip,” I’d say.

She’d lean back in her chair, shoot me an ultra-wise look, and tap her forehead. “I am writing,” she’d say. “Up here, in my mind.”

I never argued, because that’s not my style, but I also never believed her. When I’m writing or brainstorming for new characters or plots, I find it necessary to be at my computer or have pencil and paper at the ready.

Ideas can flash through a writer’s mind with such brilliance that you know you’ll forget never forget them. How could you? The character or plot concept seemed so alive it couldn’t fade. But it does. The inspiration burns itself out for want of a pencil and turns into ashes.

By the time I decided to put my rear in the chair and record my masterpiece, the whole thought had disintegrated. Much to my own chagrin, that sometimes still happens. Usually when I’m out somewhere with nothing to write on or with. Which, of course, is my own fault. I’ve told students to always carry a pen and notebook or index cards in their purse or pocket.

Oh, the shame of not listening to your own advice.

Just now I’m brainstorming for a new protagonist. (To non-writers, that’s the main character who is telling the story.) I’m interviewing females from 60 upwards to relate some new adventures.

Ms. Protagonist will have younger relatives to add balance to the story. One might be a a grown granddaughter who is also a police psychologist. To add depth and interest, this young woman could love anime and dress up each year for Tokyo in Tulsa. As a hobby she might conjure up characters by doodling pictures like these:

Brother and Kid travel a deserted wasteland

Thorn, a thief, wrestling with his own pride
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All characters were created and sketched by Morgan Sohl

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At this stage there are no limits, and I’m having so much fun that the old characters may have to wait for awhile. 

What Are You Best At in Writing Novels?

by June Shaw

All of us have strengths in many areas of our lives and weaknesses in others. I'm so glad life works that way and gives us variety.

One of the areas where writers vary is their talent for creating stories.Some bring the most strength to creating characters. Others gloss over their characters and press on with their plots. Some others show their power to their voices that are unique. The best, of course, do an exceptional job with blending everything, making us really care for the people in their stories and pulling us along at an exciting pace with their plotting. They also have a writing voice we remember.

My main strength, I believe, is creating characters. The books I've always been drawn to make me care about the people in them. I love developing those who will live in my stories. Readers and reviewers often comment about my characters. For instance the main charcter in my mystery series, which Five Star published in hardcover and Untreed Reads will put on as e-books in July, August, and September, is Cealie Gunther. She's a spunky widow who wants to avoid her hunky ex-lover Gil Thurman so she can rediscover herself. But he opens Cajun restaurants wherever she travels -- and she is so bad at avoiding tempting dishes and men.

Lots of people say they love Cealie (and want Gil.) Some want Cealie in their families or as their best friends. She's fun and there's no telling what she'll say or do. That's what made her so much fun for me to be with her to see where she'll take me.

How about you? If you're a writer, what are your strengths? What area would you like to develop more?

www.juneshaw.com

Real people are not an option.

I don’t know about you but sometimes I come across people who seem to beg to be in a book or at least a story. They have some idiosyncratic thing about them, speak or dress in an unusual way or have an approach to life which is very different from the norm. But even if I do try to ‘use’ them in that way, I never really succeed.

People have assumed, for example, that the fourth in my Jack Carston series, Shadow Selves, which is set mainly in and around the fictitious University of West Grampian, must draw on personal experiences. Why? Because I used to teach at the very real University of Aberdeen so it’s perhaps natural to think that the people and things I describe may be based on ex-colleagues or repeat things that actually happened to me or them. But they’re not, except insofar as I know the general academic atmosphere, the demands and privileges of working in such an institution and the small p politics in which some teachers and researchers delight.

In fact, the book was triggered by a visit to an operating theatre while an operation was in progress. It was arranged by a friend who was an anaesthetist and I’ve reproduced some details of what being an observer in such a context was like in the scene where Carston visits the hospital to check their procedures.

The people are certainly fictitious. Books always carry the careful ‘any resemblance to real persons, places, or events is coincidental’ disclaimer but I have to say that, even though you’ll find it in my books, it isn’t really needed. I may borrow how someone looks, or copy what he/she wears, but using a real person as a model just doesn’t work for me. I only tried it once, in my early writing days, and I found that my awareness and knowledge of the actual person prevented my character from growing and being himself. As I said, a writer ‘uses’ a real model because there’s something special or unique about that person – he/she is wonderful or despicable. My man was the latter but he wasn’t my character – indeed, as my character tried to react, the ‘real’ person kept getting in the way. In the end, I had to free the character and let his nastiness develop in the way he wanted to express and live it. The only resemblance between him and my ‘model’ was that he turned out to be more charismatic (in a horrible way). But I wouldn’t want to spend too much time with either of them.

So anyone reading Shadow Selves and expecting to recognise x, y or z will be disappointed. What they will get, though, is a sense of the strange world of academia – a rarefied place where high culture and low cunning co-exist and some individuals continue to be blissfully unaware of how privileged they are to be safe in their ivory tower. Oh, and they’ll get a couple of deaths, a stalker and a case of sexual harassment.

Just checking my credentials

I wonder whether I’m here under false pretences. Yes, I’ve had one historical and three modern crime/mystery novels published, my crime stories have appeared in the UK Crime Writers Association’s annual anthologies, and one has been chosen for the volume of Best British Crime Stories 2010 by Maxim Jakubowski. So I am a crime writer.

But, recently, my efforts have been going into promoting the first of a series of stories for kids. They’re about a grumpy fairy called Stanley who lives in the wash basin in my bedroom here in Aberdeen. But he’s not homicidal.




Also the next two books of mine to appear will be in the “Brilliant” series by Pearson, Brilliant Essay and Brilliant Dissertation. I’ve already written Brilliant Study Skills for them and, as the titles suggest, they’re all books intended to help students get the most out of university and their academic writing. On top of that, another publisher is interested in a sci-fi/fantasy novel and a satirical black comedy which is a spoof crime/spy novel. But I think my crime-writing credentials are still legitimate because the fourth modern mystery will appear next year, the fifth has been written and I’m ready to start work on the sequel to my historical crime novel, The Figurehead.

I certainly don’t mind being labelled a crime writer but I’m always eager to try new things. Writing is a pleasure, even when it’s challenging, and spending time with such different audiences is very refreshing. Having said that, I think whatever I’m writing needs distinct characters for me to find it interesting. So, while not suggesting that there’s any relationship between a misanthropic, miserable male fairy who lives under a dripping tap and a figurehead carver in 1840 who’s investigating a murder and falling in love at the same time, they’re both equally real for me when I’m writing about them.

For me, characters are everything. They decide who they want to be, dictate the plot (or at least change it), and they keep on surprising me. In fact, if they stop surprising me, I begin to wonder how realistic they are. Isla Dewar, a terrific Scottish writer who was on a panel I chaired a while back, put it far more poetically. Answering a question from the audience about characterisation, she said, “you’ve got to give your characters room to dance”.

Not long ago, I read an article about how, according to some research, we base our decisions about individuals on split second observations of tiny bits of their behaviour. Apparently, we form an impression of people we meet within the first few seconds and then only notice the things which confirm that impression. And they do the same with us. The first handshake, eye contact, hairstyle choice, colour of jacket or God knows what else has already made up the mind of the person we’re meeting, so whatever lengths we go to to project a specific image may be wasted.

Is that what happens with our characters, too? Is the initial impression so crucial? Or does the leisurely process of unfolding them slowly through the narrative change how we see them? Does it mean that writers should make sure that the way they choose to introduce a character puts his/her essence right up front and leaves little room for misinterpretation? Should we introduce them at all, or let them introduce themselves? After all, the narrator’s only an observer, an intruder. The moment we start describing hair, eyes, clothes, bulk, etc. we’re offering stereotypes. If we give a woman thick auburn hair falling over one eye, she becomes “the sort of woman who has thick auburn hair falling over one eye”. Does that just give the reader licence to decide that she’s a sultry siren, an untidy slob who can't be bothered to brush her hair, a person who maybe has a scar or birthmark on her brow, or any other number of interpretations of her? And if it does, how can she develop in the way we’d planned for her?

And how useful is a blog which is all questions and no answers?