Dear You. It's Me again.

Yesterday, a magical thing happened. I saw a piece of binder paper shoved back in my overhead cubicle cabinet. It looked like a kid had ripped it out of a notebook and folded it up with the intention of giving it to a friend or keeping it in her hope chest for safe keeping.
I was bewildered. What in the world is this?
I took it out and unfolded it. There, in clumsy handwriting, was a letter to me from Ana Bardwell, my protagonist. She started off telling me about her mother and her poor relationship with her. I read, charmed the whole time. Ana can be charming in an irreverant, childish way even though she's eighteen years old and needs to start acting like an adult.

I believe we've discussed this before on this blog, but I can't stress enough the value of character letters. Every good piece of literature has characters you can't forget even if you try. When people talk about Pride and Prejudice, do they talk about the plot as much as they talk about that irresistible Mr. Darcy? In Harry Potter, are people entranced with the typical good vs. evil fight or Dumbledore and Fred and George Weasley? What attaches us to Catcher in the Rye? What's the plot of that book? Um...a guy walks around and does stuff for a day. We're enthralled with Holden Caulfield, aren't we?
Most of the time, when I'm in a jam, it's because I don't know or understand one of my characters. It's taken me years to understand Ana. She used to be a subservient, passive creature who never did anything proactive. The plot revolved around her while she sat there. Needless to say, the book was unpublishable.
If you're stuck, the best thing to do for many people is to write a letter to you from one of your characters. This technique has written entire scenes for me! At the end of the day, you'll be looking at a document that comes directly from the heart of your character and doesn't seem familiar to your personal style.
Our characters are more than just helpless vessels we use to drive the plot. They can rise up from the ink and become flesh and blood, just as an actor transforms into a make-believe identity spawned from the imagination of a screenwriter. Our characters aren't us. We aren't interesting enough for that. They are their own individual creatures sent to charm, seduce, intrigue, warm, inspire and even anger. Just like regular humans.

Special Saturday Post! You Have Issues...

I have issues, you have issues, everyone has issues. Especially our characters, hopefully.

I belong to a weekly critique group led by the amazingly talented Thriller and YA writer, Bonnie Hearn Hill. She says that everyone has a hole in their heart that really lends to who they are, and is what motivates their actions. She always wants to know what our characters “hole” is. This has been so helpful in my writing and in creating authentic back stories for my characters.

Why is it so important for your characters to have issues? Well, I think most importantly, because it makes them empathetic. It’s hard to like someone who’s perfect, or read about them, because for one their not interesting, and secondly, because we can’t relate. We read because we want to see ourselves on paper, and we want to see the characters making the same kinds of mistakes, and having the same kinds of problems we do.

It’s human.

It’s kind of like how some women tend to always go for the bad boy. Why do they do it? Because they see vulnerability within them. Take Captain Kirk in the most recent Star Trek movie. He was definitely a bad boy, but he was an empathetic character because we knew that the reason he was having such a hard time was because his dad died when he was young, his mom was always away on other planets, yada, yada, yada…and we liked him despite his actions because we believed he was really good on the inside. He has issues, and once we saw that, we started to root for him (well, and Chris Pine is sort of gorgeous….)

So anyway, if you have a character who is seemingly perfect, you better rethink that. Give them some character flaws, create some back story, and you’ll go from making your characters flat to round.

-Kara

I think someone is plotting something.

Let’s talk about plot. I’m working on my next project, and getting acquainted with characters who have been floating around my head for a while. Naturally, I’m trying to flesh out the plot and figure out just what their story is.

How much did you know about your book before you sat down at the computer? Did an idea come to you and you sat down and ran with it? Or did you meticulously plot out every chapter before you even started?

For my first novel, I fell somewhere in between. I had a good idea of where my manuscript was going, but my outline was very rough. In fact, the person who turned out to be the killer in the end wasn’t who I thought they would be when I started. Too obvious, for starters. A rookie mistake.

I think a manuscript is a living, breathing thing that changes as time goes on. That can be a hard concept to come to terms with when you are writing a murder mystery and you have to have a certain idea of where your book is going. For me, the most important part of plotting was dividing the manuscript into three acts, and knowing the basic events in each one. For me, the second act is the longest, about 50% of the total length of the book. At the end of the second and third, I put a major event, a cliff hanger to drive me into the next act. Those events I knew before I started, even if they changed a little as I went.

In all of the plotting going on, I think it is really important not to forget the characters. Often times they will come to me, whisper something in my ear (or hit me over the head with it) and things can change drastically. I have learned not to fight those moments, but embrace them and trust my characters. After all, they know best, and my plot has never suffered for it, but only become better.

So, I want to hear, are you plotting something?