Characters

Today, I’m at Weatherford College at the Books ‘n Authors ‘n All That Jazz conference. Author Sylvia Dickey Smith and I are leading a workshop on Characters. Specifically, we’re helping writers make their characters 3-dimensional and real. In the afternoon, we’ll both also be on a panel.

Then we have to race back south. Sylvia has to get back to Georgetown, where she’s receiving an award at a banquet. Sylvia’s novel, A War of Her Own, was chosen as best novel of the year by the Press Women of Texas, a statewide organization of women journalists and writers.

At our workshop, we’re going to focus not on the mundane, but on things that can set your protagonist apart from others and will make her/him memorable. What makes the protagonist in your book or story unique? Or what happened early in their life that set them on the path they’re on? Or what in their environment made them act they way they do? Are they trapped by their religion or upbringing?

In you're in the area of Weatherford, Texas, sign up for our workshop - it's free. 

Fun With Writing

Not all writers go through a dry spell, but quite a few do. You’re not writing. You can’t even think of what to write about. You’re just not feeling the muse. You begin to think what you need is a partner, someone with whom you can toss around ideas, someone to motivate you to write.

I was writing about this for my weekly Thursday newsletter and thought I’d share with you all how to Double Your Imagination.

For me, it happened by accident. A friend and I are writing a “book.” We didn’t start out to do that and we have no plans to publish the book. It’s just fun.

It started because I saw a buzzard in a tree across the valley behind out house. I tried to take a picture, but don’t have a camera with a zoom lens. I did, though, mention the buzzard in an email to my friend.

He wrote back five lines. This was the first two:

Once upon a time there was a buzzard named Billy. Billy was one year old but he could fly as high as any other buzzard and could gulp down whatever road kill was provided on the local highways.

The last line in that email was:

He tried to bite off a piece but lost his teeth in the hard brittle road kill.

I wrote back:

Billy Buzzard stared down at his dentures lying atop the brittle road kill. With a tear in his eye, he cursed Dr. Beaver, who had insisted he needed all his teeth pulled instead of just a retainer for his overbeak. Now what would he eat? He'd be relegated to soup and oatmeal. He was starving and the roadkill was too tough. He looked to the sky and studied the hot sun. Beaver soup, he decided. That would be satisfying.

And thus began our back-and-forth story, now at 19 single-spaced pages.

To get rid of your dry spell, try doing this with a friend. The key is to use your imagination and hit send when you’ve left your partner with a bit of a cliff hanger.

Other rules you might want to include are:

Try not to self-edit, except for perhaps spelling.

No editing the other person's writing. This is for fun.

If one of you tires of the exercise, quit.

Don't write expecting the book to ever get published

If your partner takes you someplace you had never considered, jump in and go for it, just like Billy Buzzard did when he was looking for dung beetles in the compost.

Have you ever done this kind of writing exercise? Would you?

Happy Easter

I hope everyone is busy today with family, friends, good food, laughing, hiding eggs, and nibbling chocolate. Whatever faith or non-faith you are, I wish you peace and joy and love.

We’re keeping it simple here in the Ginger house. We’re having:
Breakfast:
Good Morning Casserole

Dinner:
Ham
Baked Potatoes
Breakaway Bread (my son’s favorite) 
Deviled Eggs (my daughter’s favorite)
Vanilla Mousse Cheesecake (never tried before recipe)

Remember, this is the last day to leave a comment and be entered in the giveaway for a copy of Susan McBride’s The Cougar Club. You can also leave a flash story with the words “cougar” and “bride” or “McBride” to earn an extra entry in the drawing.

Hope your Sunday is a good one.

Here’s a question for you:
Have you ever written a holiday scene in a book or short story? What was its purpose? Happy Easter everyone!

Visual Writing Prompt: Hiding in Plain Sight

Last Sunday, we talked about hiding clues. There are, of course, lots of things you can hide in a book. Emotions, feelings of your characters. Truth, lies. Wishes and desires. Family lineage. Knowledge. Power. Fears. Connections and memories. Secrets.

There are plenty of things you and your characters don’t hide. Things in plain sight for the reader to see, learn, know, identify with, believe in, understand. Some are true. Some are false.

What’s real? What’s not? What’s hidden? What’s in plain sight? As the writer, you have to play fair. That doesn’t necessarily mean revealing all up front, but it does mean revealing. At some point. To the reader. Characters may continue to hide things from each other, but eventually the reader needs to know the truth, to know whether they were right or wrong.

Some things you the author can reveal right up front. Look, here it is. But although revealed, it’s still hidden. In among all the other revelations. All the other clues, emotions, pieces of the truth, objects, colors.



(This picture is my first Free Domain capture. It’s by Petr Kratochvil.)

What is your favorite way to hide things from the reader while still playing fair?

Visual Writing Prompt: Hiding Clues

A writer of mystery/suspense/thriller has to hide the clues to the killer, bad guy, answer. Other writers also have to hide things - action/adventure or even fantasy. In almost any book, something is hidden, waiting to be revealed or found out. It’s the author’s job to keep it hidden until time for the reveal. If the reader guesses the ending too soon, the book is a disappointment.

So the author hides things. He may not let us in on the bad guy’s thoughts, or at least not in on all of them. She may hide clues in lists of seemingly unimportant information, one clue among many others. He may put something in plain sight, but have the protagonist, and thus the reader, dismiss it as wrong or inconsequential. The truth may be thrown in among many lies and misdirection. But the clues have to be there. The writer has to play fair (to a certain extent).

Things can be in plain sight, while still hidden. Can you find the golfer among the many palm trees?

You’ll have to look close. He’s not readily visible even if the picture were blown up in size. The golfer (the clue) is in among the palm trees (the distractions), but there are pointers to him (the golf carts), if you’re paying attention. (And if this picture shows up larger in the post than it does in Compose mode.)

Visual Writing Prompt 8-23-09

Do your plots run in a straight line? Do they twist and turn? Do you tell the story from start to finish, laying out the characters and events for the reader? Or do you hide things in the shadows or smoke?

Whether your book is a mystery or a romance or a memoir, the story doesn’t have to travel in a straight line. Everything doesn’t have to be revealed up front. Everything has to be there, but it can be “camouflaged” or told out of sequence. There can be shadows that hide the clues. There can be layers that have to be revealed over the course of the book rather than all at once.

If everything is laid out and revealed, why would your readers keep reading? If all the clues are obvious, what would keep the readers guessing?

One goal should be to make your readers have to work a little to figure out who the bad guy is or if he will be caught, to determine if the heroine deserves the hero or whether someone else will step in, to wonder if the subject of the book will come out whole or with a lesson for the reader.

Your book needs layers. It needs shadows. Clarity. Continuance. It needs turns that take the reader down the unexpected path. It needs depth. Your book can have multiple dimensions, not just one.

Visual Writing Prompt: 7-26-09

When writing and/or editing a novel, writers tend to stress over the opening word/line/paragraph/page/chapter. All of those. They want the opening words to be ones that will pull in the readers or agent -- will make them keep reading, turning the pages into the next chapter and the next.

And so those opening lines become a test for the author. Can s/he make them so compelling that the agent will sign on, the editor will buy the manuscript, the reader will buy the book? An author probably spends more time on the first chapter than any other, writing, re-writing, perfecting.

The opening lines and pages are important. So is the rest of the book.

If you imagined your book as a home, what would the walk-up to the book look like? Is it wide sweeping steps? A narrow pathway? Are there flower pots and bursts of color? Is it dark and spooky? Are your words open and inviting or are they a trick, luring the reader into the danger ahead? Is the mood light and happy? Do your words evoke emotions that send the readers’ hearts racing?

What does the door to your story look like? Does it have stained glass? A peephole? Is it wood or made of metal? Is it a screendoor? Do your readers get an idea of what will happen in the coming chapters? Are they unsure where you’re leading them? Have you revealed too much? Too little?

What will happen when your readers open the door and move into the story, into the lives of your characters? How will they react when they enter the house of your book? Will they continue reading? Will they rush to the end? Savor your words slowly? Or leave this book you’ve written?

What kind of entry into your plot have you created?

Visual Writing Prompt: 7-19-09

Characters, in a book, come and go. They’re on-scene, then off. Your book will most likely only have 3 or 4 main characters, surrounded by an array of minor or secondary characters. You may have one main plot line, but there can be a second plot line involving the main characters or perhaps with its own characters. Your main character or protagonist probably has a sidekick or confidante. There may be one or two bad guys or one or two romantic interests. There might be a comic relief character or a victim who has to be rescued or avenged.

Although most books focus on a small circle of characters (one main reason for this is so your readers can keep them in their heads and not lose track), there can be a number of peripheral characters.

My question today is: What do those minor characters do when they’re not on-scene? Are they just gone or just doing their own thing sucked up in a plot vacuum? When you’re laying out the plot or timeline of your manuscript, add these characters. For them to be three dimensional, they need to have a life even when not involved in the action. Otherwise, they become stick figures you, the author, push on-stage when you need someone to tell the protagonist a clue or to burst in just in time to distract the bad guy or the police or to appear just in time to take the bullet meant for the lead character.

That doesn’t mean you have to tell or show the readers these characters' lives, but you need to know that they have lives. If you, the author, know the lives and actions of the peripheral characters then it will come through when the character is on-scene. Joe Beetlejuice won’t be in the hardware store for the sole purpose of telling Mr. Do-Gooder about the beautiful young woman being harassed by the bartender at Biker’s Brew Bar. Joe will be there for his own reason. Mr. Do-Gooder will be there for his own reason. And the harassment will come up but it won’t be Joe’s purpose for being there. He has his own life, you know; he does things besides run to places he thinks Mr. Do-Gooder will go so he can supply the inciting information to him to move the plot forward.

So, what do your secondary characters do? Do they have lives they live even when not on-stage? Or do they just lie around while the two or three main characters are performing?

Visual Writing Prompt: 7-12-09

My son used to work at the Austin Zoo & Animal Sanctuary, a rescue zoo. He loved working there with the animals. He eventually had to quit because they didn’t pay enough and he had to eat and pay rent. But he still goes back to volunteer when he can.

He has interesting tales to tell, like the monkeys who like to throw feces. And the picture that’s kept in the keepers’ kitchen, where food is prepped for the animals, to remind the keepers to be vigilant and careful - the picture is of a table with a finger on top - the finger of the tiger’s owner who ultimately decided maybe keeping a tiger wasn’t such a good idea. The picture doesn’t even need a caption.

One of his co-workers took a picture of one of the big giant tortoises. I love turtles. And I liked this picture so much, for quite a while I used it as my avatar.


This tortoise is incognito, hiding behind googly-eyed glasses. When we write, our characters often hide behind facades. If the bad guy showed his true colors, he wouldn’t last long in real life nor in a book. If the two would-be lovers showed what they really felt, the book would be over within ten pages instead of hundreds. If the cop told the subject that he really had no evidence against him, but he’s hoping he’ll confess, that interrogation would go far.

You, as the writer, have to know the truth behind the googly-eyed glasses. But you have to keep the glasses on the character, revealing the truth bit by bit or perhaps in a climax unveiling, but even if you wait to whip off the mask, there have to be clues, carefully planted, so that the reader can sit back and think, yeah, I should have seen it; the clues were there, hidden.

What “googly-eyed glasses” do you use in your writing? What techniques do you use to reveal the character’s true colors or real feelings?

Visual Writing Prompt: 7-5-09

Back in March, my husband and I went to Florida, part business, part vacation. The business part took place up in Orlando. Then we drove to Miami. A friend of mine, an author who shall remain nameless - Mark Troy - asked me to take on a quest for him. This unnamed author - Mark Troy - asked me to stop in Fort Lauderdale and visit Bahia Mar, go to Slip F-18 and take a picture.

And so I did.

Driving the road that follows close to the coastline of Florida is a pain in the patootie. First of all, there are so many houses, hotels and condos you only get occasional glances of water. Second of all, the traffic is bumper to bumper for miles and miles. But we drove south. Got into Ft. Lauderdale and couldn’t find Bahia Mar. So we called information and then Bahia Mar and got directions. Got back on the oh-so-fun road of endless traffic and drove past Bahia Mar. Managed to turn around. Got back to the entrance and waited forever until someone took pity on us and let us cut across. Paid to get in and park. Here is the sign at the entrance. I got my husband to stop, let me out, then circle around and come back for me so I could take this.


Let me take a break, while my husband is parking and finding his sunglasses, to tell you why that anonymous friend of mine - Mark Troy - wanted me to find this place. Bahia Mar, Slip F-18, is where Travis McGee docks his boat, the Busted Flush. And you-don’t-know-who - Mark Troy - wanted a picture.

So, we found the F Dock:


Next, we began walking the dock looking for Slip 18. Some boats were empty. On some, people lounged in the aft area (notice how I can speak boat), talking, drinking, and eyeing the strange Texans.

As we walk up and down the dock, avoiding staring at the strange Floridians sitting in boats going nowhere, let me tell you a bit more about Travis McGee. He’s fictional. He’s the protagonist created by John D. MacDonald. In the very first McGee book, MacDonald introduced McGee and the Busted Flush in the opening lines of the book:

"It was to have been a quiet evening at home.
"Home is the Busted Flush, 52-foot barge-type houseboat, Slip F-18, Bahia Mar, Florida.
"Home is where the privacy is. Draw all the opaque curtains, button the hatches, and with the whispering drone of the air conditioning masking all the sounds of the outside world, you are no longer cheek to jowl with the random activities of the neighbor craft. You could be in a rocket beyond Venus, or under the icecap."

I knew that, but he-whose-name-shall-not-be-spoken - Mark Troy - asked for a picture. So here it is:

Which one is it, you ask. None of them. There is no Slip F-18. Not that we found. But that is a picture of the area where it should have been.

So there it is. The pictures I said I would take for you’ll-not-hear-his-name-from-me, author-of-the-Val-Lyon-series (Mark Troy). This is the first time these shots have come to light. Not even he knows I took them. I’ve been waiting to surprise him. So now, your writing assignment, should you choose to accept it, is to link over to his blog and leave him a message letting him know his pictures of Bahia Mar, Slip F-18, that he requested are here for him to see.

Visual Writing Prompt 6-28-09

Today, we’re talking stereotypes. We all use them, even though we’re admonished not to. You write an old woman into your book and she’s slumped over, walking slowly. You describe a young boy and he’s skipping rocks in a lake or teasing a girl as a way of getting her attention. And we shouldn’t use stereotypes. Or should we?

Is there a place and time for stereotypes? Could it be that sometimes stereotypes are used because they accurately portray a group of people or things? Or is it that, even if that’s true, you should try to make your characters different from the norm so they stand out in the readers’ minds? Or… should that be reserved for your main characters so they stand out from your backdrop of stereotypical secondary characters? Or… I could go on and on with different scenarios.

But my question is, what do you do? Do you work at flavoring each character with something different and unique? Do you keep some characters “normal” with looks and behavior that are “everyman” so that readers can identify with them and so they don’t detract from your main characters?

If your protagonist walked into a house or apartment they’d never been in before and the first thing they saw was a wall clock - a black cat, tail swinging back and forth and eyes clicking left and right with each second that ticked by - what would that tell the reader (and the protagonist) about the owner of the house or apartment? Would their first assumption prove to be right?

Here’s a picture of a wedding ring quilt on a bed. Put it in your book. Whose bed is it on? Is that person old, young, male, female? Did they make the quilt? If not, who did? Was the room painted and designed around the quilt…or was the quilt added because it fit the room? Is it in the master bedroom or a guest room? Was it a wedding gift for a young couple? An older couple? Was it made by a great aunt and it’s an heirloom? If you put this quilt in your book, what would you do with it - and why?

Visual Writing Prompt: 6-21-09

Today’s prompt is about seeing things in a different light.

Sometimes, in order to see things differently, we have to step outside of ourselves. We’re five-foot-seven, but our character is six-foot-seven. He sees things differently. We have to try to put ourselves at his height and see what he sees.

Sometimes it’s not so much the level at which the character sees, but what her focus would be. I could look at a room and see things like the lamp shade color or the dust on the coffee table or the artful arrangement of the furniture. A child could look at the same room and see the toy tucked under the coffee table.

It could be a matter of perception. One person enters a room and notices the warmth of the red walls. Another perceives the red as cold and foreboding.

As a writer, you have to “be” your characters. You have to know how they think and see what they see. I have a friend who’s a lifelong fan of the Texas Aggies. He hates orange (University of Texas). Even his girlfriend knows not to wear orange or anything even remotely related to the color. (And in case you’re wondering, he’s a sweetheart in all other aspects.)

You also have to consider the time of day. A woman who enters her empty house at three in the afternoon may feel differently than when she enters that empty house at midnight. It’s not just women. We all see things differently in bright light than we do in dark or waning light.

Take this picture as an example. What do you see in this picture I took a couple of years ago while in South Carolina as the sun was setting? What do you think you don’t see that you would see in the bright daylight?

Visual Writing Prompt: 6-14-09

Let’s say you were writing a book about Texas or New Mexico or one of those hot desert states in the southwest. Well, let’s stop right there and say neither Texas nor New Mexico is all hot and desert-y. But I digress.

You’re writing a scene set in a hot part of Texas, which, admittedly, is most of the state. The sun is rising. Your character is looking into the sun over the tops of cacti and succulents.

What does your character see? Envision it in your head. Does he see a prickly pear cactus, hundreds of needles sticking up like a green porcupine? Does she see a tall succulent, almost the size of a tree? What is its trunk like? Smooth, criss-crossed? Does it have leaves like a palm tree? Or spine needles like a cactus?

In a way, all of this is a trick. If your character is looking into the sun, he’s not gonna be able to see much detail of anything. Here is the view I have from my office window each morning as the sun rises.


On the other hand, it’s not a trick at all. It’s a reminder that the details are important. Even if the main detail is the lack of details in what the character can see.

Visual Writing Prompt 6-7-09

When you write, keep perspective in mind. Specifically, I’m thinking of your characters’ perspectives.

At 5’9”, I’m the shortest in my family. Everyone is taller. I call on one of them to get things off the top shelf or to reach into the far recesses of a cabinet. They see things I can’t (without a stool).

Our dog is small. She’s so old now, she doesn’t see much. But when she did, she saw primarily ankles and dirt on the floor.

Someone who’s very tall sees the tops of people’s heads.

A child sees belly buttons and toys on low shelves.

Someone in a wheelchair sees curbs and gravel walkways instead of paved ones. Curbs and walkways that the rest of us traverse without a second thought.

Give the perspectives of your characters some thought. What would they see? What would they notice? What would they miss?

Here’s a reminder of perspective.

Visual Writing Prompt 5-31-09

It’s Spring! Oh, not here in Texas. We’re already Summer. Trust me. I have the a/c bill to prove it. But I have a sister in Minnesota who sent an email announcing Spring had sprung in her yard. And she sent pictures to prove it. Here’s one of them:


Which reminded me…Spring is not the same everywhere. If you set your book in Minnesota in early May and start talking about the heat, you’re most likely not from there - at least if you’re talking heat in the 90s, anyway. That’s Texas heat. And if you get it wrong, your readers will pounce on it. You want readers to get lost in your story, not to set the book down in order to go tweet you about your dorky mistake.

Yes, it’s true. Everything has to be researched. And climate is easy to check out now that we have the Internet.

If you were going to write about this picture, would you focus on the big beautiful leaves? Or the one new leaf unfurling? Or something else?

Visual Writing Prompt 5-24-09

This past Friday, I blogged about Books From Blogs. In that blog, I mentioned a blogger who got a book deal based on her picture-heavy blog on cats. The book has sold over 100,000 copies.

I facetiously asked on what subject matter I should create a stupid blog aimed at getting me a huge book deal. Patricia Stoltey suggested a book on feet.

Well, as luck would have it, I already have the cover pic. Currently, it’s up on my website. And now, it’s here today on Straight From Hel.


Now, that cat site got lots of hits because each cat picture had some crazy caption to go with it. What can I label this one?

Sidewalk intersection.

Where the feet meet the tile.

Seven people, one mind.

The meeting of the toes.

The Right Footed Society.

You put your right foot in, you put your right foot out…

Hmm. Clearly, I shouldn’t give up my day job to write comedy.

Visual Writing Aid 5-17-09

I took this picture in San Francisco at a museum. It’s one of my favorite story pictures.



This is a stained glass tunnel leading to a closed door.

I can see so many stories developing from this one picture. Currently, I use it on my website on my Editing Services page. It just seemed to fit with the idea of writers can create wonderful stories and memorable characters that can lead them to a door. They can step through that door into another world, both in the stories themselves and in the new adventure of being published authors.

What story do you see in this picture?

Visual Writing Aid 5-9-09

Last summer, I took quite a few pictures during my trip to San Francisco. This is one I took at a Redwood forest park.


Not sure whether this was a vine or a dying tree limb, but it was hanging down almost to the forest floor. The shape and angles intrigued me.

I decided to post it today because I just finished reading The Book of Lost Things by John Connolly. This oddly shaped tree limb/vine makes me think of that book -- the Crooked Man, the wild forests the boy travels through, the shifts and twists of the plot.

Do you ever keep pictures that remind you of the book you’re working on? Do you hang them up so you can see them as you work? Make them into a screen saver?

Visual Writing Prompt 5-3-09

Happy Sunday everyone. Today I’m sharing another visual writing prompt. Otherwise known as a picture that may inspire you to write. This is one I took in South Carolina:


Not sure why, but trees appeal to me. They can take such odd and amazing shapes and colors. This one, as you can tell, is quite grand. It looked like it had been standing for years, as I’m sure it had been, in quiet majesty.

What was most interesting, to me, was the Spanish Moss. The day I took the picture, it was cold and windy. But only the moss on the left side is blowing. The moss on the right is hanging straight down, oblivious to the wind. Lest you think I pieced two pics together, I assure you, I am not that good with Fireworks.

When I took the picture, I was enthralled by the size, shape and position of the tree. When I saw the result, the moss was spooky. The wind was really howling that day and yet the moss on one side stayed calm. There’s a lot of symbolism in this tree, to my eyes. How about yours?

Visual Writing Prompt

During my last visit to San Francisco, I took pictures of what I thought were some interesting things. This is one:

It’s a statue. It’s a water fountain. It felt like a maze of sorts.

To give you an idea of its size...if you look closely, you'll see my son back in the shadows in the fountain, off center on the right. My son is 6'10".

The statue intrigued me, so I took a picture of it. I think it’s a cool statue/fountain and I wonder about the person who thought it up.

How did he or she come up with the idea? Did he oversee the construction? Did she have to make adjustments as it was put together? How many versions did he draw out before deciding on this one? How old was she when she came up with the idea? Was he formally trained? Who influenced him? Does she ever come back and look at her creation? What else has this artist created?

What do you think about this fountain/statue?