Your Characters Are Not You

If all my characters acted and reacted like me, they would be pretty danged boring. Luckily, author Mike Nettleton does not write himself in every character and his characters are far from predictable.

 Mike Nettleton co-authors books with his wife Carolyn J. Rose (who stopped by Straight From Hel last month). Together, they’ve written The Big Grabowski and its sequel Sometimes A Great Commotion and several other books. Mike grew up in Bandon and Grants Pass, Oregon. A stint at a college station in Ashland led to a multi-state radio odyssey with on-air gigs in Oregon, California, and New Mexico under the air name Mike Phillips. In 1989 he returned to the Northwest and in 1994 joined KEX Radio in Portland. His hobbies are golf, pool, Texas hold-em poker, and book collecting. Now, instead of hearing Mike’s voice on the radio, you can read it in his books.

But Mike knows the difference between the author’s voice and his character’s voice. Tomorrow, he’ll be here to talk about that difference.

Feel free to say “hi” to Mike and come back tomorrow with questions.

Also, today I’m over on Glynis Jolly’s blog explaining some of my editing “rules” for bloggers. If you have time, zip over and tell me one of your rules.

Hearing Voices

When you write a character, you try to get inside their head (yeah, I know I should write his/her, but their is easier). You want to hear their voice as they describe things, as they talk about their life, their feelings, their observations. And of course you want to hear their voice (not yours) when they speak. The voice that will be most prominent in your book is that of your protagonist, usually.

I think most of us know to have the character speak like him or her, rather than us. The words he uses, the slang, the grammar, the inflections, sound like the character. But we sometimes forget that when we’re in his head, hearing his thoughts or seeing what he’s seeing, we also need to be in his voice. This voice of the character, especially if it’s a series character, will become the voice of the book. Not yours. His. Or hers.

Here’s a bit from a character of my own. See if you can hear her voice. In this passage, she never says anything aloud, but I think you can still hear her.

I was supposed to have been a boy. Surprised everyone by arriving with a piece of my package missing. Sometimes God plays tricks on people.

Long ago I decided God was a woman. Only a woman would have such a weird sense of humor. Like giving Miss Aggie, the lady who sold beauty makeup door-to-door, a squashed flat nose and eyebrows that streaked across her forehead in thin slashes. Or the way God put my woods together – ordered, clean, beautiful. Only a woman-God would do that. A man would’ve planted a tire-growing tree or a burping bush.

Then last year, God took baby Celia, even though Mama carried her inside her for so long.

I’d been to funerals before. Grandpa Watson rested in a big, dark brown coffin, snuggled in snow-white satin, his head on a pillow Mama embroidered with a heavenly angel. Mary Belle, whose husband owned Belle of the Ball Dress Shop, had a fancy casket with lots of brass and hundreds of yellow roses.

I’d never seen such a small coffin. White, with baby’s breath and one red rose on top. I added a dandelion I’d picked at the side of the road, ‘cause it’s my favorite. I like to make a wish and blow on it so it scatters to the wind. Celia would have liked those too, if she’d had the chance.

Mama said Celia was so beautiful and precious God decided to keep her in Heaven.

Guess God doesn’t like dirty fingernails and callused feet. That’s okay. Now She can keep a better eye on Celia than She did on me. I’m wiry. I have the woods to hide in.

What about you? Do you give your characters voice even when they’re not speaking aloud?

Finding Voice and Grace

Susan J. Tweit, author of twelve books that “explore the interrelationships that form what Aldo Leopold called the ‘community of the land’” is with us today. Her work has appeared in magazines and newspapers from Audubon and Popular Mechanics to High Country News and the Los Angeles Times - and has been heard on the Martha Stewart Living Radio Network. Her latest book is Walking Nature Home: A Life’s Journey, from University of Texas Press. Susan says her book is about “what nature, Quakerism, and chronic illness taught me about love and life.”

Welcome, Susan!

Difficult Memories: Finding Voice and Grace in the "Hard Stuff"

How do we handle the hard stuff in our life stories? How do we write about the memories that are controversial, painful, or just no fun to remember? We'll practice writing techniques that strengthen our voices and reveal the grace and wisdom to be found even in hard times.

That's the description of "Difficult Memories," the workshop I'll be teaching at Story Circle Network's Stories From the Heart V Conference, in Austin, Texas, February 5 - 7, 2010.

When I proposed the workshop last spring, I was thinking about my process in writing my memoir, Walking Nature Home, and my struggle to find the wisdom in the painful and outright hard parts of my own story. When I wrote the first few drafts of that book, I was still angry and hurt by some of my experiences. Writing out my feelings was therapeutic, but didn't result in particularly good memoir.

In fact, some of the initial drafts are so bad that re-reading them is more than embarrassing. It took me decades--and many rewrites--before I learned to chip away at the narrative to find the gift of gold in the hard stuff, before I found the grace to tell my story in a way that was respectful, honest, and compelling. When I finally did, reading the story was exciting instead of painful. It finally felt right--and I felt good about writing it.

Here's an example of finding voice and grace in the hard stuff, from the first chapter of Walking Nature Home:

That Labor Day weekend, we went backpacking with friends and an early fall snowstorm moved in. All I remember from those three days is a steady rain of wet, white flakes falling silently, muffling forest and lake and rock, pressing down on the roof of our small tent until I felt like I would suffocate. On the long drive out, even the cab of our pickup truck seemed to have shrunk. I looked over at Kent and said,

“I need space. I think we should separate.”

His jaw clenched hard, but he didn’t turn his eyes from the gravel road. “You’ll be dead first.”

I moved out. He attempted suicide. I saw a counselor.

Those four paragraphs paint a vivid picture of the disintegration of my first marriage, conveying the salient points without portraying every gory detail. The last line shows how dramatic paring events down to their essence can be: "I moved out. He attempted suicide. I saw a counselor."

There's obviously a lot more I could have said. That chapter did in fact originally include much more material, all of it vivid and dramatic in its own right.

Over time as I worked on the memoir though, I realized that this particular part of the story had come to "weigh" so much that it disturbed the overall balance. Writing out the intimate details of the disintegration of my first marriage may have helped me come to peace with my decisions, but it distracted from the larger point, a love story on several levels: me learning to love myself, the loving bond I found with my second husband, Richard, and the love of nature, the community of species with whom we share this planet, that sustained me through those years and still does.

As I re-visited the painful story of my first marriage, my ability to tell the story well grew as I grew as a person. I can't say which came first: my ability to understand myself or my ability to write the hard stuff with clarity and grace. But I know that we grew together, that memoir and me.

Now I need every bit of that clarity and grace as my beloved husband, Richard, and I walk hand in hand through the "hard stuff" of his brain cancer. I know my practice in learning to tell the sometimes painful and traumatic stories that make up Walking Nature Home [link] is helping me keep my balance today, both in writing and life. Wrestling with difficult memories not only taught me how to write a story that novelist Sandra Dallas hailed in a recent review as "a moving story... filled with hope and joy," it also taught me how to make a hopeful, joyous life--no matter what comes.

Thank you, Susan!

Susan J. Tweit has taught workshops at colleges, universities, and writing festivals from University of California-Riverside and Miami University of Ohio to Wofford College in South Carolina, as well as online. She also coaches writers, reviews manuscripts for university presses, and contributes to "The Perch," the blog of Audubon magazine, and Story Circle Network's "HerStories" as well as her own blog, “Walking Nature Home.” As busy as she is, she’ll pop in over the day to answer questions you might have for her.

Voice in Writing

As a writer, how do you find your voice? If you’re working on your third, fourth, fifth manuscript, look back at that very first one. What do you think of it now? Do you still have the same voice? Has it evolved? Do you feel like you’ve “found” your voice?

How did you find it and when did you lose it? Did you find it by hearing voices in your head? Did it come to you in a dream?

Now, remember, I’m talking about your voice, as the writer. Not the protagonist’s voice. Your voice.

The arrangement of the words in sentences. The cadence. The words you use. The length of the sentences, the paragraphs. What the readers hear when they’re not reading the words or thoughts of your characters. The overall voice of your book. The author’s voice. Keep in mind, that voice is not static. It can evolve. It can change from book to book. But some authors maintain their voice. You can pick up their eleventh book and know it’s them.

Chances are you may have developed yours without even thinking about it. And you may have gotten it from other writers. Writers, I believe, read differently than non-writers. We’re not always reading just for plot. There are times when a sentence catches our eye. Stops us. We re-read it; ponder its structure, the way it talks to us. We think, that’s beautiful or I never would have thought of putting it that way or wow, that is such a unique metaphor. Sometimes we may even make note of it by highlighting or adding it to a list we’re keeping of examples of great writing.

Although we may never go back to read that list, it affects us. Not that we copy that person’s words, but we absorb what we consider “good” writing. Good writers are readers. And we learn by reading. And, over time, we develop our own voice, a lot of it based on what we consider wonderful writing.

Author Deborah Smith

I recently discovered a new author. Okay, she’s not exactly new since she’s a nationally best selling author with 35 novels to her name. But she was new to me. Her name is Deborah Smith. Pam at A Thirsty Mind (see yesterday’s post) recommended her.

I got two of her books, both in the Waterlillies Series. The first is called Alice at Heart and the second is Diary of a Radical Mermaid. After I bought the books, I discovered Smith lives in the Georgia town I did as a kid. Small world.

I’ve finished Alice at Heart. It was very different from what I expected, although I’m not exactly sure what I expected. It’s rather like a literary romance. I’ve not read Smith before so I can’t say that this is her style, but I was surprised at the flow of the plot, the elegance of the characters and the voice of the story. At first it was hard to get used to, but once I got into it, it was an easy read. Despite the fact that it had a romance story line, there were a couple of places that made me cry.

If you like a southern voice and setting, mermaid lore, a bit of fantasy and romance, you might like Alice at Heart.

I’ll read Diary of a Radical Mermaid next. I read the first page, expecting it to be a continuation of book one. Definitely not. This one is starting off as sort of a modern, sassy chick lit, mermaid style.

Synopses

Last month I taught a workshop called “Writing the Synopsis: Four Steps to the Ultimate SALES Tool” for the North Texas Professional Writers Association (and I’ll be teaching it again next month for the Brazos Writers’ This Business of Writing Conference). Attendees to the workshop in Bedford could send me their up-to-3-page synopsis and I would look at it for them. I’m starting to get some of them now.

Writers tend to dread writing a synopsis. When they do write one, it often reads like a dry piece of toast. No flavor. It’s a listing of events that take place in the story. Even a book that’s exciting and a real page-turner can seem drab and lifeless if only the major events are presented like a paragraphed grocery list in the synopsis.

I can tell that the people sending me their synopses paid attention in class. They’re working to make the synopsis read like a “mini me” of their book. Put flavor into your synopsis. The voice of your synopsis should be the same as the voice of your book. An agent or editor should be able to read the synopsis and know exactly how the book will sound.

There is so much that goes into producing a “good” synopsis, but if there’s one key element it’s the voice of the synopsis.