Playing With Your Characters

When In Doubt, Post Another
Picture of a Cute Cat

This week is being taken up by line edits of the current WIP.  My goal is to have them marked up by the end of the weekend and completed in my laptop by sometime next week.  Then, I send copies off to my beta readers to review while I studiously work on a good query to have ready for WriteOnCon (August 10 - 12.  You DO know about WriteOnCon, don't you?)

Meanwhile, let's talk about gemstones and jewelry for a moment, shall we?

My wife is a goldsmith and a jeweler.  One day each year, in the late winter months, she takes out all of her gemstones and spends a day with them.  She will arrange them in various combinations, moving them around and staring at them for long periods of time.

We refer to this as her "playing with her stones."  

I've come to appreciate the time she spends like this, designing her pieces.  By the end of the day she has a dozen or new designs sketched out, some on paper, others just in her head.  She saves the separate sets of stones in their own plastic cases and then can't wait to get started making each piece.


When it comes to writing, I'm a character-driven writer.  I start with a character who sparks my interest and explore what makes that character so interesting.  I'll spend time with that character, talking to them and letting them talk through me. (allowing them to become some of The Voices In My Head)

Sometimes, when I'm talking with a character I'll find out what they do that's so interesting (or trying not to do) or their particular circumstances.  If not, I start dropping them in absurd, difficult situations and seeing what they do.  This not only shows me how they might react to different events, but also gives me some ideas on what problems would make for an engaging plot to feature them in.

When it comes down to it, I'm doing much the same thing with my characters that my wife does when she plays with her stones.  My characters may sparkle in the sunlight* but they are being taken out and examined, put into different settings and contrasted with other characters to discover how they might best be put on display.

So play with your characters!  They should be fun to work with--and they're certainly cheaper per karat than gemstones.


 -- Tom

______________________________________________________________________________
*No, this is not a Twilight reference.  This is a faceted gemstone reference.  Who ever heard of a sparkling vampire?  They're blood-sucking demons, not Champagne.  Geez...

One of the Best Things About Writing Fiction

Beekeeper Larry Williams

I remember reading somewhere (Bird by Bird maybe?) that Anne Lamott wrote with intensive clarity on gardening in one of her books that she was cornered by gardeners who were very eager to Talk Gardening with her. It turns out Lamott is not into gardening. One of her characters was, so she had to learn all she could about gardening to make her character's actions believable.

For a while musician and writer Narissa Nield blogged about taking boxing lessons.  It's not that Narissa was into boxing, but one of her characters, inexplicably, was.  And in order to write about it properly, she needed to get suited up and step into a boxing ring and spar with a trainer herself.

Both of these writers did what they needed to do to make their characters and their writing authentic.  They learned what their characters would already know, they experienced the sights, the smells and the feel of what their characters lived.  Instead of imagining these things, they made each of them real for themselves so they could make the experiences real for their readers.

It's a very short step from this type of dedication to your characters and your writing to an absolutely waygreat excuse to do/try just about anything fun you've ever wanted to do.

Ever thought about hang gliding?  I have. (and not only when I think about listing The Things That Terrify Me for The Amazing Race)  For me, I can't justify the expense.  However, if I had a character that was into hang gliding, I'd have to try it, right?  (Right)  So why wait until I have a character already telling me that s/he hang glides and is waiting impatiently for me to do it myself to be able to write about it and do the experience justice?  Why not do it before I have such a character?  Who knows, maybe in the process of hang gliding I might start finding such a character and a story?

This excuse works for just about everything.  Look, your friends and family already know you have a different slant on life because of your writing, right?  They're used to you researching all sorts of "Where to Dump the Body" type of things.  Why should just about anything be out of the question, then?

I'm serious here.  Writing may be one of the most head-bangingly frustrating experiences I've ever voluntarily put myself through, but it also offers vindicates me from having to come up with any better excuse for trying something.

Eating really hot food?  There's a character for that.  Bungie jumping?  There's a character for that.  Beekeeping?  There's a character for that.  Knitting?  There's a character for that.  Playing boardgames that take days, if not weeks, to complete?  There's a character for that?  Learning French cooking?  There's a character for that.  Talking on a iPhone?  There's an app character for that.

Who cares if you don't have that character just yet -- or if you never do.  This is an unwritten perk of writing that we should happily exploit.

So, take full advantage of it and live life!


-- Tom