And so we’ve reached the end of another Blogging from A-Z Challenge.  Thanks to Arlee Bird and the A-Z Team!  I’m posting my reflection early because I can.  And because I’m behind on homework (again).

Doing these character posts has been more difficult than I imagined.  When I create a character, I don’t always think about these elements consciously.  Writing the blog posts forced me to dissect the process.  I’m not entirely sure that’s how I even do it.

It’s magic.  No, really.

Image:  eofdreams.com

Now I sit here eating fancy avocado toast with sea salt and Old Bay and sipping a cup of tea (seriously, I should just move to London already–I drank a whole damn pot) and wondering what to write about next.  I suppose I could finish the Vocabulary series.  I should think up something else.  I’ll study on it and get back to you.

I’m very glad I made a plan.  Without it, I couldn’t have kept up with a post a day.  I only had to double up twice—that makes me rather proud of myself.  Especially considering that I’ve been in two of the most insanely insane classes this semester.

• A document design class (I suck at this)
• A healthcare writing class (I could not possibly care less about this)

Learning to work with InDesign has been interesting, but I doubt I’ll ever use it.   I don’t use it at work now and if I suddenly had to, I could have learned it online for free.  With school more expensive than ever and less return on that investment, I’m not sure I want to throw more money at it.

I’m already in indentured servitude to student loans.

Image:  Wikipedia

I’ve decided to take the summer off to write the sequel to Rose’s Hostage.  You’ll be kept up to date on my progress; I might do another mini- NaNoWriMo of my own for it.  I may not go back in the fall, depending on what happens.  If I do return to school, I can do it in the spring semester and not face any issues, according to my adviser.

My plans for the next five or six months include:

• Doing another edit of Tunerville: my last reader bailed (she’s having a baby—yay!), so my sister has stepped up and is working through it now
• Hopefully getting my Rose’s Hostage critique back from Brian and doing those edits
• Querying Tunerville
• Working
• Working out
• Going to London and Cardiff to:
  • Visit some friends and family
  • See Riverdance (!!!)
  • Attend the Doctor Who Experience
  • See the Harry Potter Warner Bros. Studios
  • Nom on as many delicious things as I can stuff into my face (hey, I’m going to be walking everywhere)
    • Like these
    • And these
    • And this
  • Do whatever else I feel like doing that won’t get me thrown out of a pub or arrested, heh heh

I’m driving everyone crazy because this trip is all I can talk/think about.  Sorry, but it has been so long since I had a real vacation, where I actually get to go somewhere far away for EIGHTEEN COUNT ‘EM EIGHTEEN days instead of just taking a day here and there.  Weekend trips don’t really count.  And you have no clue how badly I need to get the hell out of here.

This was starting to look pretty good.

Image:  fanpop.com

Speaking of which, about those Sherlock pictures in every single post in this series?  It started as a joke in my chat room, so I decided to put one in each post and see if anyone would call me on it.  Nobody did.

YOU HAVE FAILED ME, PEOPLE!

Image:  Dave Buchwald / Wikimedia Commons

Just kidding.  It was fun.  If you have any thoughts about a series you’d like me to do, feel free to make suggestions in the comments.  I’ll be pondering.  I keep having this weird feeling that something major is going to happen and it has nothing to do with school, so maybe whatever that is will give me extra goodies to post.  In the meantime, I’ll try not to go AWOL while I finish these final school projects.

Thank you for stopping by during the Challenge, and thanks to those of you who have been reading on a regular basis.

Y is for You.

You are the author.  These are your characters.  You gave them life and imbued them with all the traits you wish you had, you think they should have, or you’re glad you don’t have.

Every character has a little bit of the writer inside him.  But there are problems with basing a character entirely on yourself.

The Mary Sue conundrum

You may find that you’ve slipped into writing an idealized version of yourself.  It’s doubtful such a character will pass the Mary Sue test, but you can try it.  It’s difficult to look at yourself objectively in this fashion, and a character based on you may not be as authentic as you’d like him to be.

Let’s face it; we all want to be him.

Image:  Wikipedia

If you write yourself into a book as Stephen King did (he appears in Book Six of his Dark Tower series as himself in 1977), you might be tempted to go too far the other way to avoid the Mary Sue conundrum and make yourself into a weak, whiny character.  You could actually end up with something pretty amazing, if you’re a skilled writer with years of experience.

It’s too meta

Metafiction is when a work of art uses self-reference to draw attention to the fact that it is a work of art.   The Stephen King/Dark Tower thing was very meta; the writing of the books actually affected the outcome for the rest of the characters.  Sometimes, the narrator of a book will reveal himself as the author, as in Clive Barker’s Mister B. Gone, or as in the book itself telling part of the story (Toni Morrison’s Jazz).

In TV, stories about characters who are in show business are meta.  Personally, I hate this; I’d rather see shows where the characters are a bit more of a stretch.  Actors playing actors, writers writing about writers writing, singers performing on shows about singers.  People who do not do these things have a hard time relating to the characters’ situations.  I don’t want meta when I’m watching TV; I want to escape into an alternate universe.

This show is all about escape.

Image:  geekstra.com

That’s what made the early seasons of Roseanne so brilliant.  The Conner family was a working-class, everyday family with the same problems and issues as many of their viewers.  It was a little meta in that Roseanne Barr’s comedy had its roots in her blue-collar origins, but it worked because the viewers could relate to the characters.  I had a very hard time with Full House for this reason:

• Danny Tanner had his own talk show (played by Bob Saget, a TV host and stand-up comedian)
• Joey Gladstone was a comedian (played by Dave Coulier, who also did stand-up comedy)
• Jesse Katsopolis had a band, Jesse and the Rippers (played by John Stamos, actor and musician)

These aren’t things most of us do.  The only thing that saved the show from being impossibly meta was that the focus wasn’t on their jobs but on the relationships between the characters and their unusual family situation, and that it was so clean it squeaked.  There was nothing objectionable; everybody could watch it.  But meta characters like this are usually hard to take seriously.

 Criticism is too personal

If readers don’t like a character who is a reflection of you, can you handle that?  Writers sometimes have a hard time taking feedback on characters that are nothing like them.  Imagine if you poured your heart and soul on the page and it’s really yours, and they rip it to shreds.

Next on Oprah:  Writers who play the characters they write on TV!

Image:  pbs.org

When you write anything, whether it’s based on your own life/experience/traits or not, you lose yourself in the creation of it.  It comes out of you.  It’s yours even if you’re writing about a sentient dog who runs an underground railroad for stray cats.  (Okay, I have no clue where that came from, but I just climbed three flights of stairs four times for my afternoon workout and I’m dizzy as hell.)

Alisa Carter has a good post here about how to take criticism.  While you’ll probably be lurking inside your own pages anyway, it’s less of a blow when the character someone is critiquing (or attacking) isn’t your own.

X is for (E)xposition.

When you’re setting up point of view (POV), consider how your reader will discover things about your character.  If you don’t get inside his head, you’ll have to reveal it through the thoughts, actions, and dialogue of other characters.

Exposition can be accomplished one of two ways:

• Show, where the writer lets the reader infer information from action, words, thought, feeling, etc. rather than explaining everything
• Tell, where the writer advises the reader what is happening

Telling done wrong tends to pause the action and the narrative stops moving forward.  You might have to explain a few things about your character to get the readers up to speed, but it doesn’t have to be in the form of an info dump.

BEEP BEEP BEEP!  Stop the story; we’re backing up!

Image:  duron123/FreeDigitalPhotos.net

A good example of an info dump is something I mentioned in the V is for Villainy post, where villains in movies (and some novels and comics) stop what they’re doing to explain their motivation to the hero.  Mostly it’s done to give the hero time to untie himself or think of a countermove.  If the information isn’t woven into the narrative naturally, then the story clunks (as I like to put it).  It takes a few beats to get started again and jerks and hitches like a car with a messed-up transmission.

You shouldn’t have to grind the action to a halt to clue readers in.  There are ways to weave information into a scene where the character is doing something mundane.  He could be reading an article to get information; in that case, you can intersperse action and thoughts with the article to keep the reader connected to the character.  (Disclaimer:  I’m not the expert on this and for all I know, my critique will come back from Brian Keene with half the following scene cut to ribbons!)

Here’s an example from Rose’s Hostage, where you first meet John Robert Cook, Jr.  In Chapter 5, he is enjoying his coffee and newspaper before work:

             Yesterday’s bank robbery dominated the front page.  The Black Bandit again.  The guy had robbed four banks now, the take larger each time.  This time it was almost two million.  He whistled through his teeth.  A nice sum.  The jerk probably wouldn’t know what to do with it, though.  Scum like that usually blew their money right off, buying expensive crap and putting the rest up their noses or into their veins.  Still, he was getting lots of press.

            The thought made him frown.  He paged through the section, finding nothing about the motel room killing.  He skipped to the local section.  There it was, page four.  “PROSTITUTE, CUSTOMER FOUND DEAD,” the headline blared.  Below, in smaller type, “Motel Serial Killer Still At Large.”

            Why was this all the way in the back?  The Black Bandit should have been back here, not this.  He read the article.

RALSTON (AP): The bodies of a man and a woman found Tuesday in a local motel room have been confirmed by Ralston police as the latest victims of the Motel Shooter, a possible serial killer who is targeting area prostitutes and their customers.

             Customers.  Huh.  Idiots, risking disease or worse.  He took a gulp of coffee and grimaced as the hot liquid burned his throat.

Bullets recovered from the bodies at autopsy matched .9mm rounds found at two other similar crime scenes.

           No way to trace the gun.  .9mm weapons were like cigarette butts in the gutters.  They were everywhere.  He continued reading.

Media Liaison Officer Brad Mercer said the Motel Shooter case had its own task force.  City council members have complained about this, citing the overtaxed detective division, which is also assisting the FBI with a recent rash of armed, takeover-style bank robberies perpetrated by a man known only as the Black Bandit.

Mercer would not confirm or deny that the department had placed the robberies at a higher priority than the Motel Shooter case.

             Higher priority?  Ridiculous.  There were hostages.  Of course it was.  They couldn’t afford to ignore him.  He would see to it they had no reason to.  And they mentioned the Bandit in his story.  Couldn’t they leave him to his own article?  Damn.

 Earlier, you get some things that tell you John is very picky—how he likes his coffee, that he rearranges the paper before reading it.  What else can you discover about John from this?

•  He’s searching for the local crime articles.
• He doesn’t think much of the bank robber, the Black Bandit (called that because he dresses all in black—the cops and reporters aren’t very creative).
• He’s reading a particular article, about the shooting of a prostitute and her customer.
• Why does he care if the cops can trace the gun or not?  Hmm.
• He refers to it as his story.  Did you catch that?

It’s elementary, John.  He must be a car salesman.

Image:  benedictcumberbatch.co.uk

• He doesn’t like all the attention the bank robber is getting.

Soon after this, your suspicions are confirmed.  A little reminiscing before work and we know something about John that no one else knows.

Your character could also explain something to another character.  This is difficult; often, it works better just to narrate what the reader needs to know.  If you use this technique, avoid Hollywood dialogue, or the dreaded “As you know, Bob.”  Make sure your character should actually be explaining something in this scene, rather than just using it to inform the reader.  You can use it to move the story forward—since people rarely give complete explanations of anything, leave out a bunch of stuff or even make him lie to Bob.  Let Bob discover it later.

Showing takes more time than telling.  There will be times when you need to convey some information but you don’t have room for an entire scene or chapter illustrating exactly how X happens.  In that case, you can use your narrative for exposition.  It’s a balancing act—not too much of one or the other, or your reader (and you!) will grow tired.

I’ll finish it laterrr—maybe not.

Image:  marin/FreeDigitalPhotos.net

In this useful post from Writer’s Digest, Roseann Biederman suggests a tool to help you spot and vanquish telling for exposition where it doesn’t belong in your narrative.

T is for Talking.

A character’s dialogue says a lot about him.  It’s a great way to use exposition without wasting a lot of time talking about the character’s past, doing flashbacks, etc.  In just a few sentences, he can tell you where he’s from and what is most important to him.

I don’t need to hear you talk.  Even completely pissed, I can guess your entire past simply by smelling your coat sleeve.

Image:  BBC/beatrixblog.wordpress.com

In Tunerville, there’s a marked difference between the way Chris (the protagonist) and Callahan (spirit of the Realm) talk.  When Chris tries to tell people not to use the tuners, he uses very plain language—he just tells them to stop.  When Callahan appears, he says, “Cease use of this instrument or there will be dire consequences.”  When the two of them are talking without any tags, you can tell it’s two different people.

When I write a character’s dialogue, I think about who he is and where he’s from, and that influences my word choices.  An educated character who lives in an affluent suburb won’t talk the same as someone from the sticks.

Accents are a bit different.  You can’t really hear an accent when you read (not literally), so you’ll have to imply it so readers can hear it in their heads.  If I make him say he’s put his wellies in the boot of the car and dammit, where did he leave his biro, because he’s got to make a list for the grocer’s whilst Emma is having a bath, then you might surmise he’s from England.  You would be right.  Can you hear it?

I’m not even going to try and reproduce any other UK accent here; there are quite a few.  If you want to hear 14 accents in 84 seconds, watch this video.  It’s the coolest thing ever.

All this applies to dialect as well, which can be written phonetically to a degree, but you can’t go overboard with it.  Avoid what Margaret Mitchell does in Gone with the Wind:

             “…Now, did you hear us say anything that might have made Miss Scarlett mad– or hurt her feelings?”

Thus appealed to, Jeems gave up further pretense of not having overheard the conversation and furrowed his black brow.

“Nawsuh, Ah din’ notice y’all say anything ter mek her mad. Look ter me lak she sho glad ter see you an’ sho had missed you, an’ she cheep along happy as a bird, tell ’bout de time y’all got ter talkin’ ’bout Mist’ Ashley an’ Miss Melly Hamilton gittin’ mah’ied. Den she quiet down lak a bird w’en de hawk fly ober.”

You can’t argue that it’s Southern speak, either, because only the black characters talk like that.  Not only do many people think that’s pretty racist, it’s nearly impossible to read.  Dialect works best when you suggest it.

Be careful not to use what many writers call Hollywood dialogue, where the character tells another person stuff they both already know.  It’s clumsy.  Poor writers often use it for exposition.

“As you’re aware, Robin,” said Batman, “the Joker has been a nemesis of mine for many years now.”  

“Batman facepalm”  is apparently a thing.  A thing you can google.

Image: comicvine.com

Probably the best thing you can do for good dialogue and characterization is go sit somewhere and listen to people talk.  See if you can guess two things about them just by listening to their conversation.  Try it; you might even hear something that will inspire you.

S is for Sex. 

Sex is one of our strongest urges, and our most troublesome.  Who we love and who we want to boink is the driving force behind many a literary conflict.

Will you make your character heterosexual or homosexual?  This does make a difference because of the dynamics involved in having those relationships.  Many gay people hide their sexuality for various reasons.  If your character is gay and in the closet, what are those reasons?  If she is not, why does she choose to be out?

Is she bisexual or polyamorous?  That sets up a whole different dynamic right there.  Regardless of orientation, you will have to consider who her lovers are and why she chooses them.

A seething cauldron of desire.

Image:  bbc.co.uk

If she has more than one, the dynamics here will affect the other characters as well.  Otherwise reasonable people may change markedly when sexual jealousy (the absolute worst kind) rears its head.  There will be a whole set of logistical management issues, especially if they don’t know about each other.

You should also consider whether your character prefers intimate relationships or just has sex.  I already did a post about writing actual sex scenes, so I won’t repeat that here.  This is part of your larger character arc—and if she’s just having casual sex, you should give her a solid reason why.  Perhaps a relationship didn’t work out and she can’t seem to connect with anyone.  She could be seeking to reproduce that experience and no one quite fits, or she might be trying to distance herself from it.  Or maybe she just enjoys it and isn’t ready to settle down with one person.

Another consideration is whether an adult character has had sex at all.  A virgin could be interesting to write, especially a male character, and one who is a bit older than the average guy at the time he’s deflowered.  We tend to assume everyone over a certain age has done it at least once, but that isn’t always the case for everyone.

Probably never.

Image:  harrypotter.wikia.com

Your characters’ backgrounds affect how they will act because of their socialization and cultural conditioning.  You can certainly play with making someone act in ways that aren’t typical of their gender roles in whatever culture (or time period) they live in, but avoid lapsing into stereotypes.

Certain types of fiction likely won’t discuss characters’ sexuality—children’s and middle grade won’t go there, although young adult fiction often does.  Thrillers tend not to have much sex in them at all, or it’s not relevant to the plot so it gets left out (boo!).  Horror fiction characters do it all over the place and with all kinds of creatures.

Just ask Rosemary.

Image: © Paramount Pictures / starpulse.com

Despite what some people would have you believe, we are sexual beings.  We’re one of the few animals that can (and does) mate at any time, not just during certain biologically proscribed periods.  Our carnality doesn’t have to rule us, but it definitely influences us.  When you build the scaffold of your well-rounded character, keep it in mind.

You and I breathe the same air,
Though we have not walked beneath the same boughs.
In the vast spread of molecules throughout the cosmos,
Our paths move inexorably toward one another
And we mingle,
Though we have not met.
We are made from the stuff of stars, of the twinkling points of light on which we gaze,
Pondering the possibility of each other, perhaps at the same moment.
One day the fabric of space and time will bend.
I will fall toward you,
And you will catch me,
And we will become one.
Until then, you will think that there is no one for you;
I will think the same,
And we will both be wrong. — © Elizabeth West

———-

R is for Romance.

I was watching Cosmos and feeling wistful, okay?

When you give your character a relationship in your story, you’ll have to consider how he deals with romance.  What elements would influence how he does this?

Socialization

In Western society, men are expected to pursue the women they’re interested in.  While women in today’s world feel more comfortable making the first move, quite a few would rather be pursued.  And many men still feel that the role of the pursuer belongs to them.

If your protagonist lives in another time, the rules could be very different.  Someone whose behavior doesn’t align with accepted norms will clash with other characters, making for some interesting conflicts.  Even modern eccentrics can throw a spanner into the works.

This waiter has extremely bad timing.

Image:  bbcamerica.com/anglophenia

A big part of romantic socialization is the expectation we get from books, movies, and love songs with which we grow up.  Grand gestures are seen as the ultimate in true romance.  But what if your protagonist can’t afford more than a simple bouquet of carnations?  You might want to show the value of small, loving acts of thoughtful expression in your story by having your broke lover at least get them in her favorite color.  Bonus points if he has to leverage some effort to find out what that is.

Personality

Put an assertive person and a retiring person in a story where they both want the same lover and see what happens.

The assertive person is far more likely to go home with someone’s number that night.  He’s also more likely to strike out, for the same reason people who fly frequently are more likely to lose their luggage:  the more chances you take, the more chance you have of both success and failure.

How would your character, if he were the shy one, handle this?  You could use it to push him into pursuing his true love, if you liked, or you could let his social anxiety strangle him.  In Kazuo Ishiguro’sThe Remains of the Day, the butler Stevens and the former housekeeper of Darlington Hall lose their chance at happiness together because they simply cannot admit their feelings for each other.

Talk about the British keeping a stiff upper lip…

Image:  dailymail.co.uk

Even if he does manage to speak the truth to his lady love and she reciprocates, remember that no one is perfect.  The road to true love is a bumpy one.

Experience

To handle his epic romance successfully, your character will need more than just a winning personality and proper socialization.  He should have some experience dealing with the emotional needs of another person and the practicalities of such a liason.

One reason I can’t stand Romeo and Juliet is that they’re both so incredibly stupid.  Romeo spends the entire play complaining and mooning over first Rosalyn and then Juliet and waiting for everything to work out. Even when he gets her, he’s a complete idiot who thinks only of himself.

Juliet is no better.  She knows that her family will never accept her marriage, and the plans she lays for her future are ill conceived and childish.  One wonders:  if they were clever enough to sneak out long enough to get married, why could not they have left after that and sent word later on, when it was too late to do anything about it?  Perhaps they were too young to think past the wedding night.

It’s all about the nooky.

Image:  pinterest.com

I guess the only way it works is because they’re both really inexperienced teenagers.  To accept the tragedy, we have to accept their love.  But they’re both such idiots, it’s rather difficult.  I’ve often wondered if Shakespeare (who lifted this story from an older one) wrote it this way on purpose, to divide the audience.

Consider these aspects of socialization, personality, and experience in planning your characters’ romantic interactions.  Whether your big romance is the main focus of the narrative or simply a side plot, it will have more impact if your characters behave authentically.