Technical Topics -- Character Description

Someone was asking whether they should pour out the whole description of a a character all at once -- which might be dull -- or chop it up some and spread it out over a chapter or two.

It occurred to me that this was missing the point somewhat.

So I thought a few scattered thoughts on describing characters.
 
When you describe a character, you can give a mere list of the obvious. Hair color, eye color, what he's wearing, height, skin tone. But description is more interesting and useful when it serves a secondary purpose. That's thrifty writing.

So we describe our characters and do something else as well.  Here's three or four of the several ways to add value to character description:
(ETA, I made that five ways.)

1) You can tell story with description. Make the appearance part of the ongoing action. The description shows result of what has been and intention for what is coming. You could think of it as description propelled by the action.

Not -- 'he had blue eyes'.
So much as -- 'he opened blue eyes, bloodshot from last night's bender'.

Not -- 'she had brown hair, worn long'.
But -- 'She wrestled with wind-tangled brown hair, taming it before she walked into the meeting.'

Not -- He was a huge, rough-looking man with a scar on his face and gray streaks in his hair. He dressed in the respectable, worn clothing a laborer might wear.

But -- He was dressed like a laborer today . . . a big, ugly, thuggish, barely respectable giant in sturdy clothes. His hair was wet and the gray streaks didn’t show. The scar that ran down his cheek was fake. The imperturbable strength wasn’t.

See how the first set of these is a static description. The second is a description that could only be right in that exact moment.
We don't just say, 'this is how Doyle looks', we imply he has looked different in the past.  It's not how he happens to look; his appearance is related to the rain outside.

2) We do not just see our fellow; we see him through one specific set of eyes. The POV character adds value, insight and weight to the description. The description turns around and reveals that POV character.

She watched him work for a moment, disquieted by the edged beauty of his face. Lines of his hair fell in thin slashes of black. His lips were strongly marked.


She was totally feminine in every movement, indefinably French. With her coloring—black hair, pale skin, eyes of that dark indigo blue—she had to be pure Celt. She’d be from the west of France. Brittany, maybe. Annique was a Breton name. She carried the magic of the Celt in her, used it to weave that fascination the great courtesans created. Even as he watched, she licked her lips again and wriggled deliberately, sensually. A man couldn’t look away.


Could that description of Hawker come from anyone but Justine?  Could Annique be seen that way by anyone but Grey, right then, right there, in their prison?

3) Description is not a 'fill in the blanks' list of things we need to convey. It's part of an overall impression. We do not need to be only literal. For the larger portrait, we mix physical details with metaphor and symbol, story history, archetype. Give the hair color, shape of nose, texture of skin.  Sure. But also enmesh them in meaning when you do it.  Imbed them in the intangibles of the character you are creating.

She had the face of an ardent Viking. Strands of wet hair lay along the spare curve of her cheek, outlining the bones. Her eyes were the color of Baltic amber.

He was young to be captain. Thirty, maybe. He had black hair and a big beak of a nose, and sailor skin, dark and rough, burned by suns that weren't polite and English. Colorful splotches of blood were drying on his shirt. That would be her blood, probably.


4) We use the small details and all the senses.

He couldn't remember the last time he'd wanted a street whore. This one was fresh as a daisy, clean and sweet. She smelled of soap and flowers and spices. Even her fingernails were clean.


ETA:  The comment trail, and a comment elsewhere, brought to mind another common use of character description.  This uses description for a structural purpose. 

5)  Let's say you're going to step outside the on-going action, bring the narrative drive to a screeching halt, slow the pacing to molasses, and do some backstorying or philosophizing.  Character Description is a great way to segue into the internals you're laying down.  Backstory, for instance.  

Lookit here.  We're fairly early into Black Hawk and I'm filling in the What Has Gone Before column. 

“She’ll make it. She’s hard to kill.”

“Many have tried.”

Her hair spread everywhere on the pillow. Light-brown hair, honey hair, so soft and smooth it looked edible. He knew how it felt, wrapped around his fingers. Knew how her breasts fitted into his hands. He knew the weight and shape and strength of her legs when they drew him into her.

A long time ago, she’d shot him. They’d been friends, and then lovers, and then enemies. Spies, serving different sides of the war.

The war was over, this last year or two. Sometimes, he walked outside the shop she kept and looked in. Sometimes, he found a spot outside and watched for a while, just to see what she looked like these days.

The last time they'd exchanged words, she'd promised to kill him.  He hadn't expected her on his doorstep, half-dead, running from an enemy of her own.
 
I have the most dangerous woman in London in my bed.  


That's description opening the door to backstory.  We go in the order:
a) See her now. 
b) Think about her then.
c) Talk about the past.
d) Bring it back to the present. In this case I do that with a line of Internal Monolog.




ETA2: It occurs to me that I didn't really answer the question at the top.  
How long can a piece of Character Description be?  

Keep it short.  

Do not indulge in the flowery crap that readers skip anyhow.  
Doesn't matter how beautiful the words are, they have to earned a place in the story with something more than pretty.
This here is a famous example of what readers skip. 

I don't say you can't describe at length.  But if you've written more than half a page of Character Description, you should probably go back and reconsider.

Doing the Writerly Thing

Nothing too exciting to write about, but the mood struck me anyhow. 

Worked a little in the morning at the cafe.

Creative barista is creative

Yeah! Booksigning!!

The posters for the March booksigning have been handed over to the out-of-town folks by my most excellent friend Mary Ann.




I sorted the animals. 
What, doesn't everyone have huge pet beds in the living room?

Sorted animals

They promised us snow, but it never materialized.  We do however have ferocious winds and cold.  22 degrees (minus 5 for you folks who think in Celsius.)  I have stacked up the firewood for a long evening.

I am not writing on the Pax manuscript just at the moment.  I'm trying to understand the next contract.  Eventually I will give up and just sign the thing.

I'm going to go back and move the first Pax/Camille dialog into her viewpoint and out of Pax's.  This is not just a 'When all else fails, try changing the viewpoint' kinda thing.  There's probably some reasoning behind it. 

This whole first third of the manuscript is just a plotting mess.  

Me and My Wrists. A Writer's Life.

My weak point

Carpal Tunnel is the occupation disease of authors, I guess.

I'm very foolish.  I start typing and I get all involved in the story.

I'll be sitting typing any which way with my laptop in my . . .  well, in my lap, and the wrists are all awkward and hanging at the wrong angle.

Not ergonomically correct

I don't notice, even when the muscles start to hurt.   In fact, I'll get to the end of a scene and straighten up and every muscle in my body will suddenly let out a long-suppressed scream.  Head to foot, I ache.  I mean, like, my jaw will hurt.  My auricular muscles will hurt -- those are the three muscle that allow you to wiggle your ears, (if you can wriggle your ears.)  My fingers hurt.

You remember the scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark where Harrison Ford points to a spot on his elbow and says, "This doesn't hurt.  Here."  I'm like that, except I don't have a spot on the elbow.

So anyhow, the other aches go away, but the wrists keep at this ouching thing and I feel very stupid. Is there a Carpal-Tunnel-Stupid Syndrome?  That's what I have.

Me, in a couple few years

CTSS was interfering with my ability to get work done, so I went to a drugstore in California, being as I was in California at the time, and I bought a wrist brace.  (They had a selection of twenty.  Who knew?)

So now I put on a brace when I sit down to work for a long session.  Everyone who sees this thinks I have injured myself in some accident, so I try to look like I ride horses or ski or engage in other enterprises more interesting than staring at a computer screen.
Somehow this role playing makes me feel less like the old body is just falling apart.

There is interesting and useful information about this over at Word Wenches.  Here

Technical Topics -- Advice on POV, the Collected Set

In the Comment Trail, Catherine says,

"Now, do you have a post on Point of View? That is something that really, really confuses me.

Obviously I'm okay writing in first person cos there is only one POV, but when I get to third person I get very confused about whose POV I'm looking from.

Can you help, dear Joanna?"


I have written a fair amount about POV.   What I'll do is give you lotsa links to where I'm nattering on about it.
But I'll do it in random order.  And probably repeat myself.
Just to make it challenging.

I hope this is of some use to you.


Here is me talking about POV and language.  This is An Overview on Building POV 

There's an exercise on POV techniques here and here, with the examples here, here, and some further comments here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.

And we got an exercise on visualization here, which is a writing technique helpful on getting into POV. Talking about visualization, see here, here and here.


Then there are the POV exercises,  here, here and here  See here for more links. The message tells you how to track down the discussion and writing of those exercises.   

Here's me talking about how we use character names when we're in various folk's POVs.   I make a couple other comments in that thread.  Then there's  Here, here,  here, and here where I'm looking at a particular bit of someone else's writing and giving advice, trying to bring the snippet deeper into POV.


Look here, where Claire is talking about an exercise on stream-of-consciousness.

Here and here and here is an exercise on stream-of-consciousness which may people find useful for slipping into POV. Example from great writers can be found here, here, and here.


Leesee . . . more delights lie ahead.

Here's me analyzing a scene, which is not so much about POV.  Here I talk about POV and pacing.  Here is some of me talking about visualizing story from a POV starting point.  Here's more on character development, which is, again, not so much on POV.  Here  Omniscient POV.  Here  defining how POV works.  And here's some thoughts on the use of 'I' in 1st person POV.

Going over to Absolute Write . . .  This is a set of random posts where I touch upon POV in some way.  If you want to see the the other messages in the thread so you can figure out what is going on -- and, who knows, you might want to  --  click on the upper right hand corner where it says, 'thread'.  That will give you the entire thread where you can even read what other folks have to say.

multiple POVs

Ready?  Steady.  Go!

Here, here,  here, here, here,  here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here,  here, here,  here, here, here, here, here, here, here,  here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and finally at long last here.

I get to contradict myself, by the way.  I get to talk nonsense.  I get to be just plain wrong, okay?

Oh.  And  Here's Doris Egan on POV which will doubtless be useful .  And more from her, here.

Authorial Intent and Reviews.

Jennie, at Dear Author writes:

 ***

"When I address authorial intent in reviews, it’s generally because I’m confused or bothered by something in a book. I don’t ever pretend to *know* an author’s intent, but sometimes I have ideas about what I *think* the author was going for. For instance, in the latest Joanna Bourne, I felt like the author made choices that deliberately made the heroine weaker than the hero (though no one seems to agree with me on that, which is fine). As is often the case, I chalked it up to romance genres conventions – the hero is favored a bit (by the author and presumably the reader) over the heroine, and the hero is expected to assert some mastery over the heroine. So I am assuming that the story is written a certain way to please the average reader.

"Is it wrong for me to assume I know the author’s intent? I don’t know, but I do know that I’m not just doing it to be an asshole – I’m addressing something that bothers me, and furthermore why it bothers me (my belief that romance still tends to be rather conventionally sexist in a lot of ways). I think I need to acknowledge my assumptions about the author’s intent to give context to why I feel what I feel."

***

I just about entirely don't respond to reviews or speak in the comment trail of discussions about my own books.  It's not that I'm not grateful for the interest.  But,

-- I don't want readers to think I'm looking over their shoulder when they discuss the books.  That has to be quelling.

-- I think books have to stand up for themselves, without explanation or defense.  

-- There's not much to say if somebody doesn't like the work.  It's like lichee nuts.  Lots of wonderful, intelligent, interesting folks are going to not like my books or lichee nuts and no amount of discussion is going to change this.

-- The most important reason I don't respond to comment or criticism is that I don't want to make a fool of myself, which is what folks mostly do when they try to defend something they've written.

But, breaking a long habit of keeping my mouth closed, I'm going to go ahead and respond here.

 ***

Dear Jennie,

I don't deliberately make the female protagonist of my stories less strong, competent or active than the male protagonist.  If I felt the Historical Romance genre demanded that the heroine be weaker than the hero, I wouldn't write Historical Romance.

It's true my heroes tend to be more skilled in killing than my heroines.  If there were only one sort of strength -- killing people -- then I'd have no argument.  But I'm trying to write stories about the decisions characters make, rather than stories that are primarily about killing people.   I'm writing about the strength that's shown by decision-making.     

At the end of Black Hawk, Adrian has grown to be the kind of man who refrains from killing his enemy until he has solid, incontrovertible proof of guilt.  Adrian's story, through several books, has been about acquiring ethics and self-control, not about learning to kill more skillfully.

And Justine's strength?  In Black Hawk I use Justine's willingness to give up her sister, her decision to risk her life to rescue the Caches, and her determination to overcome degradation and rape to show her strength.  She has spy skills -- they're probably better demonstrated in Forbidden Rose than in Black Hawk -- but I'm mainly interested in the hard choices she makes.

Is Adrian the 'better spy'?  He brings formidable spy skills to the table.  Consider his lockpicking.  He stands behind Justine and mentally complains about how slow she is getting through a door.  

But lookit at what's really happening in that scene.  Justine enticed him to that door, (which is why he's snarking at her.)  She holds all the knowledge in this situation.  In a few minutes she's going to make him do exactly what she wants.

Who's the master spy?  The boy who can pick locks?  Or that clever, clever girl with her knowledge and determination and her sure understanding of what makes him tick? 

I can't argue that you somehow should feel the balance of power and strength between hero and heroine is equal. Everybody who reads the book is going to have a different emotional response to what I consciously or unconsciously put in the story.  I can only say it is not my intention to show the heroine as weaker than the hero.

Jo

Technical Topics -- Character Development Scenes

Somebody says -- "I have a couple of scenes that are basically only used for character development, and I'm having a hard time writing them . . .  I feel a little strange about writing it because hardly anything noteworthy actually happens."

That's the sort of scene you cough a little and say -- "That's a character development scene," when somebody asks why it's in the manuscript.  It's the sort of scene that showcases and explains the character --  well, lots of scenes do that --  but when you think about it, nothing important to the plot took place.  There's no necessary decision, no character change, no story action. The scene could be removed without affecting what happens later.

The problem with character development scenes (and flashback scenes, talking head scenes, and prologues of this type,) is that they're written to convey information, rather than getting on with telling the story.

Now, IMO, there's nothing inherently wrong with having a few no-progress scenes in the manuscript. We have all this cool information lying around, after all, so why not pass it along to the reader?

But if the writer's going to drop the reader into a static, informational scene, the writer has to know he's stopped telling the real story. When he's done with his flashback or his character development scene, he's going to pick up the plot again in the same place as before. No forward movement. The writer had better want to slack off on the pacing, because that's what he's just done.

Readers don't so much want the story to stop dead in the water, so the writer had better make this digression interesting.

Some writers always start out with a couple just informational scenes as warm-up writing. It's an exercise that helps them organize their thoughts. It's part of their process. They pull the scenes out later and expect to.
No harm, no foul

But I think sometimes no-progress scenes arise from a misunderstanding of the old saw, Show Don't Tell. Folks feel they have to lengthily 'act out' specific information instead of just having somebody remark -- 'George has always been shy as a wild rabbit,' or 'It's been ten years, and Elinor has never admitted her passion for canasta,' -- while getting on with more important business like sawing up their latest victim or rearranging the political face of Europe.

Putting Your Fiction Online

Someone asked, more or less,

"I'm an unpublished writer -- should I post chapters of my Work in Progress on my website?"


To which I reply:

There is a definite downside to this.  When you post a significant portion of  a work of fiction online, you may imperil your First Publication Rights.  (That's what you're generally selling when you sign a contract -- those First Publication Rights.) Putting your fiction online may also make your work less salable.  Publishers may be reluctant to buy a novel that's available free on the net.


Why would you want to DO this?
Why would someone want to post fiction online, on his website?
Seems to me there are a couple three possible reasons: 

-- Because he wants to fill up his blog with cool content, but doesn't want to write stuff specifically targeted to the blog and he has this piece of fiction handy.

Advice: If you want to keep a blog, write stuff intended for your blog. Don't be lazy.

Cool story example

-- Because he believes his fiction will draw traffic to his blog. He wants to build a following.

Advice: Do you read one chapter of a good book and then return it to the library?
Not so much.
Why would the readers of your blog feel good when you cut off your ongoing story, having just interested them?

Not the way to bring folks back to your blog.

'Teaser excerpts' of your cool story work when they point the reader to a buy button. If you can't include a link to the whole work, you've annoyed the folks you want to attract.


-- Because he wants praise/advice/discussion/feedback on his writing.

Typical Writer's Group

Advice: Join a writer's group.  Join or form a critique circle.  Print up copies for your friends.
 
Try Absolute Write.  
Try Compuserve Books and Writers Forum.



-- Because an agent or editor might drop by and see the work and be bowled over by it and get in touch with him about publishing it.  He heard this happened to somebody.

Advice: This is not so likely. 

Consider the slushpile an agent or editor has in her office: Here, Here. Here. Here.

With this kind of mail arriving every day, do you think agents and publishers go out trolling the web for more submissions? The odds of finding an agent or editor are astronomically better if you finish the work, send out queries, and submit the manuscript.


-- Because he does not have a completed manuscript and he wants someone to appreciate his writing right NOW.

Advice: I understand this.  Writing is a lonely business.  We don't get much feedback when we're working.
But . . .  posting a rough, flawed, unedited draft of your work is not respectful to the readers of your blog. If you intend to build a blog following, treat these people as you will someday treat your readers. Give them your best work.

-- Because he doesn't think the story will ever be published. He sees this as his only chance to share with a larger audience.

Advice: This is why folks post on fanfic sites -- this desire to share their work.
It's a generous impulse I hate to quell.

But do you intend to be a professional writer and get paid for it? 
Then trust yourself. Trust your work.

Later on, when you're published, you may regret that some of your apprentice work is out there online, haunting you, with all the newby mistakes that you can never, now, correct.

Hands. Just because.

I have a scene in the back of my mind that I really want to sit down and write.  I will, as soon as I get some mental space.

I'm about to introduce the character of Pax -- Camille and Pax -- to each other.  I want Camille to notice Pax's hands.  So I'm thinking about hands in general.  You are about to reap some of that.

Some gems and some heroines

Jess, Maggie, Annique and Justine. 
Four heroines.
Four gems.

Which gem goes with which heroine?

Can you match 'em up?

Find out over at The Romance Dish, and get a chance at a copy of The Black Hawk.

Diamond and pearl are Smithsonian.  Ruby attrib JOBAfunky. Amber attrib ericskiff. 

Technical Topic -- You're Out of Order

Someone asks, more or less,

"When it comes to publishing a series, can I start somewhere in the middle and fill in the blanks as I go?"


Well, of course you can.
People do weirder things than that every day of the week.

You can start anywhere in the timeline and slip the next book in before or after, as you please.  This is what I do.
I'm headed into planning the sixth book, the PAX STORY, and it'll hit about midway through the series, timewise. 

If I were giving advice, I'd say:


-- Every story should be standalone.

This doesn't just mean each story has a full story arc and that you've shovelled in the needed backstory.

It means your twelve-year-old minor character doesn't telegraph what he's going to be at twenty.

You suppress foreknowledge.  Even though you know a character will die six years after the close of the book, you don't write her as 'doomed'.   In this book, she's not.

And you try not to pull characters in from other books just to say hello.  Continuing characters appear if they earn a place in the plot.  If not, they wander off to live their lives outside the book.


Certainly, leave Easter Eggs for your insiders.  That's part of the fun. But these references have to be invisible to the novice reader.








--  Be stingy with backstory

Well, one is always stingy with backstory. 

But in a discontinuous series it's especially wise to avoid handing out all the particulars of, 'what has gone before'.  You may want to write something cool ten years in the past.  Something that hasn't occurred to you yet.

Give yourself room to maneuver.  The more you've tacked down the past, the more you limit what you can do there. 


-- Every book is trapped in its own moment of time.

We deal with this all the time when writing historicals.

We know the French Revolution turned out badly. Folks in 1789 didn't. They had high hopes.  When we write what characters thought and did, we can't let our knowledge of future events creep in.



-- Imagine the entire lifetime of the characters.

When you write your fifty-year-old man, try to image him as a twenty-year-old and a twelve-year-old.  You may someday need him in that capacity.  You want to make him a useful character, doing interesting things at all ages of his life.

I find it easier to imagine forward than to imagine back, as it were.  Easier to see the old man who grows from the young dude than pulling the young dude out of that old man.




-- Leave big empty patches in everybody's life.

When we write chronologically, we're free to build any future.  ("Always in motion is the Future.")  We are so powerful and unconstrained. 

When we set a story in our fictional world's 'what has been', the action must be consistent with and lead to what comes later. Our feet are all tangled up.

Some of it we can avoid somewhat.
I mentioned above that we don't get specific with backstory.  Being vague about our character's past is particularly important.   We try not to just randomly predetermine our character's life left, right, and center.

So we might be specific about stuff that won't affect anybody's action but coy when we assign life events that do constrain.  We'd say, 'he was promoted to lieutenant in 1809,' rather than 'he fought at the battle of Corunna'.  That way we don't sit down to write a scene set in Paris in 1809 and suddenly notice, (by way of those charts we're keeping -- see below,) that somebody we need is off fighting in Spain.

And we leave some years in the chronology just as empty as we can.  We don't say what anybody's doing.  Those years are vacant lots where we can build something.


And, finally:

-- Keep records

From the first chapter you set down in electrons, make notes.  Make charts, year by year and even month by month over the whole period covered by your books.

What's going on in the world?  Where is everybody?  What have they got themselves up to?

If you don't write this down, you are not only going to get stuff wrong and feel like an idiot, when somebody points it out to you,
you're going to get cross-eyed with looking things up when you have three or four books out.

Technical Topic -- How do we find our setting?

Someone asks, more or less --

I want to write a scene about the first kiss. I  want the setting to be special but anything I'm coming up with is a bit cliched.

What do I do?




I am reminded of Harriet Vane and Lord Peter on the bridge in Oxford, and later, 'kissing madly in a punt'.
There are romantic settings that are just exactly . . .  right. 

But if you can't find just the right place,
and you're saying to yourself -- 'Wouldn't it be romantic if they kissed at the top of the Eiffel Tower?' --
and taking the characters to France,
you could approach 'first-kiss setting' the way you would any other setting.


This leads me to my newly composed, handy-dandy

Guidelines for Good Setting --

. . . which is just my own take on this so feel free to come up with something entirely additional and contradictory.

1) Good setting lets the characters perform useful plot action.


Sometimes, we got busy protagonists.  They do not have leisure to wander off into a new setting just to lock lips.
When our hero and heroine do the Big Moment of mouth to mouth, they are simultaneously stealing a car or baking a poisoned cake or escaping from jail.

If the plot action is just speeding along and the next important plot point is they confront Uncle Ned about his gambling addiction --  then set that kiss when they're leaning against the slot machines on the grand arcade. 

One way to find the setting is to keep the protagonists moving forward through the action. 

Guideline: Where the action is, there shall your Setting be.


2) Good Setting is interesting.

Not the MacDonalds.  The cowboy bar down the street.
Not the laundromat.  The morgue. 

Guideline:  Good setting is interesting in-and-of itself.
 

3)  Good setting is vividly and knowledgeably described.

Unless you know what heathery hills look, feel and smell like, you probably do not want to set scenes in the gloaming on heathery hills because you will be vague and, quite often, wrong.
Many a fictional lass has laid herself down in the gorse and heather.  To which I say, 'Ouch.' 

If you want to write about a bar fight, fer Pete's sake go sit in some bars.

If you want to write about anything, take the time to look at it.  Really look.


4) Good setting reveals character.

Where possible, you put your people in scenery that matters to them or is somehow characteristic of them.

Not a stretch of anonymous beach.  A beach where they are waiting for a drug shipment.  The stretch of beach where she lost her virginity ten years ago.  The rocky cove in front of his grandmother's house.

My books open with the protagonist imprisoned in a house she knew as a child; crouched in the burned-out shell of her family home; walking mean streets she used to run as a young girl; collapsing at the threshold of her lover's headquarters.

Not random scenery.  Scenery that resonates with the POV character/protagonist.  That means something to her.

Guideline: Build character with every part of the story.  
This includes setting.


5) Good setting contrasts with the settings before and after it.

Go inside if they've just spent time outdoors.  Go quiet if they've been somewhere frenetic. Safe after danger.  Bright after dark. Crowded after solitude.  Shiny and mechanical after pastel and pastoral.

Guideline: Contrast keeps the reader from falling asleep.  

This is why we do not make a whole meal of yellow food.


6)  Good setting builds mood.

You pick the setting to display the exact type of kiss you need.

The rocking, icy-cold deck of a motorboat as they flee the Drug Lords is going to deliver a different mood for kissing than the slithery peace of the reptile cages at the zoo.

Guideline:  Mood is the grease that slides the action forward.
Apply liberally.




7.  Good Setting tells story

All by themselves, the settings and the order in which they're placed, tell your story.  Where your people are conveys meaning, symbols, impressions, emotion.

Cavern phot attrib espritdesel 

The underground cavern of Forbidden Rose is not merely a convenient place to set the action.  It calls up the Orpheus and Eurydice myth, (with a more fortunate ending.)  It's a symbol of rebirth.  The passage from the womb.  When I put my folks in that setting, the caverns themselves do a lot of the talking.

When Jess walks away from her hotel and her office, into the maze of dirty streets near the docks . . . she's not just moving geographically.  The setting tells the story of the longer journey she's making -- back to her past.   The setting is a sign of her commitment to leave safety and undertake a dangerous enterprise.

Guideline:  Use setting to show what's really going on.

Technical Topic: Creating Characters

Elsewhere, someone writes, pretty much:

My characters never develop beyond something used to fill a gap in the story or follow the plot as directed by the writer.  

What goes on through your head when you create a character?



There are dozens of good ways to develop characters.  You get thirty writers talking and you're going to hear thirty methods, most of them contradictory, some of them involving lists and interviews and diagrams and scrapbooks.  Some of them mentioning alcohol.

The best way to create characters is to try a bunch of these methods with an open mind and then go along doing what works for your particular and idiosyncratic creativity.

When I suggest this stuff below, you are advised to take it with a grain of salt because it may not work for you.  But here something to try:

Sit down where it's quiet and you don't have anything you need to do for a while. Get comfortable. Close your eyes. Think of your character in one particular scene, in one specific time and place.


This is a visualization exercise. You're going to crawl inside that character. You are going to see the world from his POV.

Try real hard not to feel silly, ok?

We enter the character by imagining what comes to his senses.

He or she is sitting, as you are. What's underneath him -- the stairs, a log beside the campfire, a velvet sofa? Is there wind? What do you smell in the air? What do you hear?

We enter our character by imaging the interior of his mind and body. He is filled with emotion and needs. Is he warm, cold, tired, hungry, excited, angry, annoyed, afraid?
Our guy has just finished doing something. What? He carries the immediate memory of those recent actions and feelings.

And we enter the character by imagining his needs.

Your character, at every moment, is just chock full of some goal.
What does he want, right now?

A sandwich? Directions to the zoo? A chance to kiss Molly? The combination to the safe? Escape from the toothed boomerslings?
What emotion does he feel in regard to that goal?
What action does he plan to get him what he wants?

This is how we create our people.  We don't look down from on high as if they were chess pieces we're going to move around at our convenience.  We get down in the mud with them.  We gain our insights from sensing what goes on inside the skin.  We find out how the characters see each other at eye level.
Because that's where we are.  At eye level.

I don't mean to say we shouldn't set down a list of parameters for the characters.

In Forbidden Rose, right from the start, I knew Justine had to be very young, no older than Adrian.  She had to be intelligent and educated, of the nobility, a great and loyal French spy, more fond of guns than knives, and with a horrific past.  I pictured someone of sorta midbrowny coloring, so she wouldn't match Adrian's darkness.

These are character parameters I needed for the long-term plot of Forbidden Rose and Black Hawk.

But see how none of this is important stuff about her.  None of it helps me know who she is. Any kind of persona at all could fit inside those parameters.

I didn't know 'Justine' herself till one day I was writing along in the early imagining of the story and I closed my eyes and there she and I were, in her bedroom, with Severine and Adrian.  It was one of the first scenes of the book I could visualize.  That's when Justine began telling me about herself.  And that's the first time I saw Severine and knew how I'd wrap up the story.

So this is what I'd advise.
Instead of laying down the law on what our folks have to do for plot reasons or what they have to be so they match some consistent and usable character we want them to be,
we let them tell us what they feel and think and need.

We learn this stuff because we are inside their skin.

Eventually, we can ask what they want, long term, and we can go back and look into their past to discover why they want it.