Nothing Special
You know that meme that's out there asking you to list six unique, random things about yourself? Well, I am not going to do that. (Aren't you all relieved?) But I AM going to use that as a leaping-off point for a discussion of standing out in the marketplace when it comes to characters.
Let's see now . . . world-weary cop, noir private eye, recovering alcoholic cop/private-eye/anything, gambling addict cop/detective, world-weary vampire, bride having her doubts, it's ALL been done before. And judging from some queries I see out there on blogs . . . either (a) writers haven't figured out how to make these characters unique, or (b) they don't know how to construct a query that makes these characters sound unique. Either way, you're in trouble. Because if you can't do a unique-sounding query then you will never get read. And if you can do a great query but your character is nothing special, you're not going to get bought.
And it was a meme that actually got me thinking about this. You see over at Edie's blog a week or so ago, she posted the meme, and I mentioned something random. You see, I grew up playing cards (Rummy) with my grandma. Then I was introduced to poker. I also remember one Christmas Eve craps game. And then we (my family and crew of pals) moved on to the classic card game "Oh Sh*t." We always (once I was a late-teen) played for money. Not serious money. Silly money. Nickels and dimes and quarters. Everyone in my family has their "lucky" change jar. Mine is one I found in an antique store--a little porcelain herb jar that someone would have kept sweet-smelling lavender in years ago, and it has purple flowers painted on it. It's an antique, worth probably the two dollars I paid for it, and I love it--AND keep my money in it. My mom has a "Country Crock" plastic tub. But on Edie's blog, I shared that one day, burnt out on playing "Oh Sh*t" (and this was as a preggers mom of one, with one on the way), I took out the game of TROUBLE. You know, the one with the pop-o-matic. And we BET on the outcome of the game. Five bucks per game. On TROUBLE.
And my point is this . . . I have never been a gambling addict. I can play for fun. The five bucks just, as they say, "makes it interesting." My family . . . we like to make things interesting. But if I WERE to write about a gambling addict (and I have, in this book), I would have to "make it interesting." Someone who goes through life betting on TROUBLE, on whether it's going to rain. On any of a number of nutty things. I used to bet football with a friend of mine. We bet weird things--loser has to mail the winner something with polka dots, or something that tells time or temperature. I still wear my polka-dot scarf he got me. Alas, I lost the thermometer that he had added a woodland painted animal to (don't ask).
When deciding how to make your character have quirks, I think you have to "make it interesting." Being a gambler ISN'T a quirk. Betting on TROUBLE is. Being a bride with doubts, isn't a quirk. Deciding whether or not to go through with the wedding based on whether or not you get some "sign" from God, like seeing a bride form in the syrup pattern on your pancakes at the Waffle House one morning? That's a quirk. You don't even want to know how I decided to get married. Really. It was that random.
You have got to stand out in the marketplace. EVERYONE at a certain level of competition is "good enough" to be published. It's the really special characters and storylines that will actual elevate you.
Thoughts?
Let's see now . . . world-weary cop, noir private eye, recovering alcoholic cop/private-eye/anything, gambling addict cop/detective, world-weary vampire, bride having her doubts, it's ALL been done before. And judging from some queries I see out there on blogs . . . either (a) writers haven't figured out how to make these characters unique, or (b) they don't know how to construct a query that makes these characters sound unique. Either way, you're in trouble. Because if you can't do a unique-sounding query then you will never get read. And if you can do a great query but your character is nothing special, you're not going to get bought.
And it was a meme that actually got me thinking about this. You see over at Edie's blog a week or so ago, she posted the meme, and I mentioned something random. You see, I grew up playing cards (Rummy) with my grandma. Then I was introduced to poker. I also remember one Christmas Eve craps game. And then we (my family and crew of pals) moved on to the classic card game "Oh Sh*t." We always (once I was a late-teen) played for money. Not serious money. Silly money. Nickels and dimes and quarters. Everyone in my family has their "lucky" change jar. Mine is one I found in an antique store--a little porcelain herb jar that someone would have kept sweet-smelling lavender in years ago, and it has purple flowers painted on it. It's an antique, worth probably the two dollars I paid for it, and I love it--AND keep my money in it. My mom has a "Country Crock" plastic tub. But on Edie's blog, I shared that one day, burnt out on playing "Oh Sh*t" (and this was as a preggers mom of one, with one on the way), I took out the game of TROUBLE. You know, the one with the pop-o-matic. And we BET on the outcome of the game. Five bucks per game. On TROUBLE.
And my point is this . . . I have never been a gambling addict. I can play for fun. The five bucks just, as they say, "makes it interesting." My family . . . we like to make things interesting. But if I WERE to write about a gambling addict (and I have, in this book), I would have to "make it interesting." Someone who goes through life betting on TROUBLE, on whether it's going to rain. On any of a number of nutty things. I used to bet football with a friend of mine. We bet weird things--loser has to mail the winner something with polka dots, or something that tells time or temperature. I still wear my polka-dot scarf he got me. Alas, I lost the thermometer that he had added a woodland painted animal to (don't ask).
When deciding how to make your character have quirks, I think you have to "make it interesting." Being a gambler ISN'T a quirk. Betting on TROUBLE is. Being a bride with doubts, isn't a quirk. Deciding whether or not to go through with the wedding based on whether or not you get some "sign" from God, like seeing a bride form in the syrup pattern on your pancakes at the Waffle House one morning? That's a quirk. You don't even want to know how I decided to get married. Really. It was that random.
You have got to stand out in the marketplace. EVERYONE at a certain level of competition is "good enough" to be published. It's the really special characters and storylines that will actual elevate you.
Thoughts?
Labels: quirks
posted by Erica Orloff at 10:00 AM
26 Comments:
Good point, Erica. I love finding a book with a character who's so 'different/quirky' in some way that I become invested in their story. After all, if we aren't interested in he characters, we just don't give a crap about what's happening to them, so what's the point of reading the story? This is a very good thing to remember while we're developing a character.
Great post! Thank you. I love your query and synopsis posts. I've been reading them a lot lately.
I've been trying to figure out my girl. To recruit agents, she has to motivate and (hate the word, but ...) manipulate people. She's really good at "playing" with people. It's not really an attractive quality, because she doesn't turn it off. I don't know. Should a potentially negative quality even be in the query? It's one thing to convince a reader to like your *itch, LOL, another to say she's a *itch up front. ;-)
Btw, I DO want to know how you decided to get married. :-)
Hi Liz:
Yeah . . . I think my main point is some writers don't get that being a gambling addict ISN'T a quirk. It's a definition of a disease--how it's manifested is the quirk. So if you pitch a book and say "noir detective" or "gambling addict" it essentially tells the editor NOTHING. You have to dig to something deeper--you can't scratch the surface.
E
Spy:
LOL! You DO? I know one place I posted it. Ha . . . :-)
Anyway . . . yes, I think it's OK to mention it in a query. But then I think it's good to have some redemtpive quality there, or some REASON for it. Look at La Femme Nikita. GREAT character. NOT someone you want to meet in a dark alley. But . . . you root for her nonetheless.
E
I want pancakes!
Ah, yep. That really is all I have to contribute right now.
Lainey:
WOW! Tough weekend? ;-) (for the record, I had one kid puking ALL weekend--strep . . . and the other with some sort of 24-hour bug . . . I am in laundry hell . . . and I want pancakes!).
:-)
E
Great advice, advice I'm going to have to think about some. My only word of caution would be not to overdue it or else you'll end up with a bi-sexual dwarf with a PhD in economics who runs a private eye firm in Lithuania and drinks stingers for breakfast and mimosas for lunch.
Mark:
I'd read that. :-)
But here's the thing . . . there are a few authors who do that "extreme" sort of book well, and I love them. But there's always a thread of humanity in it, a depth, that makes the character believable. I think of Andrew Vachss's Burke. He lives in a VERY extreme world. A psycho world. But you believe the world exists and the constructs are very real (good example being how he trains his dogs--because Burke fears that someone will murder his mastiff, the dog is trained to eat only on some weird command--which is not the word "eat"--I just don't remember it right now). I believe in the character, even if it's far removed from most people's reality.
E
LOL. Not so bad really. No kids puking, just the yella fella. No idea what the poor bugger got into but its...bad! Both ends kinda bad!
I'm just doing that seasonal thing where I am attempting moderation so my spring wardrobe quits laughing at me so I pretty much want pancakes all day every day.
And LOL, I wanna buy Mark's Lithuanian, bi-sexual mimosa-guzzling dwarf!
Lainey:
I know! Doesn't that book sound great????
Hang in there, pancake lady. Your bathing suit will thank you (unlike mine). :-)
E
Not quite the same...
http://www.dangerousdwarf.com/novels/city.html
Mark:
I like your idea better. :-) It has more quirks.
LOL!
E
I don't have the piece in front of me, but one of my "reference" models is James N. Frey's example of a grandmother making bombs in her basement. It's not just a quirk or idiosyncrasy, rather a characteristic that breaks the stereotype in a breathtaking way.
Imagine a New York City girl who doesn't just have issues with her family, in fact her father is famous for tossing people from the tops of skyscrapers.
Just something I picked up somewhere.
I think that is a big missing so far in my writing is the quirk that makes the character unique, and interesting, and compelling.
For the record I make really good pancakes - cinnamon, vanilla, and sometimes with chocolate chips. Not good for your waistline, but good for your soul.
Stephen:
Talk about dysfunctional. ;-)
E
Hi Ewoh:
Hope you are feeling better!!!
And I think the uniqueness/quirk factor can make or break a deal--particularly in certain genres (like private eye ones).
E
Excellent point! Now you've got me thinking about my characters quirks! I'm thinking hard!
Hi Ello:
Actually, this post and comments got me thinking about the difference between a character trait and taking it to the next level in developing a quirk.
E
What we want to avoid, I think, is for a quirk to feel pasted on. Whatever the character is or does should be organic to his/her nature. Oddities added after the fact are as obvious as a bad toupee (and as annoying as a bad simile), IMO.
Let's say, in some bizarre literary universe, bi-sexual dwarves with PhDs in economics who run private eye firms in Lithuania and drink stingers for breakfast and mimosas for lunch have become commonplace. They have become the biggest cliche around. Let's say you want to make your character REALLY stand out from all the others, so you tack on a quirk. All of a sudden, the character has an irrational fear of toenail clippers or something. Unless the fear is actually organic somehow to the character, it's going to feel like a literary device and isn't going to work for me.
I think Taxi, the TV show from the 70s, is practically a textbook for writing quirky characters. Every one of those characters felt real, with extensive backstories that made their quirks part of who they were.
Jude:
Not tacking it on is a given. That's why I really used the gambling addict thing--a writer can say, "Oh, my character's a gambling addict"--give the character a few token compulsions. But if they don't delve into the quirks of being a gambling addict, then it's just a hollow, trite sort of attribute.
I don't feel, for example, making a recovering alcoholic private eye have x, y, or z quirks is enough. But unfortunately, without a character "hook" . . . good luck.
It's a delicate dance . . . but again, going to the gambling addict thing, you're right. It has to be organic. They played craps for Cheerios in THE ROOFER. And then men CHEATED little kids--for Cheerios. That's "real" (in my opinion). I think you have to delve deep.
E
Hehe. My private eye still drinks and smokes, but he gets on his knees every night and thanks his higher power for making it through another day without cocaine. He has one gold record on his wall, the only one he didn't pawn for blow back in the 80s. He hasn't been able to pick up a guitar for twenty years, but he's going to be forced to before the story's done...
I don't know if any of that works as a hook, but that's where I am now.
And, after thinking about it, a bi-sexual dwarf with a PhD in economics who runs a private eye firm in Lithuania and drinks stingers for breakfast and mimosas for lunch AND is terrified by shiny stainless steel toenail clippers...is sounding better all the time. :)
Jude, I love the sound of your character. My last book had four protagonists, and I had to make them all different. One was a 61-year-old grandmother in a water fight with her 7-year-old grandson. He's soaking her, and in that second she thinks of him as "the little shit." Another writer and I were critiquing each other pages, and she said she didn't like a character who thought of her grandson that way. In that case, she wouldn't like me. BTW, I didn't send her any more chapters.
Thanks, Edie. Four protags! Wow. That must have been a challenge.
PS Erica: That's a great example from The Roofer, cheating being at the core essence of those characters. What I meant by not tacking on quirks...in my situation, where I had a complete novel that had already gone out to several publishers, I felt if I was going to do a rewrite and do it right, it was crucial to rebuild the character from the ground up. That's one reason it's taking me so long. I could have easily tacked on a few quirks and a HEA ending, but I didn't feel like that was going to do the trick. Maybe nothing is going to do the trick; but, I think I'm learning a lot with the rewrite and that's always a good thing.
Edie, I'd love the granny in the water fight with her grandson! LOL. And Erica, I mix it up too. There's usually three generations bobbing in my stories, and each one is unique to me. I just LUV characters.
edie:
I would love that grandma. :-)
E
ladonna:
I like that mix too for contrasting.
E
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