The Character Whisperer

If you are a long-time reader of this blog (with a really good memory to boot), you know that I read this column every single Sunday of my life. I don't particularly believe in marriage. If any of my kids said they were never going to marry, or were going to just live with someone, or they were going to have a baby on their own (once they were old enough to do so responsibly), or were going to adopt kids as a single parent . . . or if they told me they were gay and were going to make any of the choices above, I would be completely comfortable with it. But somewhere inside me, I love the idea that these columns represent the idea of "love found" no matter how twisted the path (these are rarely run-of-the-mill stories). Last week's column was AWESOME. Herb Ritts, if you are a fan of his work, died a couple of years ago, and his long-time love found new love--and now the two men married and have two infant daughters via a surrogate. Sigh. I guess, frankly, I love a happy ending. I want a happy ending!

However, as it pertains to writing, this week's column made me think. The man who got married is a horse whisperer. And I started to wonder if I am a character whisperer.

You see, in the comments of yesterday's post, RichmondWriter (a wonderful photographer, by the way, so check out her site) said that her character did something unexpected--who was in control here? I feel the same way.

Now, I could be a traditional character wrangler, I suppose. I could have an outline and insist, right from the outset that "All you characters BEHAVE!" I could have a riding crop, and I could dig in my heels and insist we stay on the trail.

But instead, I am more like the character whisperer. It's a ride without a saddle. Without a crop. It's a ride that meanders, with a lot of whispering. I don't try to get the characters to listen to my commands. Instead, I whisper to them. I wait for them to tell me their private agonies and fears and secret hopes. Along the way, I do try to lean down and whisper, "If we take this path, you know you'll get your happy ending." But sometimes the trail takes us places even I don't expect. Either way, I may be the one in control, but it's gentler, as if somehow I understand we're in this together.

Thoughts? How do you wrangle your characters?

Inspiration, or Why Peter Benchley Was Probably Full of It

Read this.

Heck, he even LOOKS like Quint.

I know we often make people a composite, but 'fess up. Have you ever included a real-life person--thinly disguised--in your books?

I have. And they know who they are.

Picture Frames

You ever get a new picture frame as a gift or buy one at the store? They always come with a pre-fab "family" in them. Smiling. Perfect. "Picture-perfect," in fact. Not a hair out of place. Toothpaste commercial smile. Adoring. Happy. No tension. No Demon Baby squirming, the children are even perfect.

I get asked all the time, "What do you like to write about?" Because I write across genres, sometimes it's not easy to explain.

But in thinking about it . . . I don't like to write about those people in picture frames.

I like messy lives. Messy hearts. If there's murder, the cop solving it will be a mess. If there's the mob, their relationships will be untidy and angry and loving and evil all wrapped into a messy package with a lopsided bow. In my middle-grade Magickeepers book, the family is Russian and moody, and loyalties are complicated affairs. And the guy I thought was the leader, the role model for my young hero to emulate--turns out he has LOTS of problems, including an ego so big it takes over the room. So the role model is the quieter magician over there--in that corner. The one who watches, saying nothing. He's humble. I like him. But the family? Complicated.

In fact, in real life, when I even SEE a picture-perfect family? I am looking for the cracks. I wonder what dark secrets they have. What goes on behind closed doors. NO ONE could be that perfect, right? My favorite (if you can use such a word for murder) "true-crime" tales are those "perfect" families that then erupt into a murder--did the perfect husband really murder the perfect wife?

Thoughts?

Who's Your Friend?

I was thinking about how subjective what we read (and write) is. A character I thought was benignly bitchy (Cassie Hayes in Spanish Disco) was loathed by one editor who passed before it was bought. I had men and women readers find her charming. And more than a couple who just couldn't stand her. But I have a high tolerance for snark and bitchiness if someone is smart, and so I actually liked her. She was someone I could be friends with.

And in thinking about it, particularly in genre fiction, you are always walking a fine line. Too quirky or too flawed and readers won't "like" your main character. Too likable and you end up with bland. My editor had a real problem with this character. Skye was a gambling addict. By definition, that meant she made foolish choices. I felt like I understood her. Addicts can be very likable and charming. But my editor . . . she was less certain, and we had conversations about it.

I suppose it's a bit like friendship. If I were to walk into a cocktail party where I didn't know a soul, and survey the crowd . . . if there was a cluster of "beautiful people" all smartly dressed over there. And a cluster of "power professionals" over there . . . and a smattering of small groups around the room of couples who look well, ordinary . . . I would make a beeline for the group of people over there with pink and blue hair, maybe a few tattoos, and a unique fashion sense.

My friends in real life are every color, religion (even lesser-known religions, like Baha'i, which is the chosen religion of my lifelong girlfriend), shape and size, and country of origin. They are rarely in professions where you punch a clock, though I suppose I know a couple who do. My best friend in the entire world and I have the following coversation once a month:

"I went and got my hair done today."
"What color?"
"Sort of pink. With the front pieces bleached out."
"Cool. Send me a picture."

My oldest daughter, the last party I went to solo, told me I looked like a "hot lesbian." When I asked what exactly a hot lesbian looked like, she said, "You." (For the record, I had on black pants, a black camisole, a white blouse, and a black man's vest on over it, and I was wearing my--as Oldest Daughter calls them--Lesbian Glasses . . . black with rhinestones.) And before anyone gets pissed at me over this stereotype, I gotta tell you, I have NO idea what a Hot Lesbian looks like. I am merely repeating her comments. However, I DO know a Hot Lesbian does NOT look like a Barbie Doll Mom, which is how most women around here dress.

So here's the thing. I write about about characters I can relate to. That I personally would want to be friends with. And it's dawning on me that sometimes that means I am going to butt up against a wide swath of readers who wouldn't want to be friends with my main character. And it also dawns on me, particularly in commercial fiction or genre fiction, how often that's a concern--likeable but not bland, flawed but not unforgivable.

Readers invite your characters into their lives for a few hours. They really get invested in them. They are, in their minds, justifiably angry when your characters do something horrible or they act "out of character." I think you can break more rules when you're established than when you are trying to break in.

So in your current work in progress, would you want to be friends with your main character? I actually would. But judging from the above . . . that's just saying my character is a little different.

Defining Characters

Over at Anti-Wife's blog, she discussed her characters the other day and got me thinking. Really thinking. Which is dangerous.

And my thought is . . . that especially when you are making a pitch or writing a synopsis, the quirks and traits you choose to reveal are very important. In a larger work, you have more room to explore your characters--but to me, that doesn't give you any more leeway on how precise you must be. You just have to sustain that preciseness for more pages.

Think about it. Just because you have 350 pages to tell your story doesn't mean you can get sloppy. Every word counts. Every trait. Every quirk. Every action.

And what I decided, thinking about it, is that I boil my characters down to these words, "The kind of person who . . . "

I'll explain.

I could say that a grandmother is cruel. One word. One adjective. Tells me nothing.

Or I could say, "The kind of woman who would slap her 2-year-old grandson for sticking his finger in the icing of a birthday cake."

Which is clearer?

I could say, "She volunteers in the community."

Or . . . "The kind of woman who runs the PTA and Junior League."

Or . . . "The kind of woman who, pregnant, piles her three kids in the car and drives to the 'hood to deliver food to a family in need, occasionally wondering if she will accidentally stumble on a drive-by shooting."

Two different picture emerge from those "types." I have nothing but admiration for the Junior League. Those women raise a LOT of money that helps a LOT of people. Someone who RUNS one of those organizations has to be organized. Maybe even anal-retentive. I am neither. But then my desk has not one clear speck of bare desk once again. It's pathetic. I volunteer in the community, but I don't do fundraising work. I leave that for the people who do that well. I hate asking people for money. My volunteering is the second. It's personal and often dirty and dangerous. And that's both insane . . . and who I am.

I could say, "He was loved."

Or I could say, "My godfather was so loved, and so remembered for taking his nieces and nephews to the bakery for jelly donuts, that one of them had a flower arrangement made to look like a jelly donut sent to the funeral home."

Two different pictures.

And when I say "type," it's not that I mean a stereotype. I just mean that there are ways to embody a character in a sentence. Something vivid.

I decided to pull a paragraph from a synopsis for something being considered right now:

Gina Palermo, forty, elegantly beautiful and perfectly clothed in Chanel suits, is the proverbial fish-out-of-water. Make thatYankees fan out of the Bronx. A brutal opponent in the courtroom, she was a high-priced New York divorce attorney—the kind who handled cases with settlements in the tens of millions of dollars for the uber-rich who shed wives and husbands like last season’s fashions.

Rather than "well-dressed" . . . Chanel tells you a certain look. Yet she owns a signed game ball from the 1964 Yankees . . . so she's diehard . . . if you are a New Yorker, then you know the love we have for our teams borders on obsession--and a woman in Chanel who loves the Yanks tells you something. "Divorce attorney" tells you one thing. But "the kind who handled . . ." is a whole 'nother league.

So . . . when every word counts, we have to choose our examples wisely. Even more so in the tricky synopsis.

Thoughts? Can you say ONE thing, one snapshot about your main character . . . "the type of person who . . . "

Peace,
E

Irene

Someone asked me recently whether I ever thought of my books living on after me. And my honest answer is no. I don't write to leave anything of me behind. I LOVE in order to leave something of me behind. I love my kids, my parents, my friends. I hope if I dropped dead tonight, people would miss me. That maybe you'd drop by the blog and toast my memory with a shot of whiskey in your coffee. I like to think that I am leaving the world a tiny bit better place for having been here.

But my books? I don't give that a thought.

Except . . .

For my grandmother.

My favorite story about my grandmother, Irene, was when she asked me to drive her to Yonkers to go to the bank. Stone deaf, speech impediment on top of it, anything having to do with communicating outside the family she left to her family--me, my mom, whomever. I don't think anyone ever made a decision as far as that was concerned. It was just the older she got, the harder it was for strangers, who hadn't grown up with her, to understand her, so life became a series of interpretations. What did she say . . . then what did they say back. I would face her, so she could read my lips. And I would shout. LOUD. And even at that, a lot of times she didn't understand. So she would fake it.

Anyway, off we went to Yonkers. Only she wanted me to drive the wrong-way down a one-way street. With cars coming. I argued with her. But she felt it was stupid to waste time going all the way around the block when we only had to go a hundred feet or so THAT way. The wrong way.

I argued.

She argued back.

The thing about Irene? Stubborn as a mule.

Finally, she slapped my arm. "Just do it. If a cop comes, they won't put YOU in jail because you're only 19. And they won't put ME in jail because I'll tell them I'm 80." (Which at that point was a lie, but I think she figured if she added a couple of years, it would help our case.) "We'll talk our way out of it. I'm an old lady. A cop will feel sorry for me."

So I did what any loyal granddaughter would do. I waited for a break in traffic and gunned the car the wrong way up the street, then made a sign of the cross and a whispered thank you that we made it.

That was just Irene. I could recount a thousand wonderful, maddening stories. And not a DAY goes by that I don't miss her desperately more than a decade after she's gone. Not one day.

And SHE is in my books. Bits of her. In dialogue. In the character of "Nan" in Diary of a Blues Goddess. Bits of her. And when I re-read those parts, that I know are about her, I smile and know she lives on.

So I wonder, does anyone else do the same?

My New Boy Toy

When I worked on the It Girls miniseries, mine was the first book. One of the other writers, the wonderful Vicki Hinze, suggested we each email each other pictures of who our characters looked like so that if our characters cropped up in someone else's book, we'd all know exactly how they looked (for the record, my heroine looked like Sienna Miller, my hero like Benjamin Bratt). This seemed like a remarkably sensible suggestion, but it threw me into a panic. I had never, ever picked out what a character looked like. They were just in my head.

As I worked with these other writers (including fellow Nocturne author Michele Hauf), I soon discovered that a lot of writers do this. Karmela Johnson always is posting her new heroes and heroines. But not me.

Until today.

It was purely by accident, but I stumbled on this guy, Josh Stewart. And he has the faintly tough guy, pale boy from Hell's Kitchen look I need. So . . . he's my Jimmy in my new wip.

Never did this before, but now, I might like having a boy toy or two.

And you? Do you pick out someone in your mind, or is it all in your head? What about scenes, restaurants, apartments? Do you cut out pictures, remember someplace special, or is it all imagined from the vault inside your brain?