How to develop characters

I started a blog posting yesterday that I intended to finish and post today. But I just ran across something from Writer's Digest (Aug. 31, 2010) that I thought was interesting. It's an online article called, "How to Develop Your Characters."

Actually, it was just a listing of four things and a brief description of what is meant. But I found it useful. Here they are:

1. Make a character study for each of your characters, defining the five traits discussed here: name, age, appearance, relationships and personality.

2. With a clean copy of your manuscript, get out a different colored highlighter for each character. Go through the manuscript one character at a time. Highlight whenever that character speaks and/or acts. If you try to do too many characters at the same time, shifting from one color to the other, I guarantee you will make a mistake at least once.

3. Now read only the dialogue and actions of one of those colors. Does everything your character says sound true to her? What about her actions? If not, rewrite the passages that seem forced.

4. Did you notice one character, or maybe several, who appear in the beginning but not in the end, or vice versa? If so, they probably aren’t necessary to your story. Try deleting them or perhaps combining them with another character.


Now in my latest novel, I have more than two dozen speaking parts. However, there is one main character. There'd be no story without him. But there are more than a half-dozen major characters who are crucial to the telling of the story. Am I suppose to do character studies of more than two dozen characters, which I doubt, or just the major ones?

I am opting for the latter and I might try it. It would probably be an interesting exercise.

I hope I have been a help today. That is always my goal. So thanks for reading.

First draft

I opened my e-mail this afternoon and saw an advertisement for a course at Writer's Digest University called "12 Weeks to a First Draft." Now that sounded catchy. I was also interested in the idea of a fast first draft because National Novel Writing Month is in two months and members of the newest critique group I am in are planning a novel-writing workshop at a local library to help kick off the month.

Several of the selling points for the WD course included, "How to employ writing techniques to facilitate the first draft of your novel," "How to maintain a writing routine with clear objectives," "How to pace your novel," and "How to implement literary conventions such as plot, character, setting, style, exposition, dialogue and tension in your novel."

All those are good, of course, but I also hope the course stresses one truly important fact, which is something they could give for free: Writing is hard work and there is no substitute for planting your butt in a seat and doing the hard work.

For for the uninitiated in writing a fast work (and particularly for people who might also want to try NaNoWriMo), I hope the course doesn't place too much emphasis on all those "literary conventions" such as plot, characters and setting. While those are EXTREMELY important, I think the most important things to remember are setting a realistic goal for completion and working every day to achieve that goal. I strongly believe if you focus too much on the mechanics of writing a masterpiece, it is too easy to get bogged down and discouraged, and thus not finish.

There will always be obstacles to finishing -- obstacles over which you have no control. You don't need to add more.

I think the best advice is sit down and write. A compelling plot, exciting characters, believable dialogue and good setting, if you don't get it done in the first draft, can be -- and, in fact, will need to be -- added in later drafts. You have to remember, it is only a first draft. Get it done.

Thanks for reading and keep writing.

A damn good writer

I had a couple of hours free this morning after a client postponed an appointment at the last minute. I could have -- and should have -- used the time constructively. There are a couple of things I need to edit. But I wasted the time watching television. Well, kinda wasted it.

I watched several episodes of "Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip," a show a genius named Aaron Sorkin created several years ago. Unfortunately, it ran for only one season. I got the entire show on DVD at the public library.

I loved that show. Really loved it. I was so sorry it was canceled. But given the problems I could imagine Sorkin probably put the network through, I wasn't surprised. But I loved the show because, like so many other Sorkin efforts -- the film, "The American President" and TV shows like "Sports Night" and "The West Wing" -- the writing was beyond brilliant.

After the first handful of episodes of "Studio 60," the show began to slip, much like "The West Wing" did as it reached middle age. (That about the time Sorkin was fired from the show.) But, like "The West Wing," "Studio 60" redeems itself at the end.

Whenever I watch "Studio 60" I am struck by the writing. It is clever and funny and well-done and well-executed. And I love good writing. It doesn't matter whether it is Sorkin or Sting or Richard Pryor or Lennon and McCartney or August Wilson or Ernest Hemingway or the Marx Brothers. Good writing is good writing. It is inspiring, certainly for me. It makes me want to do what I do better.

I didn't have a good day yesterday. Personally reasons, professional reasons, it was a whole bag of reasons (including after a small piece that probably cost 99-cents came off of my MG and disengaged the throttle. I had no power. I got a guy to come out and fix it and I got home). I wasn't sure I had what it takes to succeed as a fiction writer. I fought off bouts of self-doubt, though I was also sure I wasn't going to give up.

Today, however, I feel inspired, partly because it is beautiful outside, partly because of "Studio 60," and partly because I have the talent to succeed. I may not be able to write like Aaron Sorkin but I am a damn good writer. And knowing that is what will keep me going.

Have a good day and thanks for reading. Now go out and write something good.

Query letters

Since I am the secretary of the Speed City chapter of Sisters in Crime, I handle most of the local membership-wide communications. And today I was asked to pass on some information to our members regarding an event at another SinC chapter.

Sisters in Crime of Columbus, Ohio, also known as SiCCO, is having an afternoon workshop this Saturday on the query process. The workshop is being conducted by author Heather Webber, who will talk about how to effectively query agents and editors.

(She is the author of the Nina Quinn cozy mystery series and has launched a new series starring Lucy Valentine, an unlucky-at-love character with a supernatural talent.)

What really caught my eye, however, was that Webber was offering to critique query letters submitted in advance. For FREE. Doesn't get much better than free.

What a wonderful idea. Querying is one of the most crucial aspects for becoming a published author and is also one of the hardest to master. I have a basic letter, of course, but I pour over it numerous times before I send it out. Each one is slightly different from the one I sent to the previous agent.

I wish our chapter will host a similar workshop, perhaps some time early in 2011. I certainly will suggest it this Saturday at our next meeting. But, of course, that's the problem. I can't go to Columbus on Saturday, a drive of under three hours, because I have to attend our local meeting. That's too bad. I could really use some help with my letter. I think it is good but it doesn't seem to attract much attention.

So I am not sure if it's my letter that is bad or my novel itself is the problem.

I will paste my letter below and if you feel the urge, send me a note on what you think.

Until then, thanks for reading and keep writing.

---

Dear XXXXXXX,

It wasn’t a typical Monday for struggling private eye David Blaise. He got two new, important cases to solve and Philadelphia was burning to the ground.

Pretentious socialite Elise Carmichael begs Blaise to investigate whether her husband is having an affair. And Blaise’s former girlfriend asks him to accept a missing persons case. The husband is having an affair, of course, but what Blaise also finds is murder. The victim, whose badly burned body is found in a house destroyed after Philadelphia police firebombed an entire neighborhood, is the socialite’s lover, who was blackmailing her regarding her secret past.

Baffled by his client’s lies and half-truths, distracted by the advances of his former lover, harassed by police and threatened by a stalker, Blaise tries to get to the bottom of his two seemingly unrelated cases – and do it before the killer literally buries him alive.

AN UNTIDY AFFAIR is a sassy 71,000-word murder mystery that is easy to read and would be a good summer companion for fans of classic mysteries. It is my first novel. I can provide a partial or the entire manuscript per your request.

I am a working journalist with numerous freelance credits in local and national publications. I serve as secretary in the Speed City chapter of Sisters in Crime and I have a murder mystery story in BEDLAM AT THE BRICKYARD, a racing anthology published in June by Blue River Press (Cardinal Publishing Group).

Thank you for taking the time to consider my work. I look forward to hearing from you.

Sincerely,

MB “Michael” Dabney
7120 Keston Circle
Indianapolis, IN 46256-2323

317-509-6490
E-mail: www.mbdabney@yahoo.com

Backstory

I have been wrestling for some time now with the issue of backstory. Where to put it, when to put it and how much to put it.

Backstory kills the action and should be used sparingly, I'm told. Spread it throughout the story, I'm told. Only about two paragraphs of backstory at a time, I'm told.

But then, I read something by some famous author and there are big chunks of backstory, often at the beginning of a novel. Case in point, THE PRESIDENT'S DAUGHTER (Putnam, 1997) by Jack Higgins. The entire first chapter, some 23 pages long, is backstory.

Now, love the book and, frankly, the first chapter is one of my favorite parts. But why is Higgins exempt from the "use backstory sparingly" rule and I am not.

I know. That is a stupid question. He is a rich famous author and I'm . . . well, uh, not a rich famous author. He gets a pass on that rule and probably many others as well. This is not where I go on about 'life's not fair.' If it were fair, I would perhaps be a bestselling author and no one would have ever heard of teenage sensation Justin Bieber. (I'm not hatin', I'm just sayin'.)

What I am saying, however, is that it is hard catching a break when the rules I'm expected to play by can be such moving targets. There are whole sections of my first novel, FIGHTING CHAOS, I will have to cut if I ever hope to sell it. (The whole book needs another total re-write, as I have said before, but that is a subject for another day.) They are sections rich with funny, moving detail, and they flesh out the characters and establish them more as three dimensional people.

That is my complaint for the day. Backstory. I have a cold and have been in bed most of the day and I guess I just felt like whining. So there you have it. I'm going back to bed.

But you get back to work! And thanks for reading.

POV

Until the last handful of years when I seriously took up writing fiction, I never gave much thought to point of view. As a journalist, most of my writing has been in third-person. Whether at a news conference or witnessing events as they unfolded, I was like a fly on the wall. I observed and wrote what I heard or observed but not as a participant.

There have been exceptions, of course.

Besides the editorials I wrote for The Philadelphia Tribune (for which I won a couple of awards, thank you very much), my writing career includes a handful of first-person articles about experiences I had, including two I had at racing school. But my favorite first-person article was while I worked for United Press International. It was about an experiment at the Franklin Institute science museum in Philadelphia.

Using only paper, Popsicle sticks, string, glue and other materials found around the kitchen, a group of us, including an 11-year-old boy named Noah, had 15 minutes to construct something that would hold an egg and protect it from breaking when dropped from 12 feet onto some bricks. I felt particularly competitive toward Noah, though he was only one-third my age, and when I wrote the article I proudly announced to the world that I succeeded where most failed (though Noah wasn't one of them).

I have always felt most comfortable as a writer using a third-person POV. But as a reader, I generally don't care. In fact, I don't think most readers care. Or at least I don't think most readers who aren't writers actually care or even notice. So when other writers in my critique group say I sometimes switch POV when in third-person, I don't see it. I don't understand. It seems consistent throughout to me.

Then yesterday, I bell went off in my head and for the first time I got what other writers were talking about. I was reading James King's BILL WARRINGTON'S LAST CHANCE, which I have praised in the past and suggest you read. I was aware of whose head the writer in mind from chapter to chapter, and I noticed its consistency and when and why it changed.

James' writing is wonderful, descriptive and, it turns out, instructive.

I think I am going to stick with first-person narrative in my fiction for a while. It is challenging for me but also easier to keep consistent. So the next time I change POV, it will be with knowledge of forethought.

I've learned something. Thanks James.

And thanks to all of you for reading. Now go write something and don't give up.

Fan mail

Having a reader write or call to say they enjoyed your work is, I have found, one of the truly wonderful things about writing. I write with the reader in mind but first reader I work to please is always me. After that, I hope I connect with someone else. As I work, I am never sure.

I have gotten some very positive comments on my short story "The Missing CD" which is in BEDLAM AT THE BRICKYARD, which was published in June. And yes, most of the comments have come from people I know. But I have gotten a couple of e-mails from out of the blue.

I got an e-mail just today from someone who asked me about a detail in the story. It involved the storage room where Speedway Museum officials keep the vehicles that are not displayed on the museum floor.

I told her I wrote what little I knew about that aspect of the museum, which I had researched, and I made up the rest. That is why it is called fiction.

I don't know what I will do when I have a novel published and I start getting some mail that is not so positive. Probably what I have always done as a reporter: Thank the reader and not let their comments get to me.

We will see. But for now, I am enjoying what little fan mail I get.

Thanks for reading and keep writing.

Killing them softly . . .

I was reading an interview with Mary Higgins Clark over the weekend and was reminded of something I love to do. I love to kill off people I don't like. Or hurt them badly.

She said, "Don't hold a grudge! Instead, make the guy who was mean to you the victim in your next book." (Writer's Digest, Sept. 2010)

I do that. And I tell people to do that.

Of my victims, my favorite is a guy whom I don't truly dislike but who made my professional life difficult for a number of years. He was my boss' boss. He was unpredictable, often rude, inconsiderate, stubborn and controlling. (And a number of other bad things I won't get into.)

In my second novel, I had him bashed in the head with a heavy object and killed. It was so much fun and the best part was he wasn't killed for all the obvious reasons. He was killed because his assailant was a bigger bad-ass (and was crazier) than my victim was.

I started my current novel, AN UNTIDY AFFAIR, with a person I didn't like. I didn't have an idea for the book but I remembered this woman who was a real piece of work and I constructed a novel around that fact. She was a rude, pretentious, uppity (add the b-word). But I didn't kill her off. Actually, she wasn't worth the effort but I put her through Hell, which was also satisfying.

So my advice today is: Kill off that idiot you hate. Or at least hurt them badly. You will feel better for it and won't get sent to jail.

Thanks for reading. Now write something!

NaNoWriMo

I write occasionally for an alternative weekly newspaper called NUVO, and while I haven't gone to one of their weekly budget meetings for a number of months I went today. And as I was chatting with one of their contributing editors, who is also a playwright, the topic changed to my novel writing.

Now the editorial people at NUVO pride themselves as much for their literary knowledge as they do for their liberal politics. But to my amazement, they had never heard of National Novel Writing Month. And I don't think it was a simple matter of snobbery.

I mentioned that I wrote the first draft of my latest novel, AN UNTIDY AFFAIR, in 19 days last November during NaNoWriMo. David, the playwright, was impressed. (And he is a man I like to impress, by the way. Though too liberal for my tastes, he is a great writer, both knowledgeable and insightful.)

He suggested I write a journal this November as I work on my next novel and use it for an article for the newspaper. I had never thought of that but the prospect scares the hell out of me.

Just writing the novel will be hard enough. But also keeping a daily journal of my experiences would probably overtax me and drive me insane. But I agreed to think about it. November isn't for another two-and-a-half months so there is plenty of time to hash out some of the details, not the least of which being what novel I will write. Yet the idea is interesting. As part of my new critique group, I am doing a panel discussion at a local library on how to do NaNoWriMo. This could be part of that overall experience.

So I hope I am not biting off more than I can chew because I don't want to burn my candle on both ends. (A Larry Bird in the hand is worth two in a [George] bush and a rolling gathers no Kate Moss! Enough already!)

I think I will do it. But heaven help me when I do.

Thanks for reading and keep writing.

Write what you know.

The current issue of Writer's Digest is "The Big 10" issue in which the editors and writers share many of the 10 secrets of writing and success. They examine productivity, top books and markets, plot problems, and more. They have interviews with 10 best-selling authors, where I noted with amazement that not a single one of them was black. But that is a matter for another blog posting.

What immediately caught my attention, however, was the 10 Rules of Writing from writing experts. And most importantly, for each of the 10 rules, there was a reason one expert said you should follow it and another reason another expert said you should break it.

The whole exercise was exhilarating and confusing. What advice do I take?

Super agent Donald Maass, whom I unfortunately missed last October at Bouchercon, says write what you know. That means, he says, "write what you see differently, feel profoundly and know is important for the rest of us." But author Natalie Goldberg says the opposite. She says be curious, and look for "what lurks beyond the familiar, safe streets."

Good advice from both. But which do I choose? (As a writer for nearly all my professional life, I go with write what you know. But that's what research is for -- so there will be things you know.)

Write 'shitty first drafts.' John Smolens, an English professor and best-selling author of a number of books and short stories, says follow that rule. "Really, do you have a choice?" he asks. While columnist, teacher and author Nancy Kress says first drafts "can certainly be rough and sloppy," but that doesn't mean they have to be shitty. She says you can only write as well as you can write. A first draft can be messy but "a mess can be fixed. Shit is just a waste. And a first draft is never a waste."

More good advice from both sides of an issue.

And it goes on. Write every day, John Dufresne says, because you have to. Not so, says James Scott Bell. It's not possible to write everyday if only because life will sometimes intrude, he says, plus you regularly need the break to recharge your creative batteries.

Read what you like to write; silence your inner critic; if you want to get rich, do something else -- all great topics, and all with conflicting points of view.

But not necessarily. If you examine them closely, you can see similarities in the points of view. So what I took most from the article is that, as a writer and as a person, you have to be true to yourself. That is where the real truth is and it is from that place that you want to reach readers.

Do what feels best to you. That may not have been what the experts intended but it's what I got from them. Otherwise, all their advice is nothing more than background noise.

Thanks for reading. Search inside yourself and keep writing.

Other writers' success

Sorry I have been away for a while but I was on vacation. I am back in the swing of things now and have several topics to discuss but the first is on the success of other writers.

I read three books while on vacation -- two girlie books (the latest in the Stephanie Plum series by Janet Evanovich; and REMEMBER ME?, a funny and charming novel written several years by Sophie Kinsella) and a terrific debut novel by Harry Dolan.

BAD THINGS HAPPEN was published some time ago and while it was on my reading list, I hadn't gotten to it. Too bad for me. Harry's writing is witty, his characters are rich and full-bodied, and his plot is suspenseful. It was a delightful read.

I only know Harry online and through other online friends but he is a good writer and I'm happy he is experiencing some literary success.

Another wonderful writer I have met online is James King, who won ABNA last year (handily beating me, I might add). His debut, BILL WARRINGTON'S LAST CHANCE, was published this week. I went to the bookstore this afternoon to get a copy -- there were two, so my local Borders sold out 50 percent of its inventory.

(I will post pictures of both novels on my blog once I figure out how to get them off my phone and onto my laptop. I need my 16-year-old daughter to tell me how to do that and she is in cheer camp this weekend. GO WILDCATS!!!)

I have said this before but I love it when authors I know or have met online achieve some measure of success. While I still admit to some degree of jealousy, it is quite small in comparison to the encouragement I feel when yet another deserving author breaks through. I am humbled by Harry's writing and storytelling, and by James' imaginative story (I haven't read the book yet). But they both also remind me that success can come with talent, hard work and persistence.

So when I feel dispair or discouraged, James and Harry are there in spirit to tell me to stop feeling sorry for myself and to get back to work -- on improving my writing, on sending out queries, on networking with other authors and on learning more about the publishing industry.

Thank you, gentlemen. Well done. I hope and pray to follow in your footsteps. I am certainly working on it.

Thanks for reading.