2T Repeat Performance - How do you develop your characters?

I've done a number of blog tours over the years, posting on different sites. Now I'm bringing them to you!

Originally published August 20, 2012 for Blackraven Erotic Cafe

How do you develop your characters for the Biting Love series?

 Take a strong man and a strong woman, throw them into an explosive situation, stir and serve!

Okay, it’s not quite as easy as that :) Let me explain by first breaking it into pieces.

Developing the Hero—I love strong men, but there are different kinds of strong. My vampire heroes are all powerful, handsome, smart, with deep voices that buzz along your spine…you get the picture :) But each hero has unique traits. Master vampire Bo carries the responsibility for the whole town of Meiers Corners (thank goodness he has miles-wide shoulders). Julian, a lawyer, is hella smart. Each hero also has at least one emotional scar; and one quirk that drives the heroine nuts (just like real life couples :).

Biting Oz’s hero is black-haired, sapphire-eyed bodyguard Glynn Rhys-Jenkins. This vampire is determined and loyal. He’s also a bit of an enigma. When visiting Meiers Corners, the first thing he does is set up a table of homey knickknacks. That’s his scar; he had no true home as a child and is searching for one.

Developing the Heroine—My women are independent women who earn their own way. They’re not looking for a man to take care of them, or even a male who can complement them—they’re looking for the guy who can keep up with them. Each has a major hurdle to overcome, usually tied to the theme of the story and most often in direct conflict with the hero’s issue. For example, while Julian keeps strict control of his vampire nature, Nixie is all about personal freedom of expression.

In Biting Oz, heroine Gunter Marie “Junior” Stieg is a musician whose strong sense of family duty keeps her stuck working in her parents’ sausage store. But she dreams of heading for Broadway. This conflicts nicely with Glynn’s need to find a real home.

Developing Others—The plot suggests people our heroine must meet. They usually lay flat on the page until I remember to flip them one-eighty. Example: cop Elena needed a partner. The cop stereotype is tough, street-smart, closed-lipped and stocky. So I paired her with gangly, clueless, lips-flapping Dirk. Taking a stereotype and adding a twist tickles me almost as much—in Biting Oz, beautician and town gossip Dolly Barton (some say the FBI get their best tips from Dolly) drops a stunning vampire secret on Junior.

Combining more than one purpose in a single character adds richness. Nixie, heroine in Biting Nixie, plays in the pit orchestra with Junior and also runs the townhouse where Glynn stays. She urges Junior to find out what’s behind his mysterious table of knickknacks.

Putting It All Together—So those are the pieces! I work them around until they fit, then augment each other. I have dozens of heroes and heroines floating around in my head, and it can take months of trying various combinations until a pair clicks. Then I go back and forth between character, theme and plot, sharpening each against the other. Start the book with an explosive meet (Junior’s blocked by a sea of Munchkin kids—Glynn picks her up and carries her over their heads) and away we go!

 

3T Writing Tidbit

We've been reviewing plot structure the last several months. How about another of the three elements of story: character? (The three elements being character, setting, and plot 😄)

I'm not going to go in any special order with these. Here's a provocative sentence I came across: 

Archetypes are masks of a complete human being.

Let's unpack that over the next few months. First, what's an archetype?

In general, it's like a sewing pattern, something from which copies are made. Note in this simile, the archetype isn't real. A dress pattern isn't a dress. That'll come in handy down the road.

In literature, there are anywhere between 3 and 13 main archetypes, depending on who you Google.

• The Caregiver, the Creator and the Explorer.
• The Hero, the Mentor, the Everyman, the Innocent, the Villain.
  
• The Hero, the Mentor, The Threshold Guardian, The Herald, The Shadow, The Trickster, the Shapeshifter. (These are courtesy of the Hero's Journey.)
• The Hero, the Caregiver, the Innocent, the Creator, the Explorer, the Jester, the Lover, the Magician, the Everyman, the Ruler, the Sage, the Orphan, the Rebel.
  

I don't even really need to spell out what they do, do I? That's what makes them archetypes. Mention the type, you instantly picture an actor or character in a book or play or movie or show who personifies that archetype for you. Here are a few examples:

The Magician: Gandalf as played by Sir Ian McKellen.
The Hero: Captain America, either Chris Evens's Steve Rogers or Anthony Mackie's Sam Wilson.
The Explorer: Dora the Explorer as voiced by Kathleen Herles

Published since 2009, over the years I've accumulated various items of writing wisdom. The Third Tuesday Writing Tidbit showcases these items in no particular order. Click here to see all 3T Tidbits.

2T Repeat Performance - Why a Druid?

I've done a number of blog tours over the years, posting on different sites. Now I'm bringing them to you!

Originally published August 17, 2012 for Harlie's Books

Why a druid?

Myths and mysticism fascinate me. As a child I saw magical possibilities in everything around me. Finding the magic in nature, in life, is as wonderful and natural to me as breathing. Between that and my Celtic ancestry, it was perhaps inevitable that I found myself interested in druids.

A decade or more ago I came across a book, Life and Death of a Druid Prince. It’s an enthralling tale about the discovery of a bog body that bears all the markings of a druid prince who sacrificed himself to save his world. I decided to do a contemporary romance about a druid book and the mysterious professor who’s tied to it. I didn’t finish the story (it’s currently at 27K and I may finish it some day) but I researched druids then, and their courage and daring in the face of the seemingly inexorable Roman conquest remained strong in my mind.

I’ve also been looking to create a hero from Wales for some time now. The characters I write are all seeded in my reality—that is, every character has a bit of my “real” life inside them that’s the grit to the character’s pearl. In Glynn’s case, it’s my husband, whose rebellious streak I never understood—until I discovered one of said husband’s ancestors was a rebel in the Welsh equivalent of the Boston Tea Party. It’s not willfulness, it’s a strong will to see that right is done (and my husband comes by it naturally :) Glynn has this strong sense of what’s right, and the will to fight for it when it’s threatened.

Born in the 1200s, Glynn isn’t a druid. But he is a vampire who encapsulates the spirit of the druid prince: the enigmatic warrior-priest, a thoughtful man who is capable of swift action, and who does what he has to in order to save his world.

 

3T Writing Tidbit

Occasional randomness:

Published since 2009, over the years I've accumulated various items of writing wisdom. The Third Tuesday Writing Tidbit showcases these items in no particular order. Click here to see all 3T Tidbits. 

2T Repeat Performance - Inspiration behind the book

I've done a number of blog tours over the years, posting on different sites. Now I'm bringing them to you!

Originally published August 16, 2012 for the Brunette Librarian

Inspiration behind the book?

 As a musician, playing for live shows is one of my joys. My pit orchestras are usually a small group, generally friends, often including my husband. Not only is the show fun and exciting, but we have plenty of laughs and disasters both onstage and off.

As a writer, my prime goal is entertaining readers. Biting Oz immerses you in the world of theater, from the bright glitter of the show to the nitty-gritty action behind the scenes.

Much of my inspiration comes from direct experience, enhanced by imagination. When I starting Biting Oz I had just played Reed II for The Wizard of Oz and it was fresh in my mind. I myself lugged around a huge tenor sax (and it was as bone-numbingly awkward as Junior says), although I admit I never whacked a vampire with it. Our real life Toto was a hoot, getting bored and plopping down to lick his, um, scenery. In the book my Toto gets even more creative J. 

Other real-life Oz stories: friend and trumpet player Karen W remembers “having Toto come up and sniff you at the edge of the pit.” A musical friend recounts “Professor Marvels’s camp site was complete with a camp fire (light and fan, etc.)…[and]…during one performance, Toto (a real pooch) kept sticking his nose in the ‘flames’ to see if there were more hot dogs in there!” That was the performance where “the music room below stage began flooding with sewage from the sump pump. [They] closed the doors and the show went on.....Later captioned by [a national news source] as ‘If I only had a drain!’”

I’ll just share two other pit stories (not in Biting Oz but maybe a future book :). 

My husband nearly got beaned by a croquet ball in Little Mary Sunshine (the pit is below the stage) and took to wearing a hard hat to rehearsals. 

Reed player Leah D remembers a production of Into The Woods. “We had this ugly little cheap stuffed animal as our ‘pit mascot.’ Mostly, we’d stick him in funny places on someone else's stand, horn, music, gigbag, whatever. Our drummer, Barb, was commissioned with finding just the right sound for the giant’s footsteps. She found that holding the feet of the ugly stuffed animal and whacking its head into the bass drum was exactly the sound the director wanted. Heh heh...”

As you can see, quite a bit goes on offstage too. Excitement, laughs, disasters, and relationships. What better inspiration for a story?

 

3T Writing Tidbit - story structure bonus

I've been reviewing story structure lately. Despite what the pundits say, there's more than one way to tell a story! You have your 3-17 step hero's journey, your 5 plot-point, your 3 act, your 2 step scene/sequel. Let's start on the far end and work our way in.

Last month we did scene/sequel. I have one more structure that I picked up from an interview with a famous actor (I can't remember who or where, so if this sounds familiar please point me at the clip so I can give proper attribute.)

All stories boil down to this basic understanding:

• Protagonist decides to enter Special World.
• Protag acts.
• This has consequences.
  

I like this because it's super simple and super relatable. We can even apply this to our own lives! The formula works at both micro and macro levels - apply it to a scene, an act, or the whole arc of the story.

Published since 2009, over the years I've accumulated various items of writing wisdom. The Third Tuesday Writing Tidbit showcases these items in no particular order. Click here to see all 3T Tidbits. 

2T Repeat Peformance - the First Person

I've done a number of blog tours over the years, posting on different sites. Now I'm bringing them to you!

Originally published August 15, 2012 for Ravishing Romances

Writing a series in first person, is it difficult to switch characters each book?

Sherlock Holmes, Amelia Peabody, Kinsey Millhone—some of my favorite stories are in first person. There’s an immediacy that you get from being right in the hero’s head which works especially well with dry humor. But most of my first-person favorites are mysteries, and all of them feature one unchanging narrator. First person romance? Sequential narrators? Never saw it—until I read Lori Handeland’s Nightcreature series. I fell in love. Each heroine has a smart, kick-butt style that really shines.

I’d written some women’s fiction in first person and had great feedback. But I love romances, so I decided to try combining first person with romance myself. Bite My Fire and Biting Nixie were the result—along with my first sale J.

Making each Biting Love heroine unique is both a challenge and a joy. The challenge is creating a character different enough from the previous heroines—while still keeping her smart and strong. The joy is when, after much preliminary fumbling, the character’s unique voice finally sings through. Nixie, a punk rock musician, slings her slang. Elena, a cop, has a saltier vocabulary than shy geek Liese. To me, these are now truly different people, so in a way it’s easy to write them differently.

But there are a few helpful techniques that all writers can use. I pick a couple specific concepts for every character (not just the heroines), and use those concepts each time I reintroduce the character. Nixie wears kids clothes but swears like a Marine. Liese is wholesome as a dairy maid. Logan is insouciant and graceful. (See Jim Butcher’s Live Journal http://jimbutcher.livejournal.com/ for TAGS and TRAITS). I also pick emphasis words/phrases (swearing) that fit the heroine’s lifestyle. For example, when Biting Oz heroine Gunter Marie “Junior” Stieg misses her solo entrance, she snaps, “Stuff me in a tuba and blast me into space.” Each heroine also has a different career path—my varied job history is now a good thing, LOL. Even when two women have overlapping careers (Junior and Nixie are both musicians), they approach life differently (one is all about responsibility, the other is all about individuality).

Finally, even when the characters’ voices are totally different, I tag dialog when there are more than two people in the scene (Junior said; Glynn crossed powerful arms; Nixie danced, or, being pregnant, she wobbled). In a real-life roomful of people it’s a challenge to keep track of all the conversations, so in a story, I try to make it crystal clear who’s talking, not relying on voice alone.

Biting Oz features the first ever meeting of the vampire spouses of Meiers Corners—seven smart, strong women around one table. You can judge for yourself how well I’ve done keeping them unique J .