Characters—Who’s Driving the Story?

There are all different ways to drive your story, but for me, it’s the characters. I love character-driven stories. They have characters that are three dimensional and memorable. They make the story “why” based, rather than “how” based.

Martha Alderson, an international plot consultant and the founder of Blockbuster Plots for Writers., describes it this way:

Broadly speaking, writers who prefer writing action-driven stories focus on logical thinking, rational analysis, and accuracy. Action-driven writers tend to rely more on the left side of their brain. These writers approach writing as a linear function and see the story in its parts. Action-driven writers like structure. They usually pre-plot or create an outline before writing. Action-driven writers have little trouble expressing themselves in words.

On the other hand, writers who write character-driven stories tend to focus on aesthetics and feelings, creativity and imagination. These writers access the right side of their brains and enjoy playing with the beauty of language. They are more intuitive, and like to work things out on the page. Character-driven writers are holistic and subjective. They can synthesize new information, but are somewhat (or more) disorganized and random. They see the story as the whole. Right brain writers may know what they mean, but often have trouble finding the right words.

While I don’t think I’m disorganized or random, I do agree in general with what Alderson says. My stories start out with the characters—who are they, what do they do and think, why do they do and think that, what would happen to them if I did this? I tend to develop scenes around a particular thought or emotion given by that character and then string those scenes together to make a story. Sometimes it works, and I end up with a complete manuscript. Other times, I have a great scene, but that’s about all.

I like to delve into the psychological reactions and reasons for what my characters do. What are the obstacles that are preventing the hero and heroine from getting together? For me, those obstacles are usually not tangible, external conflicts, but rather emotional or internal conflicts. I enjoy figuring out what they are and how to solve them—and it’s so much easier solving a fictional character’s neurosis than my own! J

Shhh. It's Confidential.

A main character's confidant can be a best friend, kindly neighbor, grandparent, or business partner. This character listens to the hero as he ticks off reasons why he has to shoulder the blame and go on alone. The confident can supply information or try (unsuccessfully) to stop the headstrong hero.

A confidant offers advice even when it's not wanted. When the heroine proclaims she could never love that awful hero, the confidant helps the her talk though her feelings. The confidant always helps the heroine achieve her goal.

For a writer, a confidant is an ideal tool. With the interaction between a lead and his or her confidant, active dialogue replaces what otherwise could be long passages of introspection.

Donald Maas says, "The best kind of confidant is a character who is already part of the lead's life and would naturally play [the role of sounding board,] but who has reason to exist in her own right."

Friday Friend - Jane Richardson

Please welcome today's Friday Friend, Jane Richardson.

Scots-born Jane Richardson now lives on the coast in the south of England.  After a couple of fantastic careers, the last of which was her dream job as a DSM in professional theatre and opera – where she met her husband - she’s now a home-educating Mum to two gorgeous kids. When she gets the chance, she loves to write, read, listen to music, walk in the sunshine and the breeze, paddle at the edge of the sea, and cook and share food, chat and good times with family and friends.  She’s also fond of lemurs!

Read Right – Write Right!

Thanks Paula and everyone at Heroines With Hearts for having me here! 

I’ve been thinking about something I heard a writer say the other day – how she often found it very difficult just to read for fun, now that she spends so much time writing.  She found it hard to suspend her judgement, or take off her ‘critique hat.’  The things that were ‘wrong’ with a piece of writing tended to jump out at her more than things that were ‘right,’ and this was spoiling her reading pleasure.

Hmm.  Well, I sort of know what she means, and I bet there are lots of writers who’ll say the same thing – how they find it hard to enjoy books that don’t meet up to their ‘high writing standards.’  Is it really the case that when we become writers, our ‘reading standards’ suddenly change?  Perhaps up to a point they do, though I’m afraid I’ve never ever really been one to give a book more than a couple of chances anyway.  So many times I've started a book with high hopes only to drop it in disappointment before end of first chapter. 

Call me impetuous, but I’m afraid I tend not to keep reading in the hope that the book will improve – it invariably doesn’t, and it gets quietly dropped to one side while I go to the next one in the TBR pile.  Too many books, too little time!

But you know that old thing about making lemonade out of lemons?  Well, you can use that here.  Use your reading time as a valuable learning resource.  We can use identify what works or doesn’t work in a story, and why, and incorporate the positive things into our own writing.  This doesn't mean copying a style or another author's voice, not at all – it means sorting the good stuff from the less good, and using that experience to focus in a positive and honest way in your own work, and change what needs changing. 

Very often, and most telling of all, a lot of these things can be spotted in the first few pages.  As writers, we need to take note of that - after all, if I’m prepared to stop reading a book in the first chapter, I have to accept readers might do the same with my writing, unless I work very hard to make absolutely sure they want to keep reading!

So what is it that keeps us reading, and stops us from hurling a book aside with great force to ricochet off the wall and land face-down in the nearest bin?  I’ve picked out just a few of my likes and dislikes to illustrate what I mean, and called them Dodgy Moments and Learning Curves.  I’m sure you have lots of your own, so please do feel free to add your suggestions in the comments section!

Dodgy Moment 1 – Does the writer open the story by setting the scene quickly and launching me on a forward journey from the get-go?  How many times have you read on to a second or third paragraph where the writer has felt the need to start explaining the story, when all a reader wants to do is read the story?
Learning Curve 1 – opening with explanation or backstory can deal a killer bow to you story.  You rarely need it, and it’s certainly not appropriate in the opening sections of a book.  Trust your reader to fall in step with you as you move forward – you’re taking them on a wonderful journey, and if they trust you, they’ll go willingly.  If you feel your story simply won’t stand up without some backstory, then you might want to consider if you’ve started the story in the right place.

Dodgy Moment 2 – now that the story’s moving, does it keep moving?  Or did I have to go back and re-read sections again, before I understood what the writer meant?
Learning Curve 2 - a story has to flow.  A reader might be prepared to re-read a section once, but twice is pushing a writer’s luck, and three times is way too much to keep a reader interested.  This is where good, honest feedback is invaluable to a writer in the early stages of a manuscript.  A good critique partner should be able to spot this for you, and when they do, get rid of it.

Dodgy Moment 3 - ‘It was a dark and stormy night….  I’m talking about those dreaded clichés.  Has the drowning writer grabbed the cliché straw with yet another ‘ruby liquid’ or a ‘defiant chin?’

Learning Curve 3 - one cliché is one too many.  Use all the clichés you like in your first draft, especially if it gets you out of a hole at the time, but you absolutely must go back and get rid of them before you put your story in front of a paying reader.  If they feel they’ve read it all before, why on earth would they want to keep reading?

Dodgy Moment 4 – can you tell the characters apart from the way they speak, or do they all sound the same?  Do they all use perfectly constructed, grammatically correct sentences?  Into the same category comes accents and dialogue – are you being asked to read an awful of of words you just don’t understand, or work out what a character is trying to say by trying to make sense of a bagload of peculiar spellings?

Learning Curve 4 – think about each character’s individual speech pattern.  The rhythm of a person’s speech, as well as the words they choose to use, is far more effective than worrying about whether or not their grammar and syntax is correct, or whether you’ve ‘written out’ an accent phonetically.  Rhythm and word choice is also a very effective way of highlighting your characters’ individuality, especially when you have a lot of characters in the same scene or chapter - use their individual assets to make them shine.

Dodgy Moment 5 - when we’re first introduced to the characters, are they too good to be true?  Too nasty to be true?

Learning Curve 5 – think about just how realistic your character’s behaviour is, especially if you’re trying to portray someone initially as less-than-perfect.  In contemporary times in particular, women are less likely to give arrogance a second chance, but will either respond to it or not bother with the guy again.  Even if you’re aiming for a misunderstanding between characters or a mistaken impression that will be corrected later, a baddie with roots in Victorian melodrama belongs in Victorian melodrama and nowhere else!

Those are just a few of my thoughts – I’d love to hear yours!

Thanks, Jane, for such a lot of interesting points to think about!

Jane’s latest release is a short story called Edinburgh Fog, published by MuseItUp Publishing. 

http://museituppublishing.com/bookstore2/index.php?page=shop.product_details&flypage=flypage.tpl&product_id=193&category_id=18&option=com_virtuemart&Itemid=1&vmcchk=1&Itemid=1

You can read more about Jane and her future projects at her blog Home Is Where The Heart Is -  http://janerichardsonhome.blogspot.com/

B is for Bull Riders

...my absolute favorite kind of cowboy!



I'm not sure what I like best. How his Wranglers accentuate the swagger in his step. The well worn boots. The Stetson pulled low to shade his brooding eyes. The chaps that outline his perfect butt. Or just the fact that he's willing to face off against a 2,000 pound beast and finds the danger exciting and exhilarating. He's the sexiest bad boy around, but he's always the perfect gentleman, which is why the ladies can't resist him.



That being said, there was no doubt in my mind that one day I'd write a book with a bull rider as the hero. I've been working on it for a while, and this summer I polished it up, sent it to my editor at Wild Rose, and waited.



Yesterday I heard back...ahead of schedule (the editor had promised to get back to me by December).

At first I was bummed. She felt the story needs some tweaking before it's ready to be published. Now don't get me wrong...I'm always looking for ways to improve my writing and make it better, but when someone tells you your baby isn't good enough...it's a little heart-breaking.

But the more I thought about it, the better I felt. This will give me the opportunity to make this book the best it can be.

I'm confident that someday, Jake's story will be out there. It might not be as soon as I'd hoped, but it'll get there.



Plus, in the meantime, this gives me the prefect excuse to watch more bull riding on TV in the name of research. Or maybe catch some local rodeos live and in person at county fairs. (Which is where I took these pictures.) What more could a girl ask for?

Until next time,

Happy Reading!

Debra
www.debrastjohnromance.com
Now available: A Christmas to Remember (from TWRP)

Books - real or digital?

Last April I wrote a blog, as part of the A-Z Challenge, about real books versus e-books. I declared very firmly:

“I’ve been firmly in the ‘real books’ camp for a long time. I love books. All the shelves in my home bear witness to that. I haven’t counted, but there must be several hundred.

Most of them I’ll never read again, but I hate parting with them. If I take a bag of books to the local charity shop (simply to make some room on the shelves), I agonise over which to put into the bag.

I like a real book in my hands. I like the look, feel and smell of it. I love browsing in bookshops, both new and used, studying titles and authors, reading the blurb, sometimes dipping into a few pages.

I was convinced I wouldn’t succumb to an electronic book reader. Quite apart from my love of real books, I don’t particularly enjoy learning how to cope with ‘new’ technology.

But then my daughter showed me her ‘Kindle’ and demonstrated how easy it was to download e-books. My interest was kindled (pardon the pun!)

I started thinking of the almost-two-inch thick tome I put in my suitcase for holiday reading last year. How much easier to take a slim e-reader instead.

I started thinking about the American-published books by many of my internet friends. How much easier to download these instead of waiting for them to be mailed (and paying extra for postage and packing).

I started thinking of no longer having to clear some room on my shelves to make room for new books.

My daughter then bought me a Kindle for my birthday last August, and I have to say I am totally hooked! Not just for holiday reading (although I did take it with me on my recent trip to Italy), but for other times too. Times when I probably wouldn’t have taken a book with me, such as when I was meeting up with a friend – and managed to read a few pages while I was waiting for her, the time I was waiting at the doctor’s for my flu-shot, and the time I sat in the supermarket’s coffee shop while my daughter went off to do some shopping.

Any ‘waiting’ time has now become reading time for me. Another bonus is that I’ve been able to read books  I wouldn’t otherwise have been able to obtain here in the UK, and also books which are only available as e-books.

Having said that, I still like ‘real’ books, especially my own. There is nothing to beat holding your own book, with your own name on the cover, in your own hands!

Books, Books, Books!

What books have inspired your reading or your writing? I’m not talking about writer’s craft books, although those are important and every writer needs a library of them. No, I’m talking about authors and books you love to read.

I read a lot (although sometimes sporadically, and currently obsessively) so narrowing my list down could be difficult. But everyone has books that speak to them. If you’re  a reader, there are certain books that you can’t do without. Think “stuck on a desert island” kind of books, the ones that no matter what happens, you’re going to buy those books, read and re-read them and nothing is going to make you get rid of them.

If you’re a writer, there are books whose style or imagery or characterization or POV you appreciate. The ones you dog ear or underline so that you can go back to them later and remind yourself of the best way to write something (no, I’m not talking plagiarism).  

For me, there are several books that have inspired me to become a writer. Julia Quinn is an expert at dialogue and changing POV mid scene. She teaches workshops about these topics and if you’re ever able to take one, I highly recommend it. When I first started writing, I couldn’t write dialogue without it sounding stilted. By reading authors who are experts at this, Quinn included, I’ve been able to practice that skill and make characters sound like real people in their conversations.

Lynn Kurland writes wonderful time travel and historical books. I love them as a reader, but as a writer, I love to study how she creates her characters. Her conflicts are agonizingly believable and she pulls emotion from you like no one else can. I dog-ear her books and when I’m trying to get just the right amount of emotion from my character, I often find that going back to her books and seeing how she does it helps me to do it better.

Robyn Carr creates a small town that I’d give my eye teeth to live in, but she also shows how to write a series using existing characters who populate that town. The structure is great and if you’re planning a series, check out her early Virgin River books.

Although I write contemporary romance, I don’t exclusively read that. The Beach Trees by Karen White is a wonderful book for readers and writers. Chapters switch between two female characters, and even without the subheads telling you which character is speaking, you know by how well developed both Julie and Aimee are.

We all have skills we’re good at and skills that need more work, and we can learn so much from each other and from other writers. What books are on your “must have” list?

B is for BACKSTORY

While I was writing the first and second drafts of my WIP, I was sure I needed to open with a prologue scene that showed my heroine’s childhood. I felt the reader needed this information to empathize with her present situation. But I’ve been learning some rules:

Backstory belongs only where it explains what’s important for the reader to know at that moment. In other words, sparingly and so it doesn’t interrupt the pace of the story.
The longer essential information is withheld, the better. It’s best to reveal backstory before the midpoint. Never insert at the end; your ending will seem contrived.
Don’t repeat backstory information. Readers have good memories.
Backstory can be presented as action. It can be incorporated as dialogue, or revealed through short inner thoughts. Or a combination of these.
If you need a flashback, write it as a blow-by-blow action sequence that ends in disaster for your main character.

I have deleted my opening chapter and the first half of chapter 2. As I edit, I’m watching for repetitious backstory information.
I have three backstory passages. One is part of an action scene. The second is a short, essential nightmare. The third is draft 2’s version of my original prologue. I love this scene—it is where I defined my heroine, but I’m now sure it doesn’t serve the story.