building characters

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What Ash Wednesday has in common with creating characters

Outward signs. We burn last year’s palms from Palm Sunday and mix them with consecrated oil mixed with incense, also from last Easter. Inner meaning: we burn all the failed attempts of the year to make a new beginning.

I have been thinking about outward and visible signs of what is inward and invisible. Rituals, actions, habits, practices. They all hint at inner beliefs and motivations. This month, I’m slaving over the backstory, character, and inner motivations of characters for the next four books (one novella and three novels, one of which I need to have completed by the end of May). They’re all crowding my head with scenes that are giving me glimpses of my character’s inner self. But, I have to ask, do they show the character’s true self? Or do they show the mask they display to the world? To write them, I need to know both.

I’m religious, which (to me) means that I love the rituals and practices of my church. I’m also (I hope) a person of faith. I believe, and I try to act accordingly. The books I enjoy, and the books I try to write, are about characters with depth. I want the words I use on the page to hint at dimensions to the character that I don’t spell out in words; not just the rituals and practices, but the beliefs and motivations. And I want them all to be different — not the same hero and the same heroine in book after book with just the physical appearance and the name changed.

My husband has been watching best man speeches on YouTube. (No, I don’t know why, but he has.) The jokes and male-to-male insults of a best man speech are a ritual that indicates the support and affection of the selected friend for the groom. Outward signs with inner meaning.

At Mass today, they had the ashes ceremony for those who missed it last Wednesday, on Ash Wednesday. That day marks the beginning of a period of fasting, abstinence, and prayer in preparation for Easter, more than six weeks away, and the ashes are meant to remind us of the shortness of our lives (‘for you are dust, and to dust you shall return’, says the priest as he marks the forehead of each believer with a cross made from a mix of ashes and oil). They also call to mind the ancient practice of wearing sackcloth and ashes for remorse or mourning. Outward signs with inner meaning.

Oddly enough, one of my characters is a widower who may or may not be called Ash. That’s his name, in the notes about his story that I made close to six years ago; a shortened form of his title. However, in the last month I’ve given him a backstory that includes an unfaithful wife, a manipulative older brother, and a couple of daughters, one (and possible both) of whom is definitely his niece, rather than his own child. This means he hasn’t been Earl of Ashbury for very long, so he might think of himself as Val or Fort. I’m still working on it. Inner motivations. He’s a grumpy devil, and a recluse. He arrived home after his brother’s death three years ago to find that his brother’s widow has sent both girls off to boarding school, washed her hands of them, and departed for parts unknown. He has left them there, figuring they’re better off without him. I’m also still working on his heroine, but I need to know her a lot better before she turns up at his house with a carriage full of children, including his own two, refugees from the cholera epidemic sweeping the school.

I know that he will refuse her admittance and she will demand it, and refuse to move on since two of the girls (including his niece) are showing early signs of the disease. I know she shows her anxiety in contempt for his reluctance, not realising he is already thinking about how to help her. I know that he’ll marshal his pitiful complement of servants to look after the well girls and join her in nursing those who have become ill.  Outward signs with an inner meaning.

I know those things, but I have a lot more work to do before I start to commit the random scenes swirling around my brain onto a page.

I wonder if the whole story could happen around an Ash Wednesday?

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Character studies on WIP Wednesday

I’m back at the beginning of the process again. House of Thorns is off to the publisher, and The Realm of Silence is having line edits and a few rewrites after beta reading, and will be with the copy editor by the end of the weekend. So it is time to start again, and I have two stories waiting in the wings.

So far, I have only the sketchiest of plots. I need to write those down, and then I need to do character sketches for the main characters. As I get to know them, the plot will firm up, and I’ll be able to fill out my hero’s journey sheets, exploring their external and internal story arcs. Then I start writing the story, and let the plot reveal itself as I go.

So this week, I’m giving you a snippet of a character interview — one I did for Rosa Neatham who is the heroine of House of Thorns. How do you get to know your characters? If you write stuff down about them, or interview them, will you post a bit in the comments?

A wish or dream: I would love a place of my own; somewhere that belongs to me, and that no one
can put me out of. Somewhere I can grow a few roses, and perhaps keep a cat to sleep by the fire
and keep me company.
One thing that makes your character laugh: Many things. I do believe that my sense of the
ridiculous has saved my sanity more times than I can count. Finding the humour in things was a
game I played with my mother, and playing it still makes me feel close to her.
A fear: I am afraid, so afraid, that I will fail my father. I am afraid that Bear will not return, and that
I’ll be left to the mercies of the steward. I would rather die. I would rather sell myself to the first
man that passes. Oh, I hope Bear comes back.
Something they’d like to learn: How to attract Bear so that he wishes to bed me again. I am sure I
did something wrong the first time, but I have no idea what.
Something they’d like to forget: My wedding night. It was memorable, but not in a good way.
Something they’d never do: I would never disgrace or leave my father. Never.
A quirky habit: I have a pocket tied under my skirts into which I put my paintbrushes.
A secret: I would secretly like to know why someone would wish to be a courtesan, and how one
goes about it.

And the two stories I’m about to start?

One is a contemporary for a summertime anthology for Authors of Mainstreet. The unifying theme of the book is summertime at the beach, (which for me, in New Zealand, means December/January).

I know my heroine is an environmentalist lawyer, fighting corporates and governments on the world stage. Burnt out after her latest case, she has come home to a small community on the Wairarapa coast, to the bach (New Zealand North Island word for a holiday house; the South Island has cribs instead) she used to visit as a child. Wanting to do repairs,  she calls on a local building firm, and finds that she once faced the man they send over a courtroom.

The hero was once part of the high-powered business world. Heir to a huge family-owned company that made chemicals and medicines, he had trained as a lawyer, and fought for the continuation of his family’s privilege. His conscience pricked by a feisty lawyer, he had begun to check his facts, and his odyssey brought him here: estranged from his family, disinherited, working with his hands, and happier than he has ever been in his life.

Storms and coastal change play into it, and I can predict sparks will fly. I hope one of them will turn into a title!

The second is late eighteenth century, and is set mostly in Persia and partly in the Kopet Dag mountains between Turkmenistan and Persia. And yes, it is about James Winderfield, father to the hero of The Bluestocking and the Barbarian, and his wife Mahzad. It takes place sixteen years earlier than Bluestocking, so 1796. I’m busily researching Persia at that time, since interesting things were happening. The story is for the Bluestocking Belles Christmas anthology, which has a prodigal daughter theme.

In my story, Mahzad returns to Persia to visit her dying father, whom she last saw when he sent her off as to China on the command of his Khan, as a gift to the Chinese emperor. With James’ help, Mahzad had escaped in the mountain passes of Kopet Dag. Things are vague after that. I need to read up a lot more about Persia and surrounding nations in the time my story covers, since I think I’ll be doing a few flashbacks. James doesn’t approve of Mahzad’s trip. I know that. He doesn’t trust the Persians. And Mahzad’s English grandmother, who raised her and who helped her escape comes into it somehow.

All shall be revealed. Character sketches first.

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Ruminations on world-building, after an orgy of reading

As I may have mentioned, I’ve been a bit slowed recently by a shoulder injury and a repeating winter cold. The shoulder is finally responding to treatment, but being limited in the number of hours I can type has been a real nuisance. The demands of the day job have to take priority so the bills get paid, with the novellas for anthologies coming next. So I’m way behind on The Realm of Silence, and will need to really buckle down if release is not to be postponed until next year.

I’ve been reading instead of writing

On the other hand, being laid up has allowed me to voraciously reread entire series of novels by the authors who sucked me into the historical romance genre. Georgette Heyer, of course. Elizabeth Hoyt. Eloisa James. Grace Burrowes. Mary Jo Putney. Carla Kelly. Stephanie Laurens. Mary Balogh. Anne Gracie. Anna Campbell. (Others, too. That’s just off the top of my head.)

I’ve been rereading an entire series at a gulp, then another by quite a different author, just as I did five years ago when my eldest daughter loaned me the book Simply Perfect and I fell in love with the genre. (Though some of the series I’ve read in the past three months weren’t written at that time.)

This time, though, was different. This time, I was reading from the perspective of my own years of world and character building in historical romance writing.

And I know what I love!

All the authors I love provide the same things, to a greater or lesser extent. Engaging plots where I care about what happens. Well-rounded characters who seem like real people for the times, and who have something about them that makes me wish them success. Realistic and detailed background features that are true (as far as I can tell) to the history of the time and place.

Reading them the way I have, a whole series in sequence, is leading me to reexamine my own writing to see how well I’m performing in those areas.

I like my plots to surprise me

Plots? I can get a bit carried away, I think. I love a detailed and complex plot with lots of Byzantine twists and turns, with copious clues that are easy to miss and only obvious as the story draws to a close and all the bits are tied together with a bow. Expect me to keep doing this. Even in my short stories, where plots are simple, I try not to do the obvious.

I reckon good people come in lots of flavours

Characters? What I try to do is make each hero and each heroine into different people. It works the other way. Stephanie Laurens writes a brilliant Norman aristocrat: tall, stern, protective, outwardly impervious but inwardly vulnerable to the one woman on whom he sets his autocratic heart. We meet him in story after story, and have all the fun of watching her bold, unconventional, challenging heroine bring him to his knees.

Mary Jo Putney, on the other hand, peoples her books with individuals of many different stamps. Decent men and women, but formed by different influences (both nature and nurture). In the Fallen Angel series, she has one of these heroes describe himself and his friends.

“What are your friends like?” He smiled a little. “Imagine a great long wall blocking the path as far as one can see in both directions. If Nicholas came to it, he would shrug and decide he didn’t really need to go that way. Rafe would locate whoever was in charge of the wall and talk his way past it, and Lucien would find some stealthy way to go under or around without being seen.” “What about you?” His smile turned rueful. “Like a mad spring ram, I would bash my head into the wall until it fell down.”

Exactly. Four very different men, and she gave each of them a heroine alike in loyalty and love, and unlike in everything else.

So for me, that means more of the same. Each hero, each heroine, each villain, as unique as I can make them. I also want to watch that my secondary characters don’t fall into the Dickens mould. Not that there’s anything wrong with ‘enter, one cheerful landlady’ or ‘manservant for comic relief’, but I’ve got into the habit of knowing a little bit about everyone who crowds into my books, and even if surface characteristics are all I have time for on the page, something of their personality and history needs to sit beneath it.

And I need to like them in order to fully enjoy the book

And even if my readers don’t always like them and their behaviour, I need to. Many people find Aldridge unsympathetic, particularly in A Baron for Becky. And so they should. He behaved badly there and again, mostly, in Revealed in Mist (though not nearly as badly as Richport will in coming novels). Still, I know what motivates them and I hope you will forgive them by the time they reach their happily ever after.

I also have a couple of thoroughly unlikeable females to redeem. So watch this space.

Research is my catnip

Then there’s background: that weird amalgam of language usage and facts judiciously chosen to create a realistic environment for a story that could have happened only there, only then. I have read and enjoyed stories set against cardboard cutouts of historical backgrounds, when I’ve been in the mood. But they don’t sustain me. I’ve read stories with modern-thinking people in historical novels, and they irritate me exceedingly, unless they are time travel books and the people really are modern, or unless the writer gives a reason why this character is so out of step with their entire cultural milieu.

So research continues to be essential, and I agonise over detail. That doesn’t mean it is always correct—I make mistakes, usually something that seems so obviously true that I don’t check it. I’m always grateful for corrections. Indeed, reading to know what not to write is almost more important than reading for details that appear in the story. Not all research appears in the book, which is why I’ve got into the habit of posting research posts, so I can fool myself I did all that extraneous reading for a purpose.

Now your turn

So that’s what I’m trying to do. How well I emulate the writers I admire, and how much my own unique voice provides you with a different product, is for you to decide.