reflection characters

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Conflict on WIP Wednesday

Writing about twins in a double time line, with a book for each, is having its moments. But at least both heroines have someone to talk to. In the following excerpt, my sisters mention key conflicts they need to resolve to find happiness. I’d love to see an excerpt from you where your hero or heroine discusses their principal conflicts.

“You are up early,” Sarah said, appearing in the doorway. “Shall I send for your hot chocolate?”

“A coffee this morning, I think,” Charlotte told her.

Sarah retreated to speak to one of the footmen who waited in the hall to run messages. Charlotte followed her into their shared sitting room. “Could you not sleep, dearest?” she asked.

“No more than you, I think, and for similar reasons.” Sarah sighed. “Are you sure that you cannot marry Aldridge, Charlotte? One has only to see him watching you to know he cares, and he has been remarkably faithful.”

No point in arguing. Sarah knew her too well. “I have given him no encouragement,” Charlotte pointed out.

Sarah raised an eyebrow. “Which makes it all the more remarkable.”

Charlotte shrugged. “Have you forgotten how I found him when I went for his help?” She had told Sarah the whole story the last night. Charlotte blushed at the memory of Aldridge’s naked body with the two women hovering over it. How was she ever going to look Lady Thirby and her friend in the eyes again? Mind you, at least she had been clothed.

Sarah laughed. “You know as well as I do that the Thirby woman has been chasing him this past two seasons. He is not made of granite, Charlotte. He has been a rake, after all, and you have, as you just said, given him no encouragement.”

“Nor will I,” Charlotte insisted, reining in her errant imagination. “You know I can’t, Sarah.”

“You could tell him why not,” Sarah suggested. “You want him; I know you do. Shouldn’t you let him decide whether what he would lose is more important that what he would gain?”

A knock on the door heralded the maid with their morning beverages. Charlotte contented herself with a glare at her sister. When the door closed behind the maid, Sarah showed she’d understood the message. “I am sorry, Charlotte. It is just that I wish you happy.”

“And am I to wish you happy?” Charlotte asked.

Sarah blushed. “I do not know, sister. Uncle James says that I must listen to what Nate has to say, and I know he is right. I do not dare hope, but I find myself doing so, anyway.”

Whereas Charlotte had no hope at all. Only a yearning that could never be fulfilled, and a grief for the life that should have been hers.

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Someone to talk to on WIP Wednesday

Michael Hauge calls them reflection characters–those people we invent whose role in the story is to listen to the hero or the heroine, and occasionally (by what they do or what they say) point them in the right direction. This saves lots of pages where our protagonists talk to themselves, so the readers can hear what we need them to know while still keeping secrets from their romantic interest. Then the meeting with said romantic interest doesn’t have to devolve into him sitting staring at her thinking about whether to tell her the estate is bankrupt, while she sews studiously away thinking about whether he will turn her out on her ear when he knows that she has been supporting her wicked brother out of the housekeeping. Give them each a reflection character, and they can get these thoughts off their respective chests, and increase the tension when they spend the evening not talking about it.

So, give me a passage of conversation with a reflection character. My excerpt is from my newest draft, and my reflection character is a little different. He doesn’t exist, except as a memory in my hero’s mind.

“Stedham was looking for a home; a purpose,” Max told Sebastian. The lieutenant had tried being a steward on an estate, and moved on. He had worked for a while in a lawyer’s office, and a few months more as secretary to a Member of Parliament. The last address the sister had for him was a vicarage, and Max was heading there now.

“He hasn’t been able to settle since he returned from the wars” she had told Max.

Her husband’s estimation was harsher. “He cannot stick to anything. Some of them are like that. They need the adventure, the thrills, and they’re no use in ordinary life. He should join up again.”

Max didn’t agree. “Stedham was a good soldier, but he wasn’t made for that life. Not really,” he told the man, but he might as well have talked to the wall.

“You don’t know him like we do,” the brother-in-law said.

“That man wants his wife to himself,” Sebastian commented. “I know jealousy when I see it.”

Max thought the ghost might be right. Sebastian usually was right about the darker emotions. “Stedham needs a place to belong, but that isn’t it.” Stedham could hardly have missed the lack of welcome. Was that why he stopped writing to his sister? But he’d only stayed with the pair for the first two months after arriving home from France in 1814. He’d continued to write faithfully, week after week, until a few months ago.

“No one belongs,” Sebastian argued. “Belonging is an illusion, and the ones you love most are the ones who most hurt you.”

Max ignored the oblique reference to Sebastian’s death. “That’s the village.” From this elevation, it and the surrounding fields were spread below like a patchwork made by a thrifty housewife from a hundred different scraps. The church, its steeple foreshortened by his perspective, sat at one end of the cluster of houses, the last building on the village street. At the other end was an inn, strategically placed on the junction with the road he was travelling. He could see glimpses of its curves, snaking down the hill before it straightened, leapt a river, and straightened to run past the village street and on into the distance.

 

 

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Introspection on WIP Wednesday

 

I try to write characters with side-kicks so they have someone to talk to. My hero of Unkept Promises has no-one for most of the novel, so readers need to see inside his head. ‘Show, don’t tell,’ they say, but don’t you sometimes find that your hero, heroine, or even villain is all alone and you need the reader to know what they’re thinking? Share me an excerpt with some introspection. Here’s a bit of mine, from Unkept Promises.

The house had been sold, the remaining servants had all taken positions elsewhere, so Jules was bunking down in the spare room at a friend’s place. He was sailing soon, and perhaps would never return. The navy wanted him in the Bay of Biscay: him and his ship. When the war was over, he’d retire. He had been at sea, man and boy, for nearly twenty years, and what he’d said to Mia had been echoing ever since. Once the war was over, the Navy would offer little chance for advancement. They’d have more captains than ships, and he had never been willing to use his family connections to edge out men as well qualified as him and perhaps in greater need.

Besides, he had a family. He wanted to build a home with them, see his children grow, wake up to his wife’s welcoming smile.

The cemetery was his last stop before he sailed. He stood before Kirana’s grave, the flowers someone had left long wilted on the mound of still raw earth. The tombstone he and Mia had planned was not yet in place, but he could see it in his mind’s eye. “Here lies Kirana Redepenning, devoted mother and friend. Taken from us far too soon, she will always be in the hearts of Julius, Euronyme, Perdana, Marshanda and Adiratna.”

“I will look after them, Kirana,” he promised. “They will want for nothing.”