This is Alice's post, I'm just intervening to get it up (since we all know about my blog addiction)
Bear with me as I move through a chain that I hope connects in the end:
At the beginning of every Intrigue there is a Cast of Characters where you give a thumbnail sketch of the character and because it's suspense, try to inject some mystery or unanswered question. Example: "Harry Potter--this young boy is about to discover something about himself that will change the course of his life. Will it also lead to his untimely death?"
These are written after the book is completed. You choose eight or nine main characters and write something about each of them, attempting to make them sound like the bad guy or a hapless victim or a part of some large subversive plot--you get the idea.
I'd already sent off my last book when I started this process a week or two ago. For the first time, I found myself struggling with the main two characters--how much to reveal, etc... After dithering around for ages, I decided to take care of the minor characters first and therein lies my tale.
I began with this example:
George Abbot--he's Julia's boss and former lover and will do what it takes to watch her back."
The light bulb in my head began to glow. I couldn't say "former lover" because I'd made it clear they were never lovers. I also couldn't say something like "Never fully recovered from their aborted love affair, George seems to be a friend--but is he?" because I had made it very clear he was way over her and had a new girlfriend he was crazy about.
I had gutted my options early on and most efficiently. And not just for George. I was on a roll, I gutted almost everyone! Oops.
I knew I could fix this in the editing process though it would have been %100 easier to fix it before I sent it. That's when the bulb in my head not only glowed, it started blinking: Wait. Perhaps in the past, I've used the cast list to tweak my characters. Perhaps because I did it before the book was sent, making correction and tweaking a simple matter, I never gave it another thought.
Which got me to thinking. Wouldn't making a cast list as you go along, whether for Chick Lit, straight romance, mystery or humor--whatever--wouldn't it help see the facets of your characters that need to be nurtured and kept? Might it not point out that Grandma's crankiness is integral to her personality and WARNING, WILL ROBINSON, keep it up? Or that the heroine's troubled past should be left up in the air as a possible red herring? Might it not be a useful tool in a writer's arsenal to keep a check and balance on the characters and maybe even suggest aspects that would make them a lot more interesting?
But even more exciting, might it not be very useful when it came to securing that most important of matters, something more integral to your book, to your reader's enjoyment, to the salability of your work than using the proper adverb or aborting a dangling participle or creating lyrical narrative (all very nice things indeed.) I speak of FOCUS (also known as POV though the two are different. I think.) Might not that cast of characters help define each character's focus?
Exercise: Four people are standing around talking. Choose the place and the people. For example, four people are talking about buying a horse. Now give each person a very clear focus. In my example, one person wants desperately to sell this horse because it bites. Another wants to keep the horse, to heck with the biting, there's love involved. The third wants to buy the horse, but at a bargain price though he/she doesn't know about the biting. The fourth wants to get one of the others off alone so she/he can shoot them dead.
Think of how their conversation would go as each angled for what they wanted from the others. There are a million permutations. Might the one who loves the horse try using overt guilt to get the seller to reconsider? Or might they reveal the biting to the buyer to make the horse less appealing? Or might they be so devastated that they barely say a word and the seller ultimately caves in to their quiet desperation? Each take on this one chacarter's POV will influence the other's dialogue and thus it creates a real conversation.
That's my example, yours can be anything you want. You have four days. While the DH watches football, the dogs wail at the moon, or the kid's break their Christmas toys, try this. Create a conversation giving each character a voice that focuses on their unique POV as long or as short as you like. Then create a cast of characters and see how you did keeping true to your focus. Or do it the other way around. It's up to you. And if you hate homework assignments, then just sign in and share something because I'm with Paty, this blog has been way too quiet lately!
Happy New Year, everyone.
8 comments:
I do something similar to a cast when I start a book. At least with the main characters. I put down their names, their relationships to other "cast members" and what they want from each one and what they want for themselves and their physical characteristics. It us usually just the H/H, the mentors, and villains I only do this with the integral characters in the book. The "cast" with minor parts I don't worry about because I haven't a clue who or what they are until they show up in the story.
It never surprises me though that about half way through the book when I look at my sketch of the characters, they have grown or stretched in another direction. This I find very cool!
I'll work on your assignment. You did say we have four days! :)
Great Blog, Alice!
Yeah, even if you just play around with this scenario--or one you create--in your head, it should prove amusing. I've bought and sold and killed one of the others a zillion times since last night! No wonder my dreams were troubling.
Thanks, Paty, for helping. Now if I can just figure out what's wrong with my Mid-Willamette loop email, I'll be on a roll.
Alice
Hmmm. I want to try the exercise for my WIP. It lets me test out a plot permutation that's been brewing. Bear with me.
This is a subplot that's been sitting on the chopping block for a few days. Whether or not it survives the editing process after the MS is done is something that I'm wrestling with.
Gen, Dan, Meina, and Clarice are standing around talking about whether to close the business. As it pertains to this particular subplot:
Gen: Wants to keep the business open because she thinks doing so will save the family's reputation/financial future.
Dan: (Original Focus: Indifferent to business. I realized at like 3:00 a.m. the other night that he can't be indifferent--not enough conflict. If he's indifferent, the subplot has to go. Second focus: He wants to help Gen. No conflict there. Ability to help Gen IS a major part of his heroic qualities, but there has to be something pushing against that urge. Focus must create conflict to keep subplot. I don't want to loose the subplot, ergo, Dan's focus must be more diametrically opposed to Heroine's focus) New focus: Wants whatever business scandal Gen is covering up exposed to bring down his stepfather.
Meina (Dan's mother): Trying to save the business because she thinks she owes it to Gen's family. Just a busybody or does she suspect more?
Clarice (Gen's mother): (Original focus: Clueless. With the 3:00 a.m. epiphany came the realization that it was much more effective if the mother actually knew all along). Trying to hide behind mask of grief--is she really as clueless as everyone thinks? Clarice may be sitting on all the answers.
Hmmm. I need to do this for ALL of my subplots. (Not going to inflict it on you though :) :)) Still wrestling with whether the business subplot is going to go. Grrr.
Wavybrains--You are so right, without conflict, fizzle. Your plot and subplots sound intriguing.
Alice
Okay, I gave your assignment a try. Not sure if accomplished the assignment, but it got me a scene in my WIP! :)
"How do you know my father?" Maeve asked. "Did you work with him at a mine?"
"What mine are you talking about?" Barton chewed on the cigar and looked at her like she'd been imbibing of his spirits.
"My father was a miner-"
"So was mine," added Zeke, stepping closer to the man. "And Maeve thinks they were brothers." He pulled out the tintype that started their hunt for the truth about their fathers.
Barton looked at the tintype and whistled. "Been a long time since I seen this guy." He pointed to Maeve. "This your father?"
"No, that's Zeke's. But my father would look at that and say that was his brother." Her heart thundered in her chest. Finally, they found someone who could tell her why her father left she and mother for months at a time and come home with money he said he made mining for someone else, only to spend it all on some claim he'd buy and go broke, leaving them again.
"Were they brothers? My oldest brother doesn’t remember our father having a brother." He looked at Barton. "We," he motioned between himself and Maeve, "really need to know if we’re blood kin."
"I promised both your fathers I'd never tell a soul."
"They're both dead. You ain't revealing any secrets that would matter. Were the related?" The vein on Zeke's head throbbed as Maeve rested a hand on his arm to calm him.
"Why would my father say that if they weren’t?" Maeve watched the man chew on his cigar.
"All I can tell you is they was close as brothers, maybe even closer, but they didn't have the same last name."
"We already figured that out!" Zeke sprang forward grabbing the man's shirt. "So you're saying, far as you know, they weren't blood kin?"
"That’s my thoughts."
A shadow fell across the tintype on the bar.
"Shit, what you doin' with a likeness of Tennessee?" A tall man with a week's worth of beard and tobacco stained teeth said to Barton.
Maeve saw Barton wince and shake his head. What wasn't this man telling them?
Maeve - heroine in love with hero and desperately seeking information about her father to ease the pain of her lonely childhood.
Zeke - hero who loves heroine and is out to prove they aren't related so she can't hold that and his being a miner against him.
Barton - ex-Pinkerton agent who worked with their fathers and was the cause of Maeve's father's death.
Malcolm (last man to enter)- outlaw who doesn't know the men were Pinkerton's, but is worried now that he has become semi-respectable his past will catch up to him.
Paty--Way to go. Sounds like you have everything under control!
Alice
Interesting post, Alice. I'll have to give it some thought.
I'm secretly glad to hear you all have missed the blog. Must mean we're doing something right.
My four days aren't up yet, are they?
Okay. Whew. I'll get back to you on this, Alice.
Fun blog. Lots to think about.
Post a Comment