Current Project: Rewrites & plotting
Status: "gobbly gobbly pfferneuse! "*
Ah. Christmas Eve. Feel that fire crackling? Hear those Christmas Carols on the iPod? Smell those cookies coming out of Mom's oven? It's enough to send you rushing from the internet to dive into the nearest vat of eggnog. But not yet! We have work to do!
Work? Yes. Work. See, you are not the only one atwitter with anticipation. Your characters are about to celebrate the holiday as well. "But I'm not writing a holiday novel, Wavy!" Patience, grasshopper. Patience.
A person's reaction to the holiday reveals a lot about who they are, what they value, and what their goals are. GMC all in a tidy little holiday package. And, if you really want to get to know someone, send them home to their family and watch the dysFUNctional times. Many times, novels take place over a course of days or weeks--lives change before the first frost falls. Often, the extended family only makes a cameo appearance at the epilogue wedding. Consequently, you only get a limited glimpse of your character--who she is two weeks in May while Mom's on that Bermuda cruise and crazy stalker guy is terrorizing the surbubia.
Consider this: Where was your character on their last pre-HEA Christmas? Where will they be on their first HEA Christmas? I've been looking for ways to get deeper into the emotional growth of my characters, and I've found that looking backwards from their HEA gives me remarkable insight and clarity as to what changes are going to need to occur over the course of the story to allow that character to get his or her HEA. Sometimes, we get so bogged down in certain scenes or in the need to make forward progress with word count that we miss chances to play with our characters and really get inside their heads. Recently, I've been sending my character on all sorts of sidetrips that will never make into THE BOOK, but I'm learning so much about her that I'm planning future outings for her.
Your Turn: Send your character home for Christmas! Where were they last Christmas? Where will they be this Christmas? Next Christmas?
In the spirit of giving, I'll go first:
Last Christmas, Claire worked. As an intern, she was only too happy to pull extra shifts on Christmas and New Years--she didn't have any family to go home to, and she was grateful for the excuse of work to avoid her well-meaning friends. Growing up, Christmas wasn't a big deal--money was at its tightest as her mother struggled to pay for heat, and she usually had to work as well. Unlike Claire, however, she had no choice. Any presents that Claire got were practical in nature, and her mother was usually too tired for big meals or decorations. Later, after her mother died, Claire used holiday breaks to catch up on her studying and to work extra hours to pay for tuition. Now that she's finally done with school, Christmas still doesn't have any special appeal for her, although some deep, secret part of her feels a little twinge when she sees a Santa Hat in the waiting room or when one of the nurses passes around a holiday photo. She just buries those twinges under more work.
This Christmas, everything is different. She got her HEA moment months ago, but everything still feels raw and new--like stitches that still haven't healed. Claire is surrounded by hero's big Hispanic, Catholic family. She's overwhelmed by all the relatives, food, and decorations. Christmas Eve will find her going to midnight mass with hero's family, and even after several months in their fold, she still feels like an observer. Her sisters-in-law to-be cornered her and goaded her into a wearing a dress. An actual dress. Claire doesn't do dresses, especially velvet ones that pull and tug, but she liked how hero looked at her in it, so here she is. She really enjoyed helping Hero find gifts for all the nieces and nephews. She has absolutely no idea what to get Hero, and she doesn't want to give the sisters-in-law any more chances to meddle, so she's struggling with what to give him. She's afraid that if she dickers any more he'll end with something from the 50% off shelf in the hospital gift shop!
Claire could go on and on, but she (and I) want to hear about your character's Christmas history! Do share! Merry Christmas everyone!
*Swedish Chef, Muppet Family Christmas.
4 comments:
Always the teacher, Wavy! LOL You made me work this morning. But that's okay because I HAVE to finish the book or get close to it today.
Here is my assignment.
Since heading up the posse that accidentally killed an outlaw’s girlfriend and child, the hero has spent every Christmas alone in a hotel room. He can’t be with his only living relative, his sister, for fear of retaliation by the outlaw who maims or kills anyone the hero gets close to. So he sits in the room listening to carolers and people bustling to church and Christmas gatherings, dreaming of the warmth and wonderful smells of his childhood home before his parents were taken from this earth. He’ll never spend another Christmas as a family member until the outlaw is either killed or behind bars. Something he’d yet to achieve. He looked up at the brightly, shining star. My Christmas Wish is to finally bring Raging Roy in.
Since this first book doesn’t give them an HEA yet, here’s what he does/feels after having met and fallen in love with the heroine:
He was going to make Chicago by Christmas Eve and surprise Mae. He’d dreamed of finally spending Christmas with someone he loved since learning the outlaw was shot up from his latest argument over cards. With the outlaw unable to wreak vengeance for at least a month, he’d be back in the territory and no one would know he'd left. His heart thrummed with happiness and excitement just as it had as a boy. Christmas had never held such anticipation as it did, pulling into the train station and staring out the window, searching the crowd for his Christmas Angel. Since meeting the heroine, he’d learned life isn’t full without the excitement and love of another. His life before had been merely existing, now he lived.
Very cool Wavy and Paty. Okay, I'll give it a shot.
For Faith, last Christmas marked the six month mark since a desperate man tried to kill her. She's finished rehab and on the outside looks pretty good. A few scars on her face that she tries to cover, a limp from a shattered leg, things she can live with. Inside it's different. She faced evil and though she lived, it made a mark, it destroyed something innocent inside her. Both her father and brother are worried about her, she knows this, and so she tries very hard to at least act positive, especially since both men have moved on with their lives. She spends Christmas celebrating their joy and yet feeling isolated.
Several months later, she moves away and almost immediately is thrown into another dangerous situation. Christmas this year will fall on the day after this crisis is resolved. She'll be at the Triple T Ranch, holding a ten month old boy who is ga-ga over her, watching the five year girl whose life she saved open presents, wrapped in the warmth of new love and a feeling of safety. These children and their uncle are her future and she needs no other gifts save one, and she opened that the night before when using her own wiles and conquering her fear, she outsmarted a man hell bent on destroying them all.
I think if I reread this I'll start editing so I'm going to leave it alone, but you're right. This little excursion reminds me what Faith needs to find -- faith. In herself. In the world. Thanks, Wavy.
All I can say is Wow! You all are very inspiring -- and I can't wait to read all these stories. :-)
I decided to take a crack at this and I'm glad I did. It made me really think out a couple of points that had been a bit hazy for me, so thanks Wavy!
Since I'm writing a mystery, hopefully the first in a series, there isn't exactly an HEA. But Cat does meet a potential "hero" and there's more than a hint of interest on his part. Here goes:
When Cat was a little kid in Sacramento, Christmas was a magical time filled with anticipation, excitement and joy. As she grew older, the Christmas season could be hit or miss for her, depending on how she and her mother were getting along. By the time Cat went off to college in Chicago, their relationship was so strained that Cat only returned home for Christmas her first year at college and then not at all. She'd beg off making the trip, claiming the need to work at a seasonal job or worry over traveling in bad weather -- any reasonable excuse that would allow her to stay away without precipitating yet another fight.
Cat made her own "family" amongst her single college friends and started a tradition of getting together to celebrate with those who stayed in town. The tradition continued after college for the ones who chose to take jobs in Chicago, with new "family" added from friends made at work. Eventually, though, people drifted away, as happens, or married and made families of their own. Last Christmas, Cat should have been one of the married ones. Instead, she spent the holiday alone after a devastating breakup with her fiance. And to make matters worse, her mother had been killed in an accident that fall.
Alone and lonely in a city teeming with people, working for a huge corporation at a job that was sucking the soul from her, feeling guilt that it was too late to patch things up with her mother, Cat spent the holidays doing some serious soul-searching.
This Christmas is different. Cat quit her job and moved back home to Sacramento to open her own business--Champagne Celebrations. She's living in the family home with her dad, and only now is she realizing just how much she missed him during all those years away. Her fledgling business is getting good word of mouth and Cat has managed to solve not one, but two murders, clearing her own name in the first instance and keeping her cousin out of jail in the second!
Both her siblings live nearby and Christmas Day will be spent at her brother's house. But Christmas Eve will be Cat and her dad. Cat plans to surprise her dad with lefse and sandbakkels, Norwegian treats her grandmother always made for them on Christmas Eve. And maybe, just maybe, she'll invite Detective Montgomery--no, Ethan--to join them for a little Christmas cheer.
--And, like Alice, if I reread that I'll just keep editing, so I think I'll let it stand as is, warts and all.
Merry Christmas!
An assignment on Christmas Eve, Wavy? Remind me never to take a class from you. LOL!
This should be easy, as my latest release, FEATHERS ON THE FLOOR, gives the characters their happily ever after on Christmas Day. However, hero Mitch Garrison doesn't share easily. Last Christmas, he doesn't really remember where he was. It was just another day. (Yeah, I took the easy way out on that one.)
This Christmas, he and Julia are rescuing her kidnapped four-year-old twins from inside a crumbling mine shaft, scrambling to escape before they are buried under tons of debris. After they are safe, Mitch and Julia realize how precious every moment of life is and know they want to spend all the time they can together with the twins and the enormous stray dog who helped find the twins.
Next Christmas, when the epilogue of the story takes place, Mitch and Julia have a new baby, who is being christened at the community center of the small town of Halo, Oregon, where they now live. Surrounded by old friends and the citizens of Halo, who have become as close as extended family, life is filled with the rosy glow of love for Mitch and Julia.
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