Concealed permits by Lani Longshore

 

Lani Longshore

Lani Longshore

My sister-in-law just passed her final test to obtain a concealed gun permit. This is the sister-in-law with an MFA, who does exquisite pastel sketches of wildlife, and whose favorite outdoor activity is hiking in quiet mountains. Knowing that she also wanted a concealed gun permit – although not the reason why – got me thinking about my characters. What tiny secret could they have – one that even the reader doesn’t know yet – that will give me a new way of getting them out of the mess I put them in? In other words, can I write myself out of writers block by re-imagining my characters?

To advance the plot, you need to torment your characters. How they persevere despite the villain’s best efforts is part of what makes them grow. However, if you’ve written a problem that requires an act of Congress to resolve, you either have to revise the obstacle or revisit your character.

I think writers need a concealed permit of our own. We need to keep our hats chock full of rabbits – reasonable rabbits, of course – to pull out when our characters are in trouble. Whether it’s a secret skill or just a secret, get to know your characters well enough to add in that special ingredient when the situation requires. Just remember to sprinkle in a few clues during the revision so the reader says, “Ah!” instead of “yeah, right.”

Reality is in the foot of a cat by Lani Longshore

Lani Longshore

Lani Longshore

While wandering in an antique shop, I noticed a simple but elegant bookcase filled with beautiful linens. On top of the stack on the highest shelf was a very realistic toy cat. I had to stretch to reach it. I tugged on its foot to determine if it was stuffed with kapok or buckwheat.

The foot was warm.

The cat’s expression was not.

I considered myself lucky that a killer stare was the only thing the cat threw my way. It settled back to resume its nap and I retreated to a curio cabinet. Since everything was behind glass, I wouldn’t have to worry about mistaking a live critter for the work of a genius artist.

Today in critique group I was reminded of that experience as I told a writer that her character wouldn’t have reacted the way she wrote the scene. “The good news is I think of him as a real person. So real, that I’m ready to argue with you, his creator, about what he would or would not do,” I said.

We all laughed, but it’s worth remembering that the reader brings as much to our work as we do – or can, if we’ve done our job. The reader wants to see a fully fleshed character, wants to imagine having lunch with our heroine or going fishing with our hero. If the reader tells you we’ve made the character act in a way she would not, could not, act – listen! Like beauty, reality is in the eye of the beholder.

Just don’t tug on its foot.

Treasure by Lani Longshore

Lani Longshore

Lani Longshore

The participants of NaNoWriMo (and congratulations to you all, whether you hit 50,000 words or not) now have the editing to do. Like childbirth, getting the new creation out is only the first part of the job. Next comes the sorting and training, the snipping and shearing, dressing up and dressing down.

For those of us who write fiction, editing – like parenting – is when we get to know the characters we’ve brought into the world. While we might have copious notes about them, there is always room for them to surprise us. One of my critique buddies announced that in his next revision he will make a character he considered secondary the main protagonist. His current main protagonist will have to wait for another book.

As the year dashes to its conclusion, let us take a deep breath and resolve to embrace the sensations of rewriting, even if they aren’t always pleasant. If writing is an adventure, editing is a safari. Somewhere in the wilds of our manuscript something magnificent is hiding, waiting for us to discover it.

3D Characters by Deborah Bernal

At the December CWC meeting, several of us got to talking about characters. In particular, character voice and how to keep each character separate, different, unique.

Several days later as wrapping paper flew; a common theme emerged in my residence. With a baby girl celebrating her first birthday and Christmas, the play area was awash in dolls and teddy bears, even a Raggedy Ann doll. Looking over the multitude of faces peering out from everywhere, my mind leapt to the previous conversations about unique characters.

One writing tool I have adopted in order to keep my characters from suddenly aging or changing hair or eye color is an index card profile for each character. Each card is taped accordion-style inside a file folder that is easily transportable. With the flick of my finger, I can access each character’s physical traits and other aspects that infuse them with life.

Since I frequently leave the house to write, this works well for me.

Yet, I can’t help but think as I look at the unblinking porcelain and plastic and cloth faces; what fun it would be to have a three-dimensional representation of each of my characters. I smile as I look over my own collection of figurines-I’m well stocked in dragons.

Character development through humiliation by Lani Longshore

I stole someone’s grocery cart this week; didn’t notice until I got to the checkout line and my reusable grocery bags weren’t there. A pleasant and efficient clerk found my bags in an empty, unattended cart. I thanked him, paid for my groceries, and left.

Once home, I discovered I had bought someone else’s breakfast cereal instead of the eggs and tomatoes I wanted. That gave me two pieces of information – where in the store I snagged my victim’s cart, and what I should do when my characters become boring.

We’ve all read that to make truly memorable characters, we have to torment them. That doesn’t always work for me, first because I don’t write about tortured souls, and second because sometimes it seems authors indulge in gratuitous difficulty just to keep the story moving. Now, however, I will use those every day, ordinary humiliations that are (sadly) part of my life to develop my characters.

I’ve long used the mistakes and memory lapses that punctuate my day to entertain friends and family. Before I confess my errors, I reframe the events into a story that I hope will make the listener roll his or her eyes rather than reach for the phone to have me committed for my own good. Now, I will take those stories and insert some worthy character who needs a good kick in the backside. With any luck, it will get my story moving, and give me an excuse for my behavior. It isn’t just messing up – it’s research!

Becoming the other by Lani Longshore

I am not a tortured artist. My life has been mostly free from drama, and I was raised to keep it that way. But I write science fiction; in my stories, when a stranger comes to town, it’s usually a very strange stranger. For me to create characters that are believable outsiders, I have to create situations where I can be the other.

One of those opportunities dropped from the sky when the Jade Buddha for Universal Peace arrived in San Jose. I knew the statue was on display in a warehouse, not a museum, but I still expected a museum-like experience. I also expected that I would be a minority viewer – not a Buddhist, for one thing. In both cases, my expectations didn’t come close to reality.

First, the setting was definitely not museum-like. A religious ceremony was in progress when I arrived. The warehouse had become a lovely worship center, filled with flowers, color, chanting, bells and believers. Second, I was a minority of one – the only non-Vietnamese in attendance at that time.

Since I didn’t speak the language and was not part of the tradition, my first impulse was to skulk around the corners, see what I could see, and fade away as unobtrusively as possible. Then my inner writer dope-slapped me and shouted, “Listen! Observe! Experience!”

I still stuck to the corners, but now I was watching, not hiding. I still didn’t understand the language, but now I listened for repeating syllables, for pitch, for an alignment of sound and movement. I still wasn’t part of the tradition, but now I drank in everything unfamiliar, knowing someday a character of mine would be such a stranger, trying to make sense of her new reality.

Characters and how to provoke them by Lani Longshore

Some writers friends and I talked about family stories, how we loved preserving the history, but how we had to fudge the facts so various family members wouldn’t send a hit man after us. It is true that no man is the villain in his own story, nor any woman. It is also true that being labeled a colorful character is – to some people – the same as being labeled the villain.

However, if you want action in your story (whether fact, fiction, or something in between) you need colorful characters. You need the mean old lady who lives to ruin someone’s day, the unspeakably spoiled little boy who desperately deserves to be locked in the basement, the snarling alcoholic who destroys everyone without even trying. More than that, you need these characters to ring true.

Where better to get that than in your own family? I have three generations worth of anecdotes about impossible relatives, and I ache to turn them into characters in a story. However, since I want to survive the first Thanksgiving after such a story is published, I have taken to slicing and dicing my way to colorful characters.

The first thing I do is forget what really happened and focus on what will fit in my story. Names are definitely changed to protect the tender feelings of the guilty; often age and gender. Next, I blend parts of at least one more colorful character in my acquaintance. Once I’ve done that, it’s easy to let the new character play in my story, and become what he or she needs to be. And if someone asks, I can honestly say none of my characters are ever based on any one person.