Live or Let Live

This post is a combination of Maven Darcy's topic yesterday about making characters feel like real people, Maven Carrie's post about making scenes feel like a real book, and the RWR's recent article on how much first-hand research is enough.

To give a brief history: When I first thought about writing a book, I had one genre in mind -- romance. I did have a choice between contemporary and historical, but at the time it didn't seem like much of a choice. I could either spend a LOT of time doing historical research or I could guess what it's like to be a young hot single struggling to find a date. (My experience with contemporary romance was limited to chick lit.) I knew nothing about the latter, so I delved into studying the former. While meeting my historical muse, however, my life changed. Suddenly facing tons of free time, with no outside restrictions, I decided to carpe diem and find out what the Dark Side had been doing all my life. I knew why I'd never tried being cosmopolitan: I was afraid of the unknown. Sneakers and sofas were as familiar to me as weekends spent planted in front of the tv. But I had a lot of friends with busy, hip, social calendars and I knew they would be more than happy to guide me through the perilous alleys of the social networks I wanted to explore. (Both literally and figuratively...Seattle has some cool clubs with alley entrances.)

Slowly but surely, I did get out of my house. I met people -- and found I liked people -- I otherwise would never have come into contact with. Through them, I discovered having a life is hella fun. But one day I had a tilting realization. For the first time,* my* life was more interesting than reading (or writing) about other people's imaginary lives. And that put a real damper on my motivation to find time to write.

It's a different problem than not having time to write. It's a willful disinterest in *making* time. I'm still adamant about keeping to my weekly schedule, but the shiny hasn't worn off the Friday night lights yet. I wonder if there are others out there experiencing the same problem, especially since my problem isn't limited to pure social activity. I have an alien, burning desire to become adept at snowboarding. I couldn't even tell you why, other than that I'm sick of having to turn down the annual trip to Whistler because it's not cost or time-effective. (And probably my recent foray into becoming more athletic has helped ease away the fear of "too physically difficult.")

This partying thing is a hard life, I'm telling you.

The good news is, all my experiences and experiments will help my geek lit when I finally have the patience to sit still again. No more need to adapt Sex and the City-isms to create my cosmo world...VHM will be first-hand, baby.

YOUR TURN: How do you deal with those days you'd rather be shopping or hanging with girlfriends? What do you tell your pals when they're creeping into your writing time? Do you read books for pleasure or do you always have a writing-related ulterior motive? What do you do when reality is more interesting than fiction?

Play Nice

Looks like the unofficial theme this week is bringing personal experience into our writing. I figure that means it's time to dust off the half-written post that's been up in my drafts folder since late last year and actually, uh, post it.

A defining moment in every woman's life is the day she realizes she looks and/or sounds like her mother. For me, that point of no return occurred when I got my Washington Driver's License. I took a good look at the tiny picture printed there beside my name, swallowed, double-checked the image (just in case), and put it into my wallet.

I vowed never to show it to anyone ever again.

A few years went by and I started to think maybe I had been wrong about the picture. Besides, the more years that passed by, the more I wanted someone to ask me for my license. (Another defining moment in a woman's life?) Then I got the brilliant idea to take my personal photographs to work and put them up as flare in my office. One day a picture of my mother at about 17 or 18 years old went up on my shelf at work. Next to it, and without first realizing the implication, I placed a picture of me at 19 or 20 sitting next to my mother at the kitchen table.

I uttered some very non-PC things, realizing there actually existed inarguable, side-by-side proof I am the spitting image of my mother...and that I probably have been a lot longer than I've wanted to accept it (or even noticed it). Not surprisingly, the people at work picked up on it really fast. At least three times a week I'm asked whether it's me or my mom in the black and white high school photo. I've come to accept it's not a bad thing to look like one's mother when one's coworkers stand and gaze at her photo appreciatively (usually citing that it takes them back to their own high school days...but I say, Go, Mom!). But I grew up hearing I looked like my father and my grandmother on my father's side, so when did I become my mother?

None of that is particularly related to writing, in case you were waiting for the aha moment. But something closely related to the looking like one's mother is the sounding like one's mother, and that IS a subject I can relate to writing.

I hear my mother speak far more often than I'm comfortable with! I feel it in certain non-verbal language I convey with facial expressions and recognize it in my patterns of speech. (Not always a bad thing -- my mother is a very funny person.) But if I could have just one of my mother's characteristics, it would be to carry on her rock-solid determination to treat all people the same no matter what other people think or say about them. In other words, there is nothing cool about being mean to people just because you can be.

In the last year or so, I've come to realize how often people look to each other to decipher the behavior expected of them in certain situations. When you meet at least one new person a day, it becomes second nature to watch for the verbal and non-verbal cues people give off about each other. It's a quick way to avoid most social gaffes...or at least, most perceived social gaffes. See a man walk into a room and everyone sits a little taller? Without asking, you get the idea he's a person of some authority. Or take my initial introduction to my dentist:

A new dental hygienist worked on my teeth for half an hour, (un)intentionally building trust with me. When the dentist came in, she treated him like an imbecile. She clearly had no respect for him or his ability to practice dentistry. She called him "Doctor" like it was a dirty word. As in, "Doctor, you forgot to get your pick behind you." "Doctor, you just knocked the hose to the floor." I decided then and there my dentist was retarded, instead of assuming my hygienist was a bitch.

...Which I finally figured out the day my regular dentist wasn't there and she had to work with someone else. Apparently, she's the smartest hygienist in the world and all the doctors at her office are morons.

Maven Erica is the one who made me realize how important it is to show the reader how other characters react to your character/situations so the reader knows how to feel about said situations.

Example: My hero is a snarky bastard, but he's not supposed to be unlovable. I routinely would write situations where he would tease his friends but not show the reactions of the people being snarked on. This was an important oversight. I needed to show reader that no one ever took him seriously enough to be offended. The result: People would read through a scene and come away wondering why he had any friends at all. With a few simple subcharacter reactions (or lead-ins), I can point the reader in the direction they need to look.

Another example: How many times have you ever read about the extremely youthful, virginal heroine with child-like beauty and been totally squicked out when the hero can't wait to bed her? But I read The Spymaster's Lady and never once shivered at the description. (Ok, I did once, but it's a perfect example of this subject in action: I had to reread when a man came to the door and said Galba's niece was a pretty child. I actually stopped reading to flip around and make sure no one else had stepped onto the scene, because I was that unused to thinking of Annique as a very youthful-looking girl-child.)

What are your characters saying about each other? What vibes are you giving to your peers or children when you see that annoying coworker or relative? Have you ever noticed how often people look to you to decide how they should treat other people (or react in various unpleasant situations)?

Recently, someone asked me to explain my job. I said, "More important than any one thing we put on paper (and don't get me wrong; we put a LOT of stuff on paper), my team is employed to bring order to the madness."

I surprised myself with that answer, but the more I thought about it, the more it made sense. When something goes wrong, management is notified. Management then calls us in, briefs us, and sits back while we coordinate the various orgs to put together a plan that everyone can work with. Now, the various orgs are all schooled up in their Excel and PowerPoint. They could easily create their own solutions without bothering my people. The information we use to create those solutions almost always comes directly out of their heads, after all, so we're not there to tell anyone what they need to do to get their job done. We are there to force everyone to stop panicking and breathe. Because we are one step removed from the problem, we often have less at stake. The ability to project calm and order over an excited room is worth a lot of money these days, at least where I work.

What I'm saying is, it's human nature to look to others to determine how one should react...or maybe it's pack instinct and we're all barely better-mannered than wolves.

Either way, be nice to each other out there. People are watching :-)

Last week's example flurry worked really well, I thought. What are some examples of skewing perception in your life or in your manuscript?

Ode to My Kitty

MavenLand is a funny place. See, I had a deeply affecting weekend also, but not at all in the same way as Maven Carrie. But like Maven Carrie, I'm going to try my best to tie my life experience into writing. Actually, it won't be too hard. I'm nearing the end of Her Wicked Ways and can hardly stand to be not writing right now and pretty much every aspect of my non-writing life and writing life are blurring together. (Hmmm, how is being Girl Scout Cookie Mom feeding into my WIP? Must ponder...)

Friday evening we got some bad news about our beloved cat, Belle Kitty. Belle was a beautiful Maine Coon we adopted from the Humane Society (I picked her because she was cute, hey I knew nothing about cats!) as a kitten. Isn't she pretty? (She knew it too.) At 14 1/2 and after having diabetes for several years, Belle's kidneys were failing. She was fairly miserable and had stopped eating and drinking. Nevertheless, she still had plenty of love and bouts of purring to share, which made our decision to euthanize her on Saturday incredibly painful. Belle was my first cat and, truly, my first "baby." Mr. Burke and I can hardly remember a time when we didn't have Belle and of course she's always been in the Burkettes' lives. Our daughter, Quinn, is 7 and is doing pretty well with the loss. She's a smart, brave, and empathetic little girl. Every now and again she mentions Belle (today in the car she told me that Belle lived in our hearts, awwwww) and shows me just how resilient our spirits can be.

So what does this sad story have to do with writing? Especially since I'm not writing a sad story? Hopefully I am writing an emotional story and if nothing else, this weekend was an emotional roller coaster. And feeling emotional is a great way to write an emotional scene, right? Definitely! I was an actor in high school and college. Method actors (which I wasn't) live what they're playing. They completely plunge themselves into the character, the emotion, the circumstances. As a writer, I like to draw on personal experiences to really color my characters. As I write a scene, I (try to) put myself completely in the POV of that character, much as an actor inhabits the role they are playing. Since I am entering the last act of Her Wicked Ways, there are lots of juicy scenes with big emotion and huge stakes (I hope!).

I'm not saying anything new here, I realize. I've read plenty of blogs where people talk about things that get them into the mood of a character: a song, a scent, a picture. At the onset of a scene I try to think of myself as that character. What do they see, smell, hear, and most importantly feel? As I write my turning points and then storyboard, I think about the emotional arc of the character. Sometimes I even write the character's driving emotions on the scene notes.

Something else Belle's passing reminds me of is that like the books we write, we need dark days along with the ones when our heads are in the clouds (I've had a few of those lately, but more on that maybe next week!). Even terribly sad moments can be turned upside down as you celebrate a shared memory or find humor in something that can't possibly be funny to anyone not in your position (hopefully that makes some amount of sense). And every day is an adventure filled with high highs and low lows, all of it excellent fodder for the words we churn out every day.

Your turn: What helps you get in character? Are you a method writer? (Did I coin a new phrase? Doubtful.) Are there moods in which you write better/worse or more/less or just plain different?

Important Maven Note: Next Wednesday, be sure to stop by when Tanya Michaels/Tanya Michna will be here guest-blogging. I met Tanya at the Moonlight & Magnolias Conference in Atlanta last fall and we had a great time at our table! She's a multi-published author in several genres and reminds me that she was once a second place Maggie finalist, just like me!

Finally, sleep the good sleep our belle Belle Kitty.

An Enchanting Take on POV

NOTE: EDITED TO REMOVE ANY POSSIBILITY OF SPOILERS!

I apologize for being a little late this morning. I normally write my posts a few days ahead of time, but my latest WIP has been chirping like crazy in my head, and I'm afraid I got so wrapped up in it, this post slipped my mind.

Lacey's post yesterday about Hugh Laurie and how he communicates the character of House on screen even though you never get inside his thoughts was a great setup for this topic, because I want to talk about a movie I saw last week. Specifically, the new Disney film, Enchanted.

First, I have to give this film a little plug (which it may not need, as it's apparently doing well at the box office). I loved this movie. It was sweet without being saccarine, pokes a little fun at the whole Disney milieu without becoming mean, and is very, very romantic. Before all the men who read us Mavens run away tearing out their hair, let me add that my husband, who is usually quite curmudgeonly when it comes to "chick flicks," also loved this movie. My kids all loved it, too, although my youngest (five years old) wrote in his school journal that he liked it even though "there was kissing."

So what, you may be wondering, does a movie have to do with point of view? Aren't movies more "third person omniscient" than "third person limited?" I suppose in some global sense, that's true. Since you're never really able to get inside a character's head and find out what he or she is thinking, and since when the characters are interacting, you're privy to both their facial expressions and gestures and all the other techniques actors use to communicate emotion and state of mind, movies are closer to third person omniscient in POV.

And yet, in Enchanted, I nearly always felt as I was watching that I was in one character's POV more than the other and, more, that the filmmakers had done that deliberately. Obviously, when only the hero or the heroine is in a scene, it's easier as a viewer to decide whose point of view to "identify" with in that scene. But when the hero and heroine are interacting with each other, how do you choose?

In the case of Enchanted, I found myself instinctively identifying the POV as belonging to whichever character was being more strongly affected by what was going on in the scene. I always found myself sharing the point of view of the character for whom whatever was happening would seem most inexplicable or emotionally wrenching.

So, what does all of that say to point of view in writing? After all, we can put the reader directly into the characters' thoughts and feelings and make it absolutely clear who the reader should sympathize with, so how can this observation about a movie help?

Well, here's what it did for me. It drove home to me again the importance of writing each scene from the perspective of the character for whom what's happening is most pivotal, meaningful, or life-changing. That's easier said than done, of course, because most scenes (especially between the hero and heroine in a romance) have an effect on everyone involved in them.

Of course, if you're writing in first person (and not doing shared first person like Audrey Niffenegger in The Time Traveler's Wife or third person/first person mix like Diana Gabaldon and Elizabeth Peters), this isn't an issue. You've only got one point of view to deal with. But even then, you have to choose which parts of a story are relevant and meaningful to that point of view character and only tell those.

YOUR TURN: What are some tricks you use for deciding which character's POV to use in a scene? If you write first person exclusively, do you find that freeing or limiting in terms of showing the "whole" story? And have you seen any good movies lately?

10 Reasons to Love Hugh Laurie (Ok, maybe just 3)

In the comments on Tuesday's post I promised to tell you about the super-awesome POV invidualizer tool I use to give each of my characters their own particular voice. Some of you expressed disappointment you would be made to wait until later in the week to find out exactly what my process is. Well, since it's Thursday and I'm the Thursday Maven, wait no more! My super-awesome semi-secret POV individualizer tool is...

My tv.

Wait! Wait! Come back! It IS a good tool!

On tv and in film, actors make characters, right? We know characters come from screenwriters. But screenwriters can't make characters without actors. Ergo, screenwriters need actors. (And vice versa)

As writers of books, though, we don't get actors to make our characters come alive. I propose that our characters be actors. Problem solved!

But wait--how do we do that? In my career as an industrial engineer, I've learned working backward is usually the easiest way to figure a process out. As someone who is both lazy and a huge proponent of standard work, I have come up with a theory for turning characters into actors--starting with looking at actors who create great characters.

Many of us use photos of actors or models to help our muse along and to keep details of facial features and height, etc, consistent. I think it's not a big leap to use actors to help us hear characters. When an actor is in character, he's not who he is in real life. But there are elements of his own style (or hers) that creep in to make us love that character's actor. (Consider this your author voice.)

You're following, right?

So what makes the difference between the actor and the character? Think about this: some actors can't play characters. They can only play themselves. We know which ones they are: actors who consistently behave the same way in every movie, regardless of their role. Ok, now that you know who they are, forget about them. You don't want to use one of them to help your muse. What you want is to think of someone who really, really makes the character for each role he or she plays. Come up with someone really talented and then -- write this down -- steal them.

WWTD?

What Would They Do?

See the difference between copying a character and copying an actor? We writers are all actors, in a way. We take plain words and make them into riveting, emotional stories. How do we do that? A lot of the time, it's through making really captivating characters and then hurting them really, really badly. But a character with no reaction isn't a fun character to watch hurt. Likewise, someone who makes you smile *must have something about them that makes you smile* while they're making you smile. It's all in the delivery, baby.

When I sit down to write a scene, I get into character first. I usually go back and read a few pages of their last scene (even if it's 30 pages earlier) before I start writing. This reminds me of their voice. Then, while I'm writing in their voice, I'm constantly acting out the scene as I picture that actor in my head behaving. Not looking, but behaving. That's because I am the character looking out. Knowing what the character looks like isn't helpful to me. Knowing how that character behaves and using it to communicate the world around him is the key to finding that specific character's voice.

In short, I am a really big fan of my characters interacting with their setting, and anyone who's ever had a crit from me can probably tell that. If you're locked in your character's head and they're not acting then you're either getting internal narrative or dialogue. Think about Hugh Laurie's character Greg House. Do we ever get internal narrative from him? No. But do we need it to feel like we truly know and connect with him? No. Why?



Cues & Things Hugh Laurie uses to communicate Greg House to me:

• A glass whiteboard


• A ball


• A cane


• His sneakers


• His motorcycle


• His printed tshirts


• His PSP


• Vicodin


• Coffee


• The individual relationships he has with each of his coworkers -- no two are the same; he never behaves the same way with any two people (because he has individual opinions of each of those people, even though he very rarely ever says so (positive or negative))


• The way he stands
  
  
  
  It's impossible for me to imagine anyone but Hugh Laurie playing House because Hugh Laurie has taken what began as words on a page and made them into a real person. Have you ever gone to Fox.com and listened to him interview? Hugh Laurie is NOTHING like House. Similarly, you'd almost never recognize Hugh Laurie's characters in Black Adder unless you knew to look. Many fans may not know he had any role in Sense and Sensibility--because you weren't watching Hugh Laurie; you were watching Mr. Palmer. He is a fabulous actor and yes, he is my muse.
  
  Sigh.
  
  How do you do it?

POV for Hump Day

POV can be a tough thing to master (as is finding a relevant title for this post, apparently). I write in third person, mostly from the h/h POV. That said, I have a nasty habit of slipping into omniscient or near-omniscient from time to time (a friend who read my Golden Heart entry called me "Jane Austen-esque," which I took as a grand compliment!). I'm still working on that aspect.

Today I'd rather muse about male vs. female. Specifically, how one sex interprets thoughts/actions from the POV of the opposite sex. I wrote a scene in my hero's POV recently and got a Maven crit that has me thinking. How accurate is too accurate? My heroine kissed the hero (in the first scene) and displayed a shocking lack of inexperience (this is set in 1816 England). The hero is now at a social event in her presence and is thinking back on that event. He thinks to himself that she "kissed like a whore." I originally wrote it as courtesan, but realized the hero would have no experience with a courtesan. However, he does have experience with whores since his mistress of late is none other than the local madam. To him, the heroine kissing like a whore is not a negative. Au contraire, it's hawt. Men like that, right? Right? The Maven crit pointed out that most women would read this as a negative. She's probably right, but it still doesn't change that for a guy, it's a true and wholly unnegative (is that a word?) thought.

I'm still mulling how to tweak this because I think it's a valid crit, but I'm torn because it's exactly how my hero would think of the kiss. However, we can't get into the business of explaining our POV character's every little thought. We have to find the place that is true to the character without turning off or confusing the reader. I'm still searching for it.

Your turn: How do you walk the line between what your POV character says and does vs. how it's perceived/interpreted? How do you stay true to the character's voice in the face of potential misunderstanding? I hope those questions make sense to someone.

Voice and POV

One of the things I've spent a lot of time thinking about recently is voice and POV. How do the two interact? Where does one end and the other begin?

Just over a year ago, I was working on a chick-lit YA called Dead Bodies and Debutantes. I was writing it first person POV (the protag's name was Jess) and I had her voice down. It was so easy to slide into Jess's world, to see things the way she did. She was acerbic, insightful, judgmental, and somewhat unhappy to be a deb. She was a ton of fun to write.

But then I started a new project for NaNo 2006 (long discarded) -- another YA chick lit written in first person POV. After about 10-15k words I realized that my new protag was sounding a lot like Jess. Too much like Jess. But I didn't know how to change that.

My answer was to start another book (The Forest of Hands and Teeth) with a character as far away from Jess as possible. I wrote in first person POV present tense, in a new world, with a somewhat detached narrator. My new character -- Mary -- was nothing like anything I'd ever written. And because she was so different, I was able to let go of Jess. Mary wasn't really meant to be permanent, she was more of a palette cleanser, a diversion and bit of fun.

Of course, now my problem is letting go of Mary. A few days ago I sat down to work on Book 2 and read JP what I'd written so far. "Great job," he said. "Although it sounds an awful lot like Mary." Naturally, the character I was writing was a boy and should have sounded NOTHING like Mary. Sigh.

My temporary solution is a new book, a new world, a shift from first person POV to third. Sloughing off all of the old in order to make room for the new. But I wonder if I'm the only person who has problems with this. Did I find my author voice in writing Forest of Hands and Teeth, or did I find Mary's voice? How do I pull myself apart from her? Is this just a particular problem with first person POV -- you climb so deep into one person's head that it's hard to see anything else?

I wish I had insightful answers to these questions, but I don't :) Just my musings as I turn from one project to the next and try to find a new mind to inhabit for a year. What do y'all think about the barrier between author voice and character voice?