Maven Darcy's At It Again

I just finished Maven Darcy's Her Wicked Ways and let me tell you, wow. You are all in for a treat! The bitchly heroine is utterly lovable, the secret identity hero makes me want to tear into his mask and the in laws will keep you laughing until you hit The End. Fabulousness.

All this fabulousness makes me sit back and try to evaluate how she did it. As with any really good book, I tried not to pay attention to the craft while reading it. Given I was in on the planning for the novel, this is a difficult task, but there was enough time between our cping and reading the finished full that I found it pretty easy to glide through without too much heavy thought. What I did decide was that Maven Darcy is really good at two things (among others, naturally): a) Her use of deep POV draws you into the story without being intrusive and without depriving you of sensory details and b) she managed to contain the story within a handful of characters and subcharacters so that it really feels like every line in the book ties up to a purpose.

I envy both of those successes. I envy her book! Great job, Darc. Now to read Maven Jackie's latest...

YOUR TURN: What's your craft tip of the week?

PS Our friends at the Romance Vagabonds nominated the Mavens last week for an Excellence in Blogging award, which we thought was pretty darned cool (not to mention flattering). The "rules" for this award are that the recipient, in accepting said honor, shall nominate ten other blogs for the same award. Since there are five of us, however, we thought we'd split up the task amongst ourselves, and each of us award to two blogs we particularly enjoy.

My two nominations go to:

Tessa Dare (who never fails to amuse -- where DOES she come up with her blog topics?)
inkygirl.com (I set a new background image at work at least once a month. Keeps my peers amused to glance into the quirks of a writer's mind.)

When to Listen...

There are at least three types of critiques in this world. There's the one that you shrug off: a typo or something completely off-the-wall. There's the one that makes you want to scream and beat the other person over the head with your point. And then there's the one that twists your stomach and makes you ill with fear.

I don't have much to say about any of them. I have the least to say about the last one. There doesn't seem to be much one can do when faced with the complete and utter destruction of her book, whether it's due to a pin-sized plot hole that leaks air so stealthily it's nearly impossible to trace, or a story that rambles and writhes and simply won't come out the way it seems in one's head. What about voice? I can think of at least four Mavens who've rewritten most or all of a manuscript because they realized too late they needed to put more dark here, more edgy here, more angst or historical tone there.

Plots: we've replotted entire books to make them make sense. Given TSTL heroes hope for a brighter tomorrow. Deleted reams and reams of subplots that weren't worth the ink it took to print them. Come up with tighter, more saleable books, better characters, and killer hooks.

It can be done. I know it can be done. But it's exhausting work. One wants to believe it never happens to other people. That everyone else writes perfect books the first time around--or, at least, marginally excellent books that require only mild editing.

It's not true, of course. In my head, I know it's not true. But when I think about dismantling a story to build it back up again, it makes me want to close my eyes and hide. What if I do it wrong again? What if it's better, but it's still not great? What about when I send it out for that all-important beta read, and she still finds enormous flaws? Do I just write something else? Is my entire genre, my entire voice then in question because one story won't hinge together without squeaking?

What do you tell yourself? What would you tell me? And if I told you I was going to steal those words of comfort and offer them to someone else, would you want to be quoted? :-)

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?

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?