It's About Character

Thought for the day: 

 “The difference between the right and the nearly right word is the same as that between lightning and the lightning bug.”

~ Mark Twain

A gift for my writer friends. Writers’ Digest sends me e-newsletters all the time with links to articles. Some are good and some are not worth much time. I think the following two links are very good. Enjoy!

http://www.writersdigest.com/whats-new/7-simple-ways-to-make-a-good-story-great?et_mid=563087&rid=3028165

http://www.writersdigest.com/tip-of-the-day/writing-a-mystery-novel-creating-a-villain-5-ways-to-justify-a-crime?et_mid=563087&rid=3028165

The WINNER of the copy of Seeing Cinderella from my last posting is Carolyn Pile. I will be getting this to you right away, Carolyn. Congratulations!

I’d like to talk about character today. This is prompted by a couple of middle-grade books I reviewed recently for the Sacramento Book Review. As Donald Maass says in his instructive book, Writing the Breakout Novel, “Most of us do not for very long tolerate people who make us feel frustrated, sad, hopeless or depressed ― not in life, not in books.” Well, that is exactly what I experienced in these two books – the most obnoxious, unlikable main characters I have encountered in a long time, characters who made me feel frustrated most of the time I was reading the books. Honestly, if I hadn’t agreed to review the books, I’m not sure I would have finished them. The stories were not compelling enough to overcome the unpleasantness of the main characters.

I remember hearing at a workshop that writers need to create characters readers will want to cheer for. The main characters in both books were bratty, selfish, and downright mean-spirited nearly the whole way through. I found myself not only cheering for the other side, if you will, but saying out loud more than once, “Are you kidding me?” I wanted someone to come in from the sidelines and straighten those girls out.

Both these books came from large, reputable publishers. This is the kind of mistake I’m not too surprised to see in a self-published book by an anxious new author or from an extremely inexperienced writer, but I can’t imagine how this got past an editor at a big house. For one of the authors, it is her debut novel, but for the other, it is her seventh published book! I won’t be spending any of my time on her other books.

So what is it we can do as writers to build characters who make readers want to get their pom-poms out and jump out and down. According to Donald Maass, “It just requires identifying what is extraordinary in people who are otherwise ordinary.” This, of course, is not nearly as easy as it sounds. Unless we are writing fantasy or science fiction, we want our characters to be believable, which means they need to be fairly ordinary and very human. But I also believe most people have extraordinariness within them, and that is what we need to mine to build characters for whom our readers will want to cheer. I wish I had a good answer to offer here about how to do that, but I don’t. I can only tell you what I do. I try to look for the vulnerability in my character. That will lead me to what gives the character the best chance to become extraordinary by overcoming something that is frightening and difficult for him or her. And that’s where I think the writers of the middle-grade books I read last week missed the mark. They didn’t have characters who overcame anything difficult. Heck, they couldn’t even overcome their own brattiness and selfishness. They never would have even tried. The characters were just plain ordinary. So, writer friends, take a close look at your main characters and make sure the voices you hear in your head are cheering!

I’m not giving away a book this week. I didn’t read anything I want to pass along. Isn’t that sad? You will fare better next week. I have a very funny book to review and pass along. But please leave a comment. I’d love to hear from you. Remember, if you have trouble leaving a comment, click on the title of the post and it will give you just this post with a comments section on the bottom. Also, if you haven’t signed up by email, please do. Just look in the upper right-hand corner of this page, pop your email address in, and you will receive an email each time I put up a new post. Your information will not be shared with anyone.

It Doesn't Get Much Better Than This: a Review of John Hart's The Last Child

I’m doing more reading than writing now, but after the marathon of finishing my second novel, I don’t feel too guilty. Besides, it’s part of the training. I was at a workshop put on by Michael Larsen and Elizabeth Pomada of the Larsen/Pomada Literary Agency last week, and they gave us Ernest Gaines Six Golden Rules for Writing: Read, Read, Read, Write, Write, Write. Now Ernest Gaines is a writer for whom I have great respect. He’s written some wonderful novels – The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman and A Lesson Before Dying – to name just two. This is a man who knows something about writing, so if he says I should read, read I will.

Donald Maass of Donald Maass Literary Agency and author of the seminal book on contemporary writing, Writing the Breakout Novel, talks about a novel needing to have tension on each and every page. That is a tall order. In my novels, I feel like I get good tension on most pages, but all? Not quite. When I first read that, I thought about books I’d read and could honestly only think of a precious few books I would describe in that way – The Day of the Jackal, Jaws, and one of my all time favorites, Kindred by Octavia Butler. Oh, there are probably others, but that’s what came to my mind.

This week I read a book that certainly fills Maass’s “tension on every page” maxim. I don’t remember where I heard about this book – read a review or heard something on the radio about it, I think. I scribbled it on a scrap of paper with a note to pick it up. That note rattled around my purse and car for a while, then last week I picked up The Last Child by John Hart. Holy Smoke, what a book! Unfortunately for me, I didn’t have a good chunk of time this week to just sit down and read it. I had three sub teaching jobs this week, a couple of appointments, a day of a thousand errands, etc. You know how it is. Anyway, I grabbed a little time here and there, but once I started the book, I put off what I could and read. I found myself praying for long stop lights on the way to and from school so I could read a page or at least finish a paragraph. I carried the book into stores in hopes I would have to stand on line. I stayed up too late reading. I got up early and read a few pages over breakfast. Every time I thought I’d have an hour or two, something came up.

Today was to be my day. The phone rang at 6:15 a.m. “Do you want to sub today.” “Oh, gosh, sorry. Can’t. The dentist.”  Okay. Not the dentist. Just an absolutely delicious book. I saw clear reading time. Just some obligations in the morning, but by ten, the time would be mine, all mine. At 11:30, Dave said, “How about I take you out to lunch?” Not even one of my favorite mini-dates – lunch out with my hubby – was going to get me away from that book until I finished. I hope Dave had a nice time.

This is a book that is more convoluted and well-written than almost anything I’ve ever read. It has mysteries inside of conundrums wrapped in enigmas. And the writing is simply wonderful. Hart takes you to North Carolina and you don’t want to be any place else until the last word. You feel the suffocating heat and the mosquitoes nibbling you. The smell of death fills your mouth and gags you. You hear the voice of God speaking to Freemantle. It’s all there. His characters are perfect – damaged, vulnerable, sympathetic people pursued by black-hearted, malevolent evil-doers of the first order. Holy Guacamole! How does he come up with this stuff? John Grisham pales in comparison, and trust me, I love John Grisham.

So, if you don’t have a bad ticker, and you do have an open day or so on your schedule, pick up a copy of The Last Child by John Hart and enjoy. It does not disappoint.