Ruth Ann Nordin's Blog, page 54

I is for Intimacy

When I say “intimacy”, I mean the author needs to have an intimate knowledge of his point-of-view characters.

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In real life, there is a part of us no one truly knows, no matter how close they get to us.  Sure, people around us will have varying degrees of intimacy with us.  Our spouse will know us better than our friend, and our friend will know us better than an acquaintance.  But the only one who truly knows us is us.

The same should be true if we are to write the emotionally engaging character.  We should know their backgrounds, their darkest secrets (even those that never show up in the story), and we should know their futures.

This can be a sad thing.  I write romance, which is a happy genre.  You always have a happy ending.  But I know things about some of my characters that have made me cry, even though these things have never shown up in the book.   I don’t write this stuff down.  It’s just stuff that comes to me when I’m in bed or taking a shower or going for a walk.  I can’t shut this off.  I just “know” this stuff about the character I’m currently writing.

Usually, this is backstory stuff I had to take out during the edits.  For example, there was a lot more to one of my character’s story that I never touched on in a book already charged with a depressing backstory.  None of it belonged in the story, so it was never added, but it did add layers to this character’s life that made me understand her intimately.

But sometimes, this is something I know will occur in the future (long after I type “the end”).  For example, I know one of my couples will lose one of their children to an illness.  I’ve been asked to write more of their story, but I will never do it because I don’t want to make them “go through” that pain.  As long as I don’t ever write it, they’ll be suspended in their happy ending.  Believe me, the reader does not want to know more about this couple.  It would ruin the book for them.

Our main character should be as complex as we are.  I like to think the reader should be at the level of spouse/best friend with the character.  But, the author is the only one who can look into the soul of the main character and see what’s really there.

The key, of course, is how much you reveal in the story.  My suggestion is to only put in what you need in order to make the story the best it can be.  Any revelation you give should advance the plot.  If it doesn’t advance the plot, it doesn’t belong there.

So don’t be afraid to explore all aspects (good and bad) about your main character.  You don’t have to include everything you learn.  Just the parts that matters to the story.

This post is part of the Blogging from A – Z Challenge.

H is for Humor

Humor in fiction can take on many forms, but it’s always the character’s point of view that  directs the reader to the humor.

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I’m only going to touch on a couple types of humor.  To do them all would be too exhausting.

Dark humor – this touches on something morbid or offensive in a funny way.  Dark humor tackles the hot button topics most of us are afraid to touch in case someone gets offended by it.  For example, if you’re writing a story where a man is so stupid he doesn’t realize he’s having sex with a dead woman and he thinks she’s just not into it (so he tries harder to please her), this could be dark humor.  The tricky thing with dark humor is that is has to be done just right to resonate with the target audience.

Slapstick humor – this is physical in nature, and it’s usually exaggerated.  Remember ever seeing someone slip on a banana?  Or remember seeing a fight where people are throwing pies at each at each other?  This is slapstick humor.  The Three Stooges (if anyone remembers them) were notorious for this.  The problem with this is that you can’t rely on this to carry humor out for long.  After a while, this can get monotonous.  So the best thing to do is spread it out and keep it short.

Satire – this is humor that makes fun of something or someone.  Often these are situations or people most people are familiar with.  For example, it could be poking fun at people in political offices.  I saw some episodes where a night show host was making fun of everyone running for the current presidential nomination.  The entertainer picks out some trait in the person and exaggerates it so it’s funny.  Another example could be calling a customer service representative about a problem you’re having with your cable bill.  You could have the character on hold, talk to someone who directs them to another number, gets put on hold again, gets another number to call, etc.  The reason satire is funny is because most people can relate to it.

Misunderstandings – this is the kind of humor I like most when writing fiction.  It requires the reader’s knowledge of the character’s point of view to get the humor. In my opinion, this is psychological humor because it stems strictly from the character’s thoughts and requires the reader to get the subtle nuances.  For example, in one story, I wrote about a hero who was falling in love with his wife, and a group of men kept flirting with her.  The wife, however, had no idea  they were flirting.  So when I was in the hero’s point of view, I would have one of the men come up to his wife and say things that were obvious pick-up lines.  The hero was panicking the whole time, but the wife (still unaware of what was really happening) misunderstood why the men were coming up to talk to her.  It’s a subtle humor, but humor all the same, and it’s only something the reader, who knows what is really happening, can truly appreciate because neither the hero nor his wife were laughing.

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The conclusion to all of this is that you consider your point of view character’s personality when you do different types of humor in your story.  What will be funny with one character won’t be funny if you do another one.

G is for Grace

Today, I’m going to talk about you, the author, and why it’s important to go easy on yourself.   Writing is the easy part.  It’s everything that comes after writing the story that can cause a lot of stress.

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What are some sources of stress?

Two of the greatest sources I’ve noticed is a lack of confidence in the ability to tell a good story.  First, a reader can find a typo or two, and suddenly, we see it as a huge mountain instead of the molehill it really is.  Second, we see a drop in sales and figure that people are voting with their wallets on the quality of our work, and the drop means we suck.

That’s why I think it’s important to keep grace in mind.

We are human.  We will make mistakes.  Typos happen.  We can’t catch everything, and the same is true for editors and beta readers.  Think of the traditionally published books you’ve read.  Have you ever read one that had a typo?  I read one where the heroine’s hair color changed in the same chapter, and I caught typos.  Even the big publishers miss stuff.

As much as I wish sales were steady (aka. predictable), they aren’t.  And changes made to the algorithms at the retailer can have an impact on sales.  We can do everything right on our end.  We can write a great story, get a great cover, and have a great editing team.  We can even use our mailing list, create a successful launch campaign, add more books to the series, price it competitively, and even run ads on it.  The problem is, we can’t control how it sells.  We tend to blame ourselves for doing something wrong.  The truth might be we aren’t doing anything wrong.  For whatever reason, the book just isn’t selling.  And yes, it makes us feel like crap.

The only thing we can do is be aware that we have done everything we can possibly do.  Beating ourselves up over whatever is causing us stress isn’t going to change anything.  Yes, give yourself time to grieve.  Listen to depressing music.  Have a good cry.  Take a break.  Do whatever you need to do to get through the low point.  I think the only way out of the funk is by allowing yourself to experience it.  We can’t be 100% happy 100% of the time.

And getting back to a reader not liking our book…  Well, we can’t please everyone.  It’s impossible.  The best thing you can do is realize taste is subjective.  Talk to an author friend about how sucky you feel.  (I’ve found non-writers don’t properly understand why it hurts when someone hates our work.  Other writers, however, get it.)  It’s okay to feel angry or sad about it.  That’s normal.  But don’t stay in that frame of mind.

Be realistic about it.  Even authors you love to read get bad reviews.  Check them out.  You thought the author’s book was awesome, but someone else didn’t.  Treat yourself to something special.  Make time to be good to yourself.  Take note of the readers who loved your work.  And ultimately, if you enjoyed the story you wrote, it was worth writing.

So give yourself lots of grace.  It does the author soul a lot of good.

This post is part of the Blogging from A – Z Challenge.

F is for Friendship

I know.  This isn’t one of the topics you expected me to write about when it comes to writing, but one important aspect that’s worth exploring is the friendships your characters have.

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Friendship has a way of revealing things about the main character that few other things can.  I don’t know about you, but in my life, different aspects of my personality come out depending on the friend I happen to be with at the moment.  Personalities end up balancing each other out.  With one friend, I tend to be the comic relief.  With the other, I’m a lot more serious.   It’s because one friend has a tendency to take things too seriously (in my opinion) so I’ll find ways to show her the brighter side of the equation.  The second friend tends to be more rational, which brings out the more logical part of me (and the logical part isn’t a comedian).

So there are many aspects in our personalities that tend to come out when we’re around certain people.  The same is going to be true for your main character.  Your main character will be the focus of your story.  When you introduce other characters, their personalities have to bring out something in the main character that helps to advance the plot of the story.

For example, in one story I wrote, the main character was very antagonistic toward a marriage she was trapped into.  This character needed a friend who would help her lighten up and give the new husband a chance.

When writing your story, think of possible personality traits that might aid the main character along in her journey.  What kind of friendships would benefit the main character the most?  Think of balance.  Think of how the friends you introduce to the main character can help her grow.

And make the friendship feel authentic.  Let the characters have moments where they laugh, cry, get angry, and do other things friends do in real life.  The friendship should feel as natural to you as your own friendships in real life.  Next time you’re with your friends, think about how you feel around them.  Do the words you use change from one friend to another?  Like with one friend, you might talk politics.  With another, you might talk about traveling.  Why is it that talking to your best friend is a lot easier than talking to someone you’re not as close to?  There’s a varying degree of comfort and vulnerability depending on the friend you’re talking to.  The same should be true of your main character.

But, only spend time with the friends the main character needs in order to fulfill her journey.  Don’t get sidetracked by meaningless conversations that do nothing to advance the plot.  Every scene needs to have a point.

Also, friendships aren’t limited to human characters.  They can also be between a main character and an animal.  For example, it can be a boy and a dog.  Friendship can take many forms, and the form it takes depends on the type of story you’re writing.

This post is part of the Blogging from A – Z Challenge.

 

E is for Epiphany

An epiphany is the moment when everything suddenly makes sense to the character.  In short, it is the character’s revelation.

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Have you ever been struggling with something for a long time and suddenly (one day, out of the blue, when you least expect it), the answer comes to you?  This is the kind of moment I’m talking about giving your character.

For example, in the book (and movie) Gone With the Wind, Scarlett spent the entire time trying to get the perfect man.  She believed this man to be Ashley.  What she realizes, at the very end, is that the perfect man was really Rhett, and he’d been there all along.  That was her epiphany.  I’ve seen the movie and the book, and they end the same.  (Hint: if you’re a die-hard romance reader who loves a happy ending-skip this one.)

The epiphany is the “a-ha” moment when everything finally makes sense to the point of view character.  It’s the moment when all the pieces of the puzzle have finally fallen into place.  The character now knows how things are either working for, or against, her.  In return, she will have to take appropriate action because of it.

The epiphany usually happens around the climax of the story, but it can happen earlier.  If it happens earlier, the character will then have to take steps in light of this new information that will lead to the climax where things can be resolved.

For example, your character might find out he has a terminal illness.  He realizes he’s wasted his entire life on worthless pursuits.  Let’s say this epiphany happens at the beginning.  As a result, the character decides he is going to make each moment count, and might, along the way, bring joy to other people who are in need.  At the end of the book, the character will feel complete in knowing he made his life count.

Or, if you want to put an epiphany at the end using the same plot idea, the character will find out he has the terminal illness, BUT he’ll struggle with finding meaning to his life before he dies.  He spends the book coming across all sorts of different people.  However, it’s not until he’s on his death bed that he realizes he has impacted the lives of those people.  When all the people are gathered around him, his epiphany could be at the moment he realizes his life had meaning after all.

So the epiphany is something that’s flexible and can easily work its way into the story at any point in the story.  The key is to put it where it has the biggest impact for your character.

This post is part of the Blogging from A – Z Challenge.

D is for Dark

Dare to go dark.

When I say that, what I mean is, dare to go into the darkest parts of the human soul.  Dig up the hard to deal with topics.  Let the character experience their darkest moment.

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What do I mean by letting the character have a dark moment?  A dark moment is the point where the character hits rock bottom.  It is when the crap hits the fan, and the character has nothing else to lose.

Now, I don’t use this technique in every book I write.  Some books are lighter reads than others.  So I wouldn’t say this applies to every story.  But there are probably going to be some stories you’ll write that will lend themselves to exploring the darker side of the human experience.

We’ve all been to the point at some time in our lives where we are down in the pit of despair.  Nothing seems to go right.  We feel as if everyone and everything is against us.  We feel as if we’re all alone.  No matter how much we try to explain our pain to others, they really don’t get it.  Worse, it feels as if they don’t care.  If you’ve ever felt this way, then this is the feeling you need to tap into when you give your character their dark moment.

Letting your character go through this can be a painful experience.  (It’s hard to watch our creation suffer.)  But sometimes it’s exactly what the book needs. I fought a certain plot point for years because it was so dark.  I hated putting my character through it.  I tried to write the book in other ways to spare my character the level of that much pain.  But each time I did it, the book fell flat.  I hit a wall where I couldn’t go further into the story.  No amount of forcing things to go my way was going to work.  Finally, I gave up and gave the character the dark moment.  And it worked.  All at once, the story fell into place, and I was able to finish it.

Sometimes you just have to go through the deep valley with your character.  So instead of fighting it, embrace it.  Let the worst case scenario happen and see how things evolve from there.  The results just might surprise you, as it did me.  I honestly think the book I mentioned above is one of my best works.

And remember, just because you have a dark moment in your book, it doesn’t mean there can’t be a happy ending.  Sometimes the ending is that much better after the character overcomes the darkness.

This post is part of the Blogging from A – Z Challenge.

C is for Conflict

No story can survive without conflict.  No one wants to read about people who never have any problems.  Problems are exciting. They are fun.  They make things interesting.  (Maybe not so much in real life, but they definitely do in fiction.)

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So today we’re going to look at the effective use of conflict.  The purpose of conflict is to provide an obstacle to the thing your character wants most.

There are many kinds of conflict that can arise.  You can throw in a lot of horrible things to delay the character from getting what they want, but I suggest focusing on one or two major things that is stopping the character from getting his happy ending.  If you throw in too many things, then you end up with a lot of side issues that have nothing to do with the actual plot.  So I suggest picking the biggest source of conflict and focusing on that.  That way the reader is focused in on that particular issue and will be more engaged with the character’s journey.

What would be a good rule of thumb for picking a source of conflict?  I suggest looking at the character’s personality and their goal.  Not all conflicts are created equal.  The conflict in question has to be something that will have the biggest impact on the character you’re writing.  It has to provide a huge enough obstacle that the character has to struggle to overcome it.

For example, let’s say you have a character who had an awesome childhood where she was readily accepted by her family and friends.  Then in your story, this woman is put in a situation where people are snickering at her.  Given her background, this isn’t a huge source of conflict.  She has no past demons to struggle with.  However, if you put in a character who grew up in a home where she never felt accepted and didn’t have any friends, then putting her in a room where people are snickering at her will be a whole lot different.  And that difference will provide the greatest impact on the character and her story.

That’s the aim in writing the character’s story.  You have to take that character’s personality and background into consideration when picking the conflict.  When tapping into the emotionally engaging character, everything is built around the character, including the conflict.  You don’t build your character around the conflict.  The difference in the two approaches is subtle, but it’s there.  And I believe focusing on the character and making everything in the story revolve around that character will make for a better story than doing it the other way around.

Whether or not the character succeeds all depends on the storyline, but I can tell you with romance, the character is going to have to succeed for the reader to be happy.  If you’re doing a thriller or horror story, then you get away with a sad ending.  In other words, the character didn’t get what they most wanted.  Or maybe the character does get it but at the expense of something equally important to him.

This post is part of the Blogging from A – Z Challenge.

B is for Bias

This is the most powerful tool in a writer’s arsenal when writing the emotionally engaging character.  Every character has to have bias in order to feel authentic.

What is bias?  I’m glad you asked because I found this great definition off of Dreamstime.com:

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When we’re dealing with bias, we’re not concerned with the character being right.  The character can be completely wrong.  But in the character’s mind, they ARE right.

How many times have we seen people get into religious and political debates based on bias?  Facebook is full of them.  And guess what?  I’d guess the people giving their opinion on those topics believe they are right.  Sometimes it’s interesting to read through the threads and see how they justify their point of view because it gives great insight into how human nature works.

Knowing how human nature works helps us develop emotionally engaging characters because they’re easier to relate to.  The more your characters act like real people, the more emotionally engaging they are going to be.

Will letting your characters be human (with their own biases) annoy some readers?  You bet.  Why?  Because everyone who reads your book will be coming to the story with their own bias.  There’s bound to be some trait in your flawed (very human) character that is going to trigger some irritation from someone.

For example, I wrote a book a couple years ago where the reader wanted to smack the heroine for giving the hero a hard time.  Upon asking the reader if the behavior would have bothered her had the hero been doing it, she said no.  She was surprised by her own response.  But what she found out was that she’s more accepting of a man being “difficult” than for a woman to be the same way.  That is her bias that she is coming to the story with.

Another reader, by the way, loved the heroine because she didn’t put up with any crap.  She stood up for herself, and the reader respected her for that.

And this proves taste is subjective.  You can’t please everyone all the time.  All you can do is let your characters be who they are.  You are not your characters.  Your characters are their own people.  Dare to write characters who see the world from a completely different bias than you do.  This helps to keep writing fresh and will make your characters come alive in a brand new way.

An exercise that might be helpful is to close your eyes (or get out your pen) and imagine two characters who are complete opposites.  Maybe they’re sisters, and one loved their mother while another hated her.  Or take two students.  One thinks the assignment is easy and the other thinks it’s hard.  If you really want to delve into the difficult topics, dare to write two characters (both good guys) who are on opposite ends of the political spectrum with each side giving convincing arguments to justify their bias.

Compare how their bias toward a situation influences how they think.  What might their past experiences be that led to the particular bias they have?  Remember, neither side is wrong in their bias.  They are right.  It’s just the “how” they justify they’re right that is all important when you’re looking into creating authentic characters.

This post is part of the Blogging from A – Z Challenge.

A is for Antagonist

The antagonist in the story doesn’t have to be the “bad guy”.  It doesn’t even have to be a person.  It can be anything that opposes the hero (aka. protagonist).  For example, if a virus is running rampant through a town and the doctor (our hero) is fighting it, then the antagonist is the virus.  Another example, the heroine might think she’s unattractive and therefore, not deserving of the hero’s love.  In this case, her own belief in how unattractive she is the antagonist.

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But for the sake of this post, I’m going to focus on a character who is an antagonist.  I want to point out that the antagonist doesn’t necessarily have to be “bad”.  How is this possible?  It all boils down to point of view.  When we’re looking at the emotionally engaging character, we are most interested in complex characters.

An emotionally engaging could appear to be bad when we’re in the hero’s point of view.  But, when you take a deeper look, the antagonist might actually come off as a highly sympathetic character.  This is why I love point of view so much.  It’s taken me about 5 1/2 years to finally grasp what point of view is all about.  It’s perception.  It has no basis in actual facts.  The person who tells the story determines the truth, but it’s only their version of the truth.

So when you’re in the hero’s point of view, take a look at how the hero views the antagonist.  What does he believe the antagonist’s motivations are?  Why is the antagonist someone he opposes?  What things does the antagonist do or say to make the hero perceive things the way he does?

Likewise, consider things from the antagonist’s point of view.  If you are going to truly understand the antagonist, it can help to imagine a scene or write one out where he confronts the hero.  How does he see the hero?  What things does the hero say or do that bothers (or amuses) him and why?  What is the antagonist’s version of the truth?

Most of all, are there any likable traits the antagonist possesses that the hero misses (at least for most of the story)?  It’s possible the two work out their differences.  In romance, the conflict between the hero and heroine who hate each other but later fall in love is a popular storyline.  So the antagonist might also be the hero.

Of course, there are some antagonists that don’t have any redeeming qualities.  There’s no way they can ever find a common ground with the hero.  But it’d still be intriguing if there was some sympathetic trait that the reader can relate to because the truth is, no one is 100% good or 100% bad.  We all fall somewhere in the middle.  And the same can be true for the antagonist.

This post is part of the Blogging from A – Z Challenge.

The Blogging from A – Z Challenge

I have never done this before, but I figured, “What the hey?”

So starting on Friday (April 1), I’m going to be doing daily blog posts.  This will be every day but Sunday.  I thought I’d go with the theme on writing.  I’ll pick writing different elements.

I’m going to try to make them shorter than my usual posts.  I know my tendency to ramble 1000+ words would get exhausting if I did it six days a week for an entire month.  So my goal is 500 words or less per post.

Also, I’m planning to release Her Devilish Marquess on the 17th (a Sunday), so I’ll sneak that one in to remind everyone it’s out.

To check out more about the challenge, click here.

Hopefully during this month, I’ll be able to check out a couple of new blogs I’ve never seen before, but we’ll see how much the kids and time in Omaha visiting Janet Nitsick again will allow me to do that.  (Janet and I plan to do more videos, but these will go on the blog for helping other authors, and we’ll upload them to You Tube during the course of the year.)