C.L. Talmadge's Blog: StoneScribe

My Characters Drive Me Nuts, Part 1

Having lived in silence about the people populating my head for more than five decades, I have decided, finally, to open up about this whole crazy process of creating fiction. Or at least my crazy process.

And about the blasted characters who drive me up a wall.

There is a debate among writers about where the storytelling process takes off. One camp says it begins with an idea, like terrorists take the White House. The other argues it starts with characters. As in, a teen girl who finds out she had a major past-life role in the cruelties of her society’s overclass.

Put me firmly in the that latter camp. Stories that start with an idea tend to spawn characters with no depth, no arc of self-discovery and growth. This is painfully obvious with too many films. Maybe the premise was high concept, but the characters end up strictly low rent and lame, lame, lame.

I didn’t consciously decide to begin with characters. They chose me, or at least it seemed that way. Like so many writers of my antediluvian generation, I read J.R.R. Tolkien and was profoundly inspired. I rather imagine J.K. Rowling is filling the same role for today’s cohort of budding scribes.

But I didn’t want to write more elves-dragons-swords fantasy. Now, there’s nothing wrong with the aforesaid. I’ve read plenty of terrific works in the Tolkien-like vein. I wanted to do something different.

I need not have worried. About when I was 13, characters started invading my daydreams. They most decidedly weren’t elves or dwarves or dragons or knights in shining armor. They were human beings. I had no idea who they were then, but I could see them and hear speak them in my mind. Vividly. Clearly.

I literally spent decades and lots of thought time getting to know them. They entranced and unnerved me.





Griffin Mordecai

I once was standing in a checkout line at a Safeway and reached for a baby name book sitting on the impulse purchase rack. I opened it to the G section and saw the name Griffin. That’s me, one character said. I heard it in my head. I quickly closed the book and put it back.

Another time I was in downtown Dallas heading toward the YMCA for a weekend workout. I heard two characters, brothers, talking. One cracked a joke, and I guffawed loudly.

At that exact moment I looked up and noticed a business acquaintance walking out of a building close enough to hear me. She must have thought I was looney, by myself and laughing out loud. I smiled and waved and walked on to the gym, a bit faster.

My point is this. Until an author knows her characters, she doesn’t know how they will behave in different situations. And if she doesn’t know how they act and react, she cannot craft the plot. That’s because the events of any story, a.k.a. the plot, arise straight out of the characters’, well, character and motivation, what’s in their hearts.

Griffin, as it turns out, is mean, petty, vicious, and spiteful with a mountain-size chip on his shoulder. And he acts accordingly, stirring up all manner of mischief and driving the plot in various ways. At times I really just want to smack him and say, “You have so much! What is your problem?”

But that’s the thing about my characters. They don’t give a rat’s behind about what I think. They’re going to do what they are going to do.

That realization led me down an amazing spiritual path that I will explore in future takes on the topic of crafting characters.

Creativity and spirituality, at least for me, are inextricably entwined. Lots more on that to come.

Boo some bad guys! Win some good reads!

Care for some villainy with your coffee? Are nasty boys your cup of tea?

Thencheck out this postat Layered Pages about the Schemers of Azgard. They made life miserable for me and most everyone else. Feel good about sending them your very worst.

My author, C.L. Talmadge, will be watching the comments section. The funniest will win a set of e-books (Kindle, Nook, or .pdf) of the first four novels in the Green Stone of Healing series.

So read, shake your head, tickle your keyboard, and win fou...

They ALL win!

My heartiest thanks to all those who visited theStoneScribe blogduring the IndieB.R.A.G.“Be Still My Heart”Romance Blog Hop!

On my blog remains an excerpt from B.R.A.G. Medallion winnerThe Vision—Green Stone of Healing Book One.This sweeping speculative fiction series is packed with romance that spans multiple lives and chronicles the explosive clash of passion, politics, and piety in a doomed island nation called Azgard.

Those who visited left such delightful comments I could not decide betwee...

Rx for Romance

Today is Valentine’s Day, dedicated to lovers and romantics everywhere. May you and your sweetheart live happily ever after.

It’salso the second day of theIndieBRAG“Be Still My Heart”Romance Blog Hop!

Following is an excerpt from B.R.A.G. Medallion winner The Vision—Green Stone of Healing Book One.This sweeping speculative fiction series is packed with romance that spans multiple lives and chronicles the explosive clash of passion, politics, and piety in a doomed island nation called Azgar...

Dangerous religious privilege prevails

Today's U.S. Supreme Court decision exempting "closely held" corporations from paying for employee birth control is a win for religious privilege, not religious freedom.

It's deja vu all over again. Ring-wing theocrats are taking over the United States bit by bit, just as they tried to wrest ultimate power in Azgard and ended up destroying it.

In Burwell v. Hobby Lobby, the court ruled that private corporations owned by a few people do not have to pay for any birth control to which they hold religious objections. The court claimed that this decision applies only to birth control under the Affordable Care Act's coverage mandate, but that's wishful thinking. It won't be long before closely held corporations claim religious exemptions as their basis for not paying for other healthcare procedures, like blood transfusions.

The court essentially allows these private businesses to have their cake and it it, too. They get the considerable legal protections associated with being incorporated plus the individual liberties guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution. And they get to force their interpretation of religion down their employees' throats.

If this issue affected men as directly as it does women, I wonder if the Supreme Court would have ruled differently.

Day of reckoning awaits the 1% and the Kindred

The seventh novel in the Green Stone of Healing®speculative fiction series is now under way. Books Five and Six are complete as first drafts and await a big enough improvement in their authors finances to see the light of publication.

This forthcoming tome sees a changing of the guard. Outspoken heroine Helen Andros fades and her offspring assumes the spotlight. Think Helen was feisty? Wait until you meet her child.

I‘ll give you some idea of what the Kindred of Azgard are about to face. Billio...

JFK after 50 years: We’re not ready for the truth

[image error]Have we had our bellyful of memorials to President John F. Kennedy?

In all of the ceremonies, however, there was no eulogy for the truth that died on Nov. 22, 1963. A truth about the who, what, how, and why of his death that we may never know because we are not ready, as a nation, to face this truth, whatever it is. Especially the who, since many of those involved are doubtless still among us, deeply embedded in the post 9/11 surveillance state, wielding undemocratic, unchecked, deeply invasiv...

Feng Shui Tips for Luck All Year Long

Tip 1

Seed your day by getting lucky first thing in the morning! Even if you’re traditionally not a morning person, there are some things that anyone can do to start the day off from a place of anticipation, expectation, gratitude, and joy.

The very first thing you see the very first time you open your eyes in the morning will influence and impact, not only that particular day, but potentially your entire life.If the first thing you spy opening your eyes is a desk full or unfinished business or...

‘Emotional Education’ Author Answers Questions

StoneScribe today hosts the final stop of the virtual blog tour for Memory in the Cells by author Luis Angel Diaz.Newly translated from the Spanish edition, Memory in the Cells, according to its author, is “where Eckhart Tolle meets What the Bleep Do We Know, but taking you on a much more practical journey.”The author also says the book teaches “emotional education” and showsreaders how to transform the “pain body” into the “joy body,” helping to heal all aspects of their lives.(StoneScribe’s...

Herbal alternative to costly cancer treatments

If cancer isn’t a death sentence, it’s nonetheless lethal to the pocketbook.

Radiation, chemotherapy, surgery, or some combination of the three set patients back tens if not hundreds of thousands of dollars. Healthcare insurance typically pays 80 percent of the total costs afterpatients shell out a deductible that can be as high as $10,000.

From Natural Health Dossierthen, is a recipe for an herbal tea that was developed by a Canadian nurse, Rene Caisse, starting in the 1920s.

In 1922, Caisse no...