How Character Was Built – Interview

Kelli Jae Baeli, one of my first readers for my new book Building Character, kindly agreed to interview me about the novel:

Tell us about Building Character. Where did the idea for the book come from?

I had the basic idea for Building Character a year or more ago. Just a snapshot in my mind of a woman seduced by one of her own characters and thought that would make a pretty cool story. It took so long to get started on the actual story because I knew the main character (Fen Marshall, as she turned out to be) wasn’t going to be the most sympathetic of characters, and I wondered how readers would feel about a main character who was initially not all that easy to like.

Originally I saw this character as married with a couple of teenaged kids, but realised I could never write her that way as it would bring in the whole infidelity aspect and I just didn’t want to go there, as the book then would become about something totally different, something I have no desire to write about at the moment.

Then I found Fen Marshall. She lives on her own. She’s a complicated woman but interesting enough, I hope, to capture the reader’s attention even though she may not initially be the most likable. Building Character is so much her story – how she grows and develops as a result of these extraordinary things that happen to her. I suppose every story is about that in the end, but this time it is more pronounced because the character herself has to recognise and choose this growth. It was very interesting to write.

How is it different from your other novels–for you and for the reader?

For me, it was a lot harder to write. I knew from the start that it was going to challenge my skills as a writer. That’s a good part of the reason I wanted to write it – that and I thought I was onto a cracker of a story.

Building Character has a much slower start to the story than my others. I had to do it this way because of the necessity of introducing Fen Marshall and making sure the reader has a good idea of her before things start happening. Everything in the story happens because she is the type of person she is, so I had to characterize her very carefully. One of my beta readers hated this slow start to the book and told me the first chapter was boring and should be scrapped. I didn’t agree and kept it as it was, so I’ll be very interested to hear from more readers about it. (The other beta reader loved it and thought it was perfect, so I went with my own instincts about it).

Building Character also has a lot of sex in it, which was different for me to write. All my novels have sex in them, usually just the one scene, but this book was different; the storyline actually required more in this area. I was both embarrassed and delighted during the writing and found it all quite amusing – I’ve never written anything before that used sex for characterization.

What did you learn by writing this book?

I learnt that I love a challenge, that I’m not a writer happy to stick to one winning formula, that not only do I want to continue exploring the supernatural in my books, but that character-driven stories are just as important to me. That’s what I love most about writing, I think – putting characters in challenging situations and watching to see how they cope with them, learn from them, and become stronger because of them.

I also found that I love the technical aspects of writing. Building Character presented several challenges in the writing. Having to introduce a fantastic aspect into the story in a way that the main character barely questioned it called upon all my resources as a writer. I loved the feeling that I was weaving something together that required a delicate touch and a steady hand. I was never bored once in the writing of this book and relished the opportunity extend myself.

I noticed that the character of Marissa was frightening in its illumination of the obsessive psyche. And the character of Ruby was equally disturbing in a delicious way–Should we be worried that you understand abnormal psychology so well?

Both Ruby and Marissa are secondary characters that were such a lot of fun to write. I didn’t realise during the writing that I was getting the abnormal psychology so right, I was just letting the characters take over. Marissa was a lot of fun because here’s this woman living in her own little delusional world, hampered by the lack of ability to see anything except through her own needs, yet not even having the skills – language skills especially – to express herself. I’ve done some reading in the past on the psychology of stalkers, so maybe that helped when it came to poor Marissa.

Ruby was another fish in the same kettle. I got a lot of enjoyment out of her simply because it’s so fun to write characters who are so unusual and fixed in their view of themselves and the world. Villains are so easy to write because you don’t have to worry about any arc of personal growth and change. They don’t change, they don’t grow, they never doubt or question themselves, they never worry about why they do what they do; they have their psychopathic little view of the world and that’s all there is to them. I was totally gobsmacked while writing a lot of the scenes about Marissa and Ruby. Their actions were so often horrifying to me personally, but at the same time totally in character and Ruby’s glee was – yes, I’ll admit it – just a little contagious.

Building Character is now available on Amazon, AmazonUK, and Smashwords. It will be available on B&n, Kobo, Apple,  and Sony within the next couple of weeks.

It will also be the first of my books available in print. I will let you know more closer to the time. 

Filed under: Writing Journal