My Characters

A friend asked me: "How do you come up with your characters?"

I fear my answer will be quite unsatisfactory. They just come.

Usually, a story idea starts with a "What if x happened?"
Or, because I mostly write Fantasy: "What if a place existed where X had happened or Y was real?"

Then, usually, I world build. As a person is influenced by their environment, my character is in equal parts dependent on the social structure, ethnic identity (and it's relation to the existing powers and history)and the characters' own psychology, home life. So I start with the world.

The character is a "what if such a person existed in this world? and if they had to overcome this particular dilema, how would it play out?"

Then, I sit back and go for the ride, so to speak. On the page, enhanced by the character's perspective, convictions and so forth, the world and character come alive.

So it is partially conscious, but half of the character comes out in the process of writing. Sometimes the pieces fall together in a completely unexpected way. Then revision becomes imperative. Sometimes the characters take on more qualities and different personalities/complexities in the process of revising than reveal themselves in the first draft.

I know this sounds vague, but it's all that can be said. As Melissa and I discussed last week, the personality of characters is largely affected by the mental state of the writer. Things change day to day, or over time. Like dreams, writing seems to tap the subconscious. So while writing daily can make the "subconscious" easier to tap, the precise interaction between the two is hard to explain. Honestly, i wouldn't be surprised if it worked differently for every writer. Hope this answers the question!

Read more »

Posted in: characters,inspiration,writing

Cycles

My motivation to write is usually highest when I have the least time for it.  Shove tests, papers, and events in front of me, and I'll have no stronger urge than to plant myself in front of the computer and turn out chapters.  Every year I tell myself the same thing: Just wait until summer and then you can write for hours every evening.  Every year the same thing happens: The instant the final final has been finished, my stories are repulsive; the idea of writing unappealing.  What I do turn out is stilted and forced.

I bring this up because my semester ends tomorrow.  I have an ethics final in the afternoon and then I'm free for the next fourteen weeks.  And I have caught myself giving the doomed promises of how much writing I'll get done once I get through this.  After eighteen straight years of school.  I never learn.

-Melissa

Read more »

Posted in: inspiration

Progress Report

I’ve actually been on a writing kick lately, which is extraordinary (to say the least). The manuscript of Aya’s Wings has grown to fifty-two pages, which may not seem like much, but for me it’s quite a ways. I started this thing last September, seven months ago, and while I’m pleased with and proud of what I’ve written so far, it’s often been a paragraph at a time.

I’m not sure what inspired this latest binge. Last week was Spring Break, so I had more time to write, but if anything, having more free time usually brings my writing to a standstill. I want to write most during finals week, the night before a big paper is due, etc. So maybe it started a couple of weeks ago when I had a family therapy midterm? Or maybe now that I’m out of the first couple of chapters, where everything is new and I’m still feeling my way around a strange world where not all of the rules have been formed yet, things will be a little easier?

Maybe I’m finally falling in love with the characters. I have an unfortunate tendency to get attached to them, and when Arylle was finished it felt almost like betrayal to write about other people. But with every page I’m adoring Amarinne and crushing on Narun more and more. I don’t think anyone will ever replace the first cast of characters I ever wrote about, but I’m starting to have fun with these guys.

I also needed to let go of Arylle and realize that, imperfections though the story may have, I’m satisfied with it and think that it’s about as good as it is going to get. Strange timing, when my mother just asked me yesterday, as she listened to the furious clicking of my keyboard, “What are you doing?”

“Writing,” I said, my usual one-word response.

“Again? You’ve been doing a lot of that.”

“Yeah, I’m finally getting into it again.”

“Aren’t you finished with it yet?”

“No, this is my second book. The first one is finished.”

“Well rather than starting on something else, aren’t you going to try to publish that one?”

“Not right now.” I don’t understand why it’s so hard to fathom that I might have other interests than slogging through query letters and summaries. Why can’t I be happy with my completed project? Is publishing the only way to make it matter? What matters to me is that here is something I started when I was thirteen years old; I’ve written it and rewritten it, and now I’m finally happy with it and feel like I’ve accomplished something. Doing research on the market and sucking up to various heads of industry would spoil the experience for me. That’s the grunt work, for me, and maybe someday I’ll be willing to put my head down and do it, but that day isn’t now. Right now, Arylle is done. Aya’s Wings is just beginning. And I’m looking forward to seeing it through.

-Melissa

Read more »

Posted in: characters,inspiration,writing

Character Ingredients

I only have time for a quick post this evening, but I'd like to use it to share a quote from Isabel Allende that I've had written on a scrap of paper and shoved in a desk drawer for many years now. When asked what she believes every character needs, she said, "A complete biography, a defined personality, and an individual voice."

I'm not the best at any of these things; I tend to let the story draw it out by force (e.g. if I dropped Amarinne in a pool of sharks, what memories would she draw upon, what aspects of self would be revealed, and what choice words would she utter? Rather than meditate on these things without a specific situation as background).

Allende, of course, seems to have no difficulty in following her own suggestions, as her characters are some of the most vivid I've ever encountered in books. For me, though, it's advice to fall back on when I'm stuck.

-Melissa

Read more »

Posted in: Allende,characters,inspiration

Faces

I’m pretty bad at visualizing things. When it comes to writing, this means that although I don’t have difficulty with superficial physical characteristics (long black hair, deep blue eyes, etc), I’m hopeless at putting it all together in my mind and knowing what my characters actually look like.

Years ago, I tried to draw them, but unless my stories were populated with misshapen lumps, it didn’t do me much good. When I write, I see the scene happening in my mind. If I can’t see the characters clearly, I can’t accurately transcribe what they’re doing.

This weekend, I realized that I had lost several hours to scouring google images for the cast of Aya’s Wings. I had already found a few of them months ago, but I wanted to round out the rest. The above, for example, is an actress by the name of Maude Adams. She was very famous around the turn of the twentieth century and, by all accounts that I’ve found, she was a decent person as well. And she bears a resemblance to Amarinne Thelorian. Not an exact replica, mind you. Amarinne is blonder, younger, sadder. There are many photos of the lovely Miss Adams, but she only really looks like Am here. But it’s enough for me to work with.

I wondered, as I was searching for them all, if this were not just an elaborate way to avoid actually writing. Procrastination in the name of inspiration. Uh huh, sure. But then I pulled out my old binder of Arylle things and there, tucked in the very back, were pictures I had clipped from magazines of the gowns that she wore, the way her hair hung, and even people who resembled Cor and her (without naming names, let’s just say that they were actors from a now-defunct soap opera). So I guess that this is just part of my process, and it happens to be fun as well.

-Melissa

Read more »

Posted in: characters,drawing,inspiration,writing

To sum it up...

Today's been pretty busy so I'm keeping this post short, but I discovered the following quote and had one of those "oh wow, it's not just me" moments. This is why I write. It's always comforting to know you're not alone.

"If there's a book you really want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it." ~Toni Morrison

-Melissa

Read more »

Posted in: inspiration,morrison

Out of My Head

Here’s a kind of stupid confession: I used to write out conversations between myself and my characters. For some reason I thought that this was the best way to get to know them, so I would write a literal encounter, like the character suddenly sat down beside me and said hello.

These usually occurred when I was stuck on some aspect of motivation and needed to know why someone did what they did. “I need help on this,” I would write, and the character would inevitably be more than happy to explain it to me. (Side note: If my characters were real, I don’t think that any of them would be quite so pleasant as they managed to be in these instances.)

I think I stopped using this technique around the time I read somewhere that Anne Rice claims she wrote the Lestat novels with the title character whispering the story to her over her shoulder.

But for my purposes, these character conversations often revealed unexpected things. People would spill their deepest secrets. Stoic, unemotional characters would suddenly burst into tears. Weak characters would draw on hidden strengths. Like good therapy, everyone came out feeling better.

As I said, I don’t use this method anymore. My cast of characters in Novel #2 feels more separate from me. I don’t draw on my own neuroses so much in their creation, nor do I understand their every thought or action. Interestingly, I reread a few chapters of Novel #1 last week (after about four months of refusing to let myself open the files) and found that distance has positive effects. I was able to read more objectively, no longer anticipating every word. I caught the stupid typos or redundancies that I had always glossed over before. And, strangest of all, I no longer recognized the characters as pieces of me, but as pieces of who I used to be. My protagonist, who I used to think was myself on paper, actually annoyed me in places.

Becoming enmeshed in a novel is like having your nose to a large painting. You can only work on a few inches at a time and you lose sight of what the entire canvas really looks like. For all you know, you might be working on the Mona Lisa or one of its parodies. Taking a step back, giving yourself time to detach, is both a difficult thing to accomplish and a necessary one. Every time I have imposed breaks on myself, I come out with something positive or learn about some integral piece of the canvas that I had been overlooking.

To return to my original topic, I think that my teenage-self might have had the right idea when trying to get into the characters’ heads, but it’s important to also know when to stop and let them work out their own problems, with the author merely holding onto the reigns. Distance is often crucial to see your creation.

-Melissa

Read more »

Posted in: characters,inspiration,lestat,painting,writing

REM

In middle school, I used to regale (or bore, depending on how kind you’re being) my carpool with stories of my dreams from the night before. I used to dream a lot more when I was a child than I do now; probably because I used to sleep a lot more than I do now. And despite the fact that I was as squeaky clean as they come, my childhood dreams seemed to always resemble drug trips. “I dreamed that my teacher boiled my tennis shoes,” one scrawled entry in my journal goes, “and they turned into neon green liquid.” Then there was the one where I was floating in a world of purple television static, scrambling for something to hold on to. Another about giant chess pieces suspended in space. On and on.

As I grew up, though, my dreams became less chaotic and more like stories. I met fascinating casts of characters – dark-haired, soft-whispering lovers; people who told me they were my long-deceased relatives; shadowy pursuers with their snarling hounds. I journeyed to both familiar places and new locales created by my mind. Often, these new places and the people I found there wormed their way into stories. Strangely enough, a common motif in my dreams is that of opening a book and then switching between reading the pages and experiencing the action as the protagonist.

I’ve only managed to dream about my novels a handful of times. No matter how much time I’ve spent deliberating about them during waking hours, somehow the characters shy away from my unconscious. When I do dream about them, they’re never doing anything relevant to the plotline. The one I remember with most clarity was a brief snippet of Arylle, Cor, and Tevian (from my first novel) sneaking away from a kitchen with their arms full of food. Tevian and Arylle, sure, but why would Cor be helping?

I’m envious of my boyfriend who dreams about the same cast of characters going on continuing adventures night after night. Where he leaves off in the morning, he’ll pick up later on. I’ve cursed the alarm clock time and again for interrupting dreams right as they’re getting to the good part – five more minutes and I would have known how it all turned out. And once I’m awake, it’s gone for good.

Interestingly enough, I tend to write less when I’ve been dreaming more. This may be a flimsy correlation; perhaps dreaming more means that I’m more stressed and therefore less interested in or capable of writing. Also, I tend to record more emotional dreams and sometimes when I’m finished writing it all out, I feel like I’ve gone through the wringer enough for one day and get up to find something else to do. Or perhaps writing is a substitute for dreaming.

Does anyone else experience this or does the relationship between dreams and writing go the opposite way for you?

-Melissa

Read more »

Posted in: dreams,inspiration,writing

Libel

Quite often, authors “borrow” friends, family, or even passing strangers to make characters out of them. Despite the disclaimer that adorns the inside cover of many books, assuring the reader (and lawyers) that all of the people and places within these pages sprang from no where other than the author’s imagination, we are all guilty of fictionalizing reality from time to time.

With me, I find that sometimes I meet people so over-the-top that they seem a caricature already. A boy I once had a history class with, for example, who wore a different pair of designer sunglasses everyday all through class. A young goth man with his made-up face buried in a book of antique French poetry on the Paris metro. A girl with dark eyes and a strong laugh with a tattoo of cascading stars down her backbone that she would show to anyone who asked. All three made me pause and want to write them.

Many times, I do. The character starts out as a clone of their inspiration. In the case of Designer Sunglasses, this is how Karied Travan, a main character of my current novel, was born. I pasted D. S. directly into my world, coiffed blond hair, chiseled jaw and all. I wrote Karied as I imagined D. S. would react in the fictional world of Lirana. He would have to be rich, almost certainly spoiled, and possess an ego the size of the city. As I wrote more and more about him, though, I began to learn about Karied. I discovered his weaknesses, his all-consuming secret, both his artificial and true charm. He grew a family, a history, a future. And now he is almost unrecognizable from his roots as D. S., though he still resembles him physically.

Likewise, oftentimes characters spring from elements of ourselves. In the movie 9, a scientist uses a device to put pieces of his personality into nine homunculi, who then go on living after the apocalypse has killed all human life. Each of the nine creatures has a full character based on some of the scientist’s traits: the curious one, the power hungry one, the slightly neurotic one, etc. Although I would like to think that I don’t translate myself so blatantly onto the page, I know that my personality, interests, and beliefs seep through. Reading my novel, Erica said, was like reading a dictionary to my soul.

In the end, perhaps the most effective characters are a blend of both the known and the new. As we hone our craft and continue to write, we learn how to nurture characters into their full form, making them as real as if we just caught a glance of them on a crowded metro train.

-Melissa

Read more »

Posted in: characters,inspiration,writing

On Inspiration

As writers, the topic of inspiration is pivotal to our craft. If we were never inspired, we would never write. Or at least, our writing would be extremely dull. When we say that we have ‘writer’s block,’ we mean that we suffer from a lack of inspiration. Writing has become a chore, a drudge. We have to drag ourselves to the keyboard or notebook. Every word is like beating at a colossal wall. This happens to most every writer at some point (some might argue that the majority of their time is spent in this state). How, then, do we re-immerse ourselves? The answer is both simple and complex: we find inspiration. Simple because it can be found anywhere. Complex because, well, if it were really that easy, we would all have written a score of brilliant novels by now.

The reason why I didn’t write my customary post yesterday was because I was visiting a place that used to be my sure-fire inspiration kick. My grandparents live in a remote seaside village on the northern California coastline. It has a population of 280; the people are outnumbered by the seals that bask along the rocky coastline. When I was a child, every summer involved a three-day trip to this paradise of pine and fog and salt. Every afternoon we would hike along the cliffs, search for garter snakes in the tall grass, or venture into the icy water until the pangs in our thighs receded to numbness. In the evenings, I would sit in the big bay windows facing the sea and write until the sun grew large against the horizon and submerged itself for the night. This was my Eden, a cool draught after a sticky summer spent in my hometown.

I was always told that it would be temporary. My grandparents aged and grew weak – my grandfather, physically; my grandmother, mentally. This autumn they moved into a nursing home a few miles up the road from their community. Their house sold within days after being put on the market. My father has been placed in charge of the estate, so yesterday my parents, sister, and I piled in the car and drove up for the first time in two years. Papers needed signing, errands needed to be run. We ended by taking my grandparents out to lunch at a Mexican place off the side of Highway 1. Red paint had been sponged on the walls. The only decoration was a large painting of a rooster with a noble expression on its face (if roosters could ever be said to look noble) while two silhouetted roosters fought in a stormy sky behind him. If artists ever suffer from artist's block, this one had a terminal case.

My grandmother has no idea who I am anymore. I waved broadly as my mother led her into the restaurant. She stared past me, looking nervous, and only took the seat across from me with much coaxing from both my parents. My grandfather is almost immobilized after a series of strokes. He finds talking difficult and is dependent on an oxygen machine.

“How are things?” my father tried helpfully.

My grandmother was silent, intent on drinking the salsa. My mother directed her to the chips instead.

“Not too good,” my grandfather said with a stiff shrug.

I stared at the roosters and tried not to think.

Desperate for conversation, my father said, “Melissa’s got some big news to share with you guys. Don’t you, Melissa?” He doesn’t approve of my engagement or like my fiancé, but his voice took on an animated tone and I played along.

“I got engaged,” I said, holding out my left hand.

Surprisingly, my grandmother took it, and stared down into the ring. “It’s beautiful,” she said. The only distinct words she said all through lunch.

My grandfather’s face lit up. “Congratulations!” he exclaimed. “That’s wonderful!”

Is it really, I wondered, when the only ends are to divorce, die young, or end up like this?

But this was just a passing thought, interrupted as my grandfather asked for my fiancés name and repeated it after me like code. “Ee-ly-jah. That’s a good name. Do you have a date yet?”

I told him and he nodded. “We’re the fifteenth of that month. Fifty-six years ago.”

“Has it been that long?” my grandmother murmured, surprised.

“A long time,” my grandfather responded, not looking at her. She was already back to dipping her fingers in the salsa.

Lunch finally ended and we said our it-was-nice-to-see-you’s. One final “Congratulations!” from my grandfather and they were gone.

“Come on,” my father said to us. “Let’s go for a walk.”

We returned to the trail along the cliffs that I’ve walked so many times. I hurried on ahead of the others, not sure why I was rushing. Here was the secret stairway down to a beach, the gentle cove that was the best place to watch seals, the tide pools that we used to find starfish in, the rock that I climbed all the way to top of one morning and felt reborn. I reached the grove of trees with the crumbling picket fence, the one that I used to imagine was a place in my stories and any moment a character or two would peer out from just behind that bend. No place has ever made me want to write as much as this has. No where have I learned as much about a story as here.

But yesterday, I felt numb. The trees were just trees, slightly crooked. The fence was decaying. There was no magic here. If there ever had been, it was long gone.

My family caught up with me and we turned to head back. The sun was already low in the sky and if we weren’t out of the mountains by nightfall, it could be dangerous.

On the way home, I found my thoughts returning to my first novel, the one that isn’t very good. I’ve put it aside for the time being because, in all honesty, I’m tired of it. So much of it was written there, at my grandparents’ house by the sea. Now that it’s gone, where will I go to find my inspiration?

But as I thought more, I remembered the sponged-red walls of the restaurant. The noble rooster. My grandmother’s blank, but sincere smile. I wanted to write them all, and I have here. They didn’t take me to other worlds, perhaps, but they had driven me to the page nonetheless. Fantastical reality. Better than realistic fantasy.

The sun dipped into the ocean for the night just as we descended the last peak and forsook Highway 1 for inland-bound roads. I scrambled for my pen.

-Melissa

Read more »

Posted in: inspiration,northern california,writing