Following from Cara's blog last week, I was thinking about how we have to put totally believable characters into a make-believe world.
The headlines in the newspapers are usually all doom and gloom, but our little pocket novels are fairy stories where everything turns out right in the end. But not the fairy stories of Grimm or Hans Anderson, which are sometimes really dark, because we have to stay on the light side, even if our protagonists are faced with life-changing traumas. Fairy stories, according to my dictionary, are made-up stories designed to mislead. So how do we make them real?
Our hero must be charismatic, good-looking, and have a few flaws to make him human; the main storyline can be funny or poignant; but our heroine has to grab our hearts from the first moment we meet her. How much of ourselves we put into this creaure depends on the story, but she has to be believable.
Many years ago I read a chapter of a novel I was in the process of completing, to a writing group. My main character had been sexually abused as a child and everyone in the writing circle thought I was describing myself. It was a bit embarrassing because no one would believe I had made it all up and I got sympathetic looks for weeks afterwards, but it proves my character must have been totally believable, and that is all that matters.
Our stories don't have to be factual, we write fiction, but our readers have to believe every word we write. They have to believe there are gorgeous men out there who will fall head-over-heels in love with them, and they have to believe there will always be a happy-ever-after ending. That is what writing a pocket novel is all about.
I read this three times before posting and still got caught by the dreaded typo. It should, of course, be 'hearts'. Sorry about this, folks.
ReplyDeleteHi Fay, thought provoking post and interesting to hear about your writing circle experience. I think sometimes people don't consider when they're reading something how much research and endless thought and polishing goes into any story. That they imagine you always recycle elements of your own life and that you are not simply making things up is intriguing. The making up is as we all know incredibly time consuming. Constructing believable human beings from thin air, giving them histories, pasts, quirks of character, reasons for acting as they do is something as writers we are working on all the time. We speculate endlessly in our heads about would they do this, would they do that, what if etc. Then we polish and polish until the characters are as full as possible. But they are fictional, all from our own imaginations even if they have been sparked by real events we've heard of. The only thing I would say is that although our heroes are gorgeous they only have to be good looking to the heroine and beauty is so much in the eye of the beholder that they can be out of the mould of a textbook hero and still be gorgeous to the heroine. I used to rather fancy Morse even though he wasn't six foot tall, and was as rumpled as an old paper bag. I liked his intellect (far more clever than I'll ever be) and his tenacity in pursuing the truth and always felt I would have been the woman to cheer him up!
ReplyDeletePS, I should have signed the above, it's Cara here! Also, I've amended the typo.....
ReplyDeleteAgree with Fay's and Cara's sound observations on characterization. As an aside on typos, what a pity it is they can't so easily be rectified in printed books. I'm not an omnivorous reader of the pocket novels, but in the past week I've been jolted by "surepticiously" (for surreptitiously), "clammer" (for clamour), and "a bit of piece and quiet". It's a sad sign of the times that publishers can no longer, or don't recognize the need to, spend time and money on decent copy editing. I grew up reading the old D. C. Thomson story papers. Typos in those were a rarity. And their editors and proof readers didn't have spell checkers!
DeleteAnon, perhaps it's worth dropping a line to D.C. Thomson about this as there's not much we can do about it once our work has gone to press. Typos do creep in, even with the best will in the world, but I'm sure we all do our best to make sure they're few and far between.
DeleteOh no, Fay, poor you on your writing circle experience. I don't know why people identify authors so strongly with their material but perhaps it is a natural thing. If you write romance you're romantic as a person (probably true) but then again, crime writers are rarely criminals...
ReplyDeleteI love making characters - I rarely start with a plot but often a name pops into my head and then I flesh her out. The back history develops depending on how she acts, why did she do such and such, the reason is because when she was ten.. etc. Eventually I have a well-rounded character ready to launch into the story.
ReplyDeleteMore and more I prefer a light touch to my reading and a happy ending. There are enough grim, dark things going on if you watch the news. I'm all for disappearing into a fictional world where things will go right eventually!
Personally, I like the fairy-tale quality of this kind of fiction since I'm usually an escapist as far as my taste in fiction and film is concerned. But years ago, I won a WM comp with a story about a 16 year old (in first-person voice) who gets pregnant and has to decide whether or not to keep it. I was taken aback when one writing group thought it was from experience (mine or someone close to me). It wasn't, but I decided to take it as a compliment about the writing!
ReplyDeleteI've had a similar experience with people thinking stories I write are based on life. Especially as I write erotica! (though I also write murder mysteries and oddly no one has ever assumed I have personal experience of murdering someone!)
ReplyDeleteThe strangest response was from my father, about the first story I ever sold. It was a darkly comic story about a woman considering suicide. My dad's worried response was 'What ever made you want to write about a suicidal woman?' I had to assure him that I didn't feel that way!
Oh, the work and the journey of planning and writing a novel. I seem to have my story people/characters in my mind first and their backstory just seems to come to the fore [oxymoron, I know]. Once that's established and I play with it and keep asking the continual Why?, then it all evolves. The man appears in her life, the location sets itself or I deliberately plan a setting I want to feature in a novel. Then it comes down to research needed for whatever aspect is explored in the story. This planning stage I absolutely love the most and once it's done, I can't wait to start writing. My scenes of the story progress are sorted before I begin pretty much. And being a romantic at heart, I always seek to give my hero and heroine a "love for a lifetime". I truly believe, even though these people are out of my imagination, they become real and I just know that will be together forever.
ReplyDeleteSorry, I went a bit off topic with my last post I know, but we're all seeking that special someone and happy ending for ourselves to share our journey through life. Seeking that happiness in today's world is sure a challenge but I like to give that to my readers when I write a book.
ReplyDelete