I can still remember how outraged I was when I read The Horse Whisperer and the author killed off Tom Booker. OK: in real life, heroes die; anyone can die. But I have to admit, I hate it when it happens to one of the characters I’ve identified with in a book!

This week, I read Simon Kernick’s TARGET. (Spoiler coming up here for Kernick fans who haven’t yet read the book.) This fast-paced novel had me engrossed all the way through, with the main character’s dogged efforts to find an old friend who had been kidnapped from her apartment while he was present. The book was written in the first person, so of course the reader was deep in Rob Fallon’s point of view.

I was gobsmacked when he was actually murdered by the bad guys. Yes, in the situation he found himself in, it was most unlikely that he wouldn’t have been shot. (He’d already had more narrow escapes than the average cat.) But… hey, this was the HERO. This was the first-person-viewpoint guy! The whole book had been based on his search for the people who abducted his old friend, Jenny. And the death happened several chapters before the end of the book.

But I read on anyway. Why? Because by this time, I had also identified with Tina Boyd, a maverick cop who was breaking rules right left and center to help Fallon in his quest. Tina had also been captured and was in desperate straits… I had to read on and find out how things turned out for her.

After I finished the book (since I can’t help reading like a writer) I thought about how the author made this work. Yes, I was upset that Rob Fallon was killed off… but I cared about Tina’s fate, too, so I kept reading.

The author pulled this off because he had woven in chapters from other viewpoints throughout the book (the prologue is in third person viewpoint: a corrupt businessman). The scenes for all viewpoint characters except for Tom Fallon were written in the third person.

Kernick wastes no time introducing Tina, who has problems of her own, so we’re interested in her story too.

It’s a good model for authors to follow if they MUST kill off a major character – one that readers will like. Ensure that you have one or two other characters that the reader cares enough about to keep reading – and to forgive you for the death they didn’t want!

Marg

Tags: killing main character,main character death
Categories: Plotting Your Story, characters
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This week’s Writing4Success Tipsheet article is all about your ‘writer’s radar’ – and what you can learn by simply being alert and open to receiving information from a variety of sources. This article is all about marketing – but your writer’s radar is essential for picking up ideas for your fiction and your articles, too.

Writers need to become especially good listeners (oh, OK: let’s call a spade a spade – they need to be especially good eavesdroppers, too!). Here are three tips to help you hone your skills.

• Listen not only to WHAT people say, but HOW they say it. The patterns of speech, the drawl, the unfinished sentences – all this is gold for your writing.
• Jot down a word or phrase that can lead you to further research. (How often have you heard a snippet on the radio or read a line in a magazine that took you to the Web to find out more?) Don’t miss the essential word or name that may lead you to a treasure trove of information – through an expert, a museum, an internet site, or a particular location.
• Link what you overhear or what you discuss with the associated body language. What can you see on people’s faces when they are excited or bored or angry? How do they move their bodies? How do they emphasise a point? Do they lean forward, or backward? What does their body language tell you about their relationship to the other person?

- Marg

Categories: General Tips, characters
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How do you go about creating your characters?

Do you have ‘rules’? Do you follow a formula? Do you build painstaking character profiles?

Some of us always follow a tried-and-true method; others are constantly reading and searching for a better way.

Here are a couple of suggestions. The first is from Christopher Leland’s THE ART OF COMPELLING FICTION. Christopher suggests using the 7-Ds approach to evoking character. He says that through using this method, you SHOW the readers your character, rather than simply telling about him/her.

What are the ‘7 Ds’?

1. Description (show the character doing something – show, don’t tell)
2. Declaration (Make some statements about your character, but back them up with his/her actions in the story.)
3. Dressing (What does your character’s style and clothing say about him/her?) 
4. Dialogue  (Show your character in a scene using action and dialogue – what do the words he/she uses tell us about him/her?)
5. Demeanour (How does your character react to others? What is the first impression he makes on people?)
6. Dramatics (How does your character typically behave? What do his actions tell us about him?)
7. Deeds (“Give me deeds, not words!” Test your character by putting him under pressure. What does he do?)

Let’s move to a bit of advice from Don Maass, author of WRITING THE BREAKOUT NOVEL. Don says:

“It’s a common fault of beginning thriller writers to slam an Everyman, your average Joe, into the middle of something big and terrible. Such stories usually feel lackluster because the main character is lackluster. A plot is just a plot. It is the ations of a person that make it memorable or not. Great characters rise to the challenge of great events.”  In his breakout character checklist, Don says that engrossing characters are out of the ordinary, and that readers’ sympathy for characters comes from characters’ strengths. He points out that larger-than-life characters say what we cannot say; do what we cannot do, and change in ways that we cannot change. Finally, he says that the highest character qualities are self-sacrifice and forgiveness.

NOTE: Don’s new book THE FIRE IN FICTION (published 2009) is now available from Amazon.com.

Categories: characters
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Some years ago, my librarian (with whom I share a passion for crime, mystery and thrillers) told me “I’ve got a book here you just have to read. The main character is so different!”

She wasn’t kidding. She was talking about Dexter Morgan, who was a blood-spatter analyst for the police by day and serial killer by night -but only of people who ‘deserved’ it; usually those who had managed to escape justice. I borrowed Darkly Dreaming Dexter – and read it through at a sitting. I was hooked. I eagerly awaited the publication of Dearly Devoted Dexter , No. 2 in the series… (yep, another tick) and then Dexter’s popularity caught up with him and out came the TV series.

Well, I had to watch. I mean, as a Dexter fan, there was no way you couldn’t at least take a peek. And I’d also been a fan of Six Feet Under, which starred the actor who was to play Dexter: Michael C. Hall. The only thing was… the image I had in my mind of Dexter hadn’t looked a bit like Michael Hall. Oh well. I sat down to watch anyway.

I kept watching. And a funny thing happened: somehow, the Dexter in my mind and the Michael Hall Dexter began to happily co-exist. By the time Book 3 came out – Dexter in the Dark – I was able to read the book without even thinking about it. But then, something else happened.

Dexter-in-the-books started living a rather different life to Dexter-on-the-screen. Probably the biggest divergence – for me – was that in the books (spoiler coming up here if you haven’t yet read the books) Rita’s two damaged children, Astor and Cody, are two little sociopaths.  Dexter is delighted: here are two charges that he can train to follow the “Harry Path”, the way his cop foster-father Harry did for him.

In the TV series, the kids are pretty normal. I prefer the development in the books, but maybe that’s just my dark side coming out.

A few days ago, I finished Book 4, Dexter by Design. There’s no doubt about it: after watching three seasons of Dexter, I see Michael Hall striding through the pages (or rather, gliding through the night, armed with a knife.) I see on-screen Deborah every time the character appears; I hear the TV character’s voices. I’m appreciating the humour in the book more, picturing Michael Hall’s hapless expressions.

As someone who always found that a movie or TV version was disappointing after the book, I have to say I’m somewhat asurprised. Even though the direction of the characters (so far) has a lot of differences (including that of Doakes, who died in the TV series but is still around annoying Dexter in the books) I’m enjoying both.

Well, who would have thought it?

Marg

Tags: Dexter,Dexter by Design,TV and books,TV series from book
Categories: characters
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With millions and millions – I don’t know the exact figure, but I would guess we’re up to trillions? Gazillions? – of websites about every subject under the sun, it’s little wonder that writers are finding priceless nuggets of information everywhere.

And of course, we pass on the info. I’m indebted to Jenny for giving me a heads-up on these two items – I love both of them!

1. Police Body Language and Behavior: You Gotta Walk the Walk by Lynda Sue Cooper.

I’ll quote the first few paragraphs – if this doesn’t whet the appetite of crime and mystery writers, I don’t know what will!

” My husband and I, both police officers, love to people watch. It’s easy enough to recognize a working cop, but he and I can even spot an off-duty cop a mile away. The way they walk, stand, sit, and talk. The way they observe their surroundings.

Next time you see a group of cops walking together, take a good, hard look at them. Ignore their uniforms and really look at the person inside. They may be of different sizes, shapes, or colors, but there’s that undefinable something, above and beyond the uniforms, that makes them resemble each other. It’s hard to put a finger on, but you can’t miss it. It’s how they look and how they act. It’s who they are and what they do. It becomes so ingrained, the officers do it off duty as well as on.

So what exactly is it? What causes a cop to move and act in a certain way both on duty and off? It all boils down to one thing: officer safety.”

Read the rest here:

http://www.hodrw.com/cop2.htm

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

http://www.archetypewriting.com

 

2. Archetype: The Fiction Writer’s Guide to Psychology

The home page on this site is enough to have you clicking away, enthralled, for hours. Again, I quote:

“Maybe your character needs psychotherapy and you’re wondering what goes on behind the closed doors of the therapist’s office. Maybe you need to know how to make the psychologist in your fiction sound like a real shrink. Or maybe you’re just looking for the psychology behind a really great villain, or wish you could ask a real clinician your psychology questions.

You’re in the right place! So before you lobotomize your character or send her off to electroshock therapy, get the information you need right here!”

Intrigued???? So was I. Here’s where you go to find out what makes your character tick…

http://www.archetypewriting.com/index.html

… And if you have stumbled across some great sites for writers, please let me know so I can pass it on!

Cheers

Marg

Tags: characters,police,procedure,psychology
Categories: characters
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