Guest Vickie McDonough on Writing Realistic Characters

Blissful Writing Thoughts is pleased to have guest blogger and multi published author Vickie McDonough here on using the challenges we face in life to make the characters in your novels more realistic. She is also offering to give away a copy of her latest book!

ONLY MOSTLY FROZEN

By Vickie McDonough

Two and a half years ago, we had a horrible ice storm in Oklahoma. Power was off to nearly 2/3^rds of the state, which was buried under two inches of ice. Trees had split in half, limbs had dropped off like leaves in a heavy fall breeze, cracked ice that had fallen from limbs resembling broken glass. The ground looked the aftermath of a tornado, and the streets were all but impassable.

But let me back up a step. Every fall I plant pansies. They are one of the few flowers that can live through our chilly winters and will sometimes still be blooming in January, if the temperatures don’t get too low. With two inches of ice on my precious flowers, I figured I’d have to replant again come spring. Well, much to my surprise, as the ice thinned, color began to show beneath it—purple, yellow, white. My pansies were not only still alive, but they were thriving—using the ice as nature’s greenhouse and the sun to warm them. When the ice was finally gone, I had the biggest and most healthy looking flowers I’ve ever had. Some blooms even measured four inches across. Amazing! Those little mis-named plants should be called “toughies” because they’d gone through hard times, persevered, and come out even stronger and prettier.

So, how does this relate to writing, you ask? As people, we all encounter difficult times—sickness, the death of a loved one, finanacial struggles, the loss of our home to fire—and sometimes to ice. It’s how we face those challenges that either make us stronger or show us that we have much more to learn. It’s the same with the characters in our books. Don’t be too nice to them. They must face obstacle, challenges, things that are going to make them want to give up and turn back—and sometimes they will, but they must learn something in each situation. Maybe the heroine is not as brave as she thought. Maybe the hero figured he was ready to remarry but realizes he isn’t—just before the wedding. Or, maybe he is.

Isaiah 41:10 says: So do not fear, for I am with you; do not be dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you; I will uphold you with my righteous right hand. God never promised that we wouldn’t go through hard times, but He does promise to strengthen and uphold us.

Don’t be afraid to let the characters in your story suffer or face troubles. You know you will in real life, so use trials to make your stories more realistic. And know that when you—or your protagonist—walk through hard times—what you learn in those times will strengthen you and build character. And the next time you—or they—face difficult situations, things will be a little bit easier.

Finally a Bride, the third book in the Texas Boardinghouse Brides series, is now available. Here’s a little sneak peek:

Noah Jeffers returns to town determined to make up for past misdeeds. Will reporter Jacqueline Davis uncover his secrets before Noah can capture her heart? With nowhere else to go, ex-con Carly Payton returns to the Lookout boardinghouse. Garrett Corbett is looking for an upstanding wife, not some jailbird. What will he do when overpowered by Carly’s unassuming appeal? Be on the lookout for romance in Lookout, Texas.

Vickie McDonough is an award-winning author of 23 books and novellas. Her books have won the Inspirational Reader's Choice Contest, Texas Gold, the ACFW Noble Theme contest, and she has been a multi-year finalist in ACFW’s Book of the Year/Carol Awards. She was voted Third Favorite Author in the Heartsong Presents Annual Readers Contest in 2009. Vickie is the author of the fun and feisty. Watch for her new books from Moody Press, Texas Trails: A Morgan Family series, in which she partners with Susan Page Davis and Darlene Franklin to write a 6-book series that spans 50 years of the Morgan family. The first three books release this fall. Also, next year brings the release of a new series from Guidepost Books, Whispers on the Prairie, set in 1870s Kansas. Vickie hopes readers find her stories An Adventure into Romance.

Vickie and her husband live in Oklahoma. She is a wife of thirty-five years, mother of four grown sons and grandma to a feisty five-year-old girl. When she’s not writing, Vickie enjoys reading, gardening, watching movies, and traveling. To learn more about Vickie’s books, visit her website: www.vickiemcdonough.com

Vickie is donating an autographed copy of Finally A Bride to one lucky commenter. If you don’t win and would like to purchase the book, it’s available online at Christianbook.com, Amazon, and Barnes and Nobles and may be available in your local stores.

(for US residents only. Void where prohibited. Odds at winning depend on number of entries received)

Guest Blog - Creating Three Dimensional Minor Characters

My guest this month is the successful and talented historical romance author, Laurie Alice Eakes, who will share some fascinating ideas on making your minor characters stand out in your novels. And if you leave a comment, you will be entered for a chance to receive one of Laurie's books!

Many years ago, I attended my first writer’s conference. The workshop leaders ranged throughout the genre spectrum, and did I ever learn—about the market, about point of view, and that my characters were two-dimensional.

Ouch!

As little as I knew about the craft, I understood that was bad. So I set out to learn. I read psychology books and self-help books and books on creating characters. Yet the one point that sticks in my mind above all when talking characterization, which I learned at that conference in less than five minutes. I learned enough that when I asked writer friends what topic I should cover here, they suggested I discuss creating three-dimensional secondary characters because it was a definite strength of mine.

At that conference, a presenter talked about another author, Martin Cruz Smith. I knew Smith’s work, had read his wonderful Russian detective novels, so I sat up and listened. The teacher pointed out how Smith had something this simple to say about a one-time character, “She had a red slash for a mouth.” That’s all we got about that woman. Though out of context, the image struck me in vivid detail. I knew the sort of person who would have a red slash for a mouth—cruel, bitter, angry, hard. Surely writing three-dimensional minor characters couldn’t be that easy.

Let me insert here that I’m not talking about the supporting cast to the hero and heroine, the best friend or mom, boss or mentor, who show up in numerous scenes throughout the book, the major secondary characters. Creating those characters goes right along with creating your primary characters—with full goal, motivation, and conflict charts, require the hours of filling out a 36 part questionnaire, and the other accessories of character building.

What I’m referring to here are those characters who have small roles that are crucial to the story, despite their small stage presence.

As I began to develop my craft, I discovered creating realistic characters, who may have no more than a hundred words of dialogue and often less, takes some thought. There are few words to reach a stage where even those people who walk on, deliver a line, and walk off again come to life with a trait—a one-line description that is unique and vivid.

A unique, yet vivid characteristic is one technique. We can’t copy the red slash for a mouth, and the world abounds in descriptive phrases. The man who looks like he stepped off of the pages of an Eddie Bauer catalog. The hostess in a purple satin ball gown and matching turban. Make it fit your time period and setting and the image you wish to convey. What would you think of a guy who dressed all Eddie Bauer? Or a woman who would wear purple satin?

Physical description is only one way to present a secondary character. In my first book, Family Guardian, where my heroine is a perfumer and into scents, she recognizes an odd person by his mildewy odor. What kind a person smells like mildew? Does it evoke an image in your mind?

Then people have a manner of speaking. In Lady of the Mist, my release out next year from Revell, a character mentioned periodically throughout the story finally has on-stage presence for about two pages at the most.

“So this is the brave young lady.” A hearty British voice rang through the room.

In one of my favorite Georgette Heyer novels, Devil’s Cub, the hero’s valet goes into a monologue about the physical flaws of all his previous employers. After about three lines, one knows just the sort of person he is and is in hysterics over his fussiness and perfectionism. We know him, though he really plays no other role in the story beyond that scene.

Do you see a pattern here?

Let me give you a

hint—five senses. Employ them to make a minor character work as a real person. Though if any of you can figure out how to use taste in this regard, I’d love to hear it.

A further way to make minor characters human is through their actions. Again in Lady of the Mist, the heroine meets the hero’s uncle for the first time and is so nervous she forgets where to place her feet so as not to topple over when she curtsies.

In most fiction, the characters drive the story. That means every person who walks across the stage needs to be three-dimensional,regardless of how small the role. Pinpointing the impression you want to evoke in the reader and then using the senses and/or actions to convey that impression, will give you minor characters who nonetheless stand up and proclaim their right to live amongst the major players of the story and set your manuscript apart from the hordes.

Award-winning author Laurie Alice Eakes does not remember a time when books did not play a part in her life; thus, no one was surprised when she decided to be a writer. Her first hardcover was an October, 2006 Regency historical from Avalon Books and won the National Readers Choice Award for Best Regency, as well as being a finalist for Best First Book. After selling her first book in the inspirational market, she also wrote articles and essays for Christian publications. A brief hiatus in publishing climaxed with her selling thirteen books in thirteen months, to publishers such as Barbour, Avalon, and Baker/Revell.

She is an active member of RWA and ACFW, and started the Avalon Authors group blog. A graduate of the Seton Hill University Master of Arts Degree in Writing Popular Fiction, And a Bachelor of Arts graduate in English and French from Asbury College, she is an experienced speaker, and has made presentations at local and national RWA conferences, as well as local universities and libraries.

Until recently, she lived in Northern Virginia, then her husband’s law career took them and their dogs and cats, to southern Texas, where she writes full-time and enjoys the beach whenever possible.

Her book may be found HERE.

Leave a comment for a chance to win one of her novels. Void where prohibited. US residents only, please. Chance of winning depends on number of entries received.

Guest Blogger - Roseanna White on Finding a Character's Voice

I am pleased to welcome Roseanna White, author of A Stray Drop of Blood who will talk about the importance of finding a character's voice.

Saying it Straight: Finding a Character’s Voice

Voice is always a huge marker for me of a good writer versus a so-so one. When the words of a character flow, when they not only tell me what they’re saying, thinking, and doing, but how–and even whose head I’m in without being told–then I know it’s a strong voice. I’ve read a lot of opinions on how to “find your voice,” on dialogue, on deep POV. But for me, nothing helps me find each character’s voice like sitting back and listening.

I’ve written all kinds of characters, from coastal Southern to high-society New York, from Biblical Hebrew to Victorian-era Monagasque. My goal is always to use their thought patterns to draw a more complete picture of the character, and this is as never as simple as what they’re expressing. It’s largely about how I write those expressions.

With a minor in linguistics, I’ve learned to pay a lot of attention to things like sentence structure, word choice, and cadence. Ask anybody who has taken a course in which they had to translate a text–there are a thousand ways to phrase every idea, and finding “just the right one” is often a matter of taste and style. Should you use a contraction or not? Should you choose “right” or “just” for that sentence? Would it better capture the verb if you use simple past or past progressive?

When I was writing A Stray Drop of Blood I put a ridiculous amount of time into the language. Set in Jerusalem and Rome at the time of Christ, the common language would have been Ancient Greek. I was learning Greek for two of the years during which I was writing the book, so I had the advantage of first-hand insight into the way the language affected the thoughts expressed. It was an inside joke at our school that our thoughts would occasionally come out Greek, though in English words–we’d mix up the word order terribly, but our classmates would still understand us, because they were “thinking Greek” too. As I wrote, I wanted to somehow capture that–the way people of the era thought, spoke, and interacted.

The result is a conscious choice not to use contractions, but rather to convey formality versus casualness through word choice and arrangement. To have typical Greek replies to questions, which may sound odd to English speakers, phrases like “To me, at least, it seems . . .” peppered throughout. Lots of contrasting thoughts butting against each other, and even having my characters shift between Greek, Latin, and Hebrew to best convey the point they wanted to make at the time.

One of the highest compliments my writing has been paid was when someone said, “I knew they were French before you ever said so. They just sounded French.” That’s what I go for in all my dialogue and deep POV. That the reader will recognize that Louisa is from the Carolinas, Rem from D.C. That Abigail is obviously versed in the Greek poets, that Jason has spent a lot of time in Rome. I can only do this by knowing the word-pictures they paint for themselves, the analogies they would make, the images that fill their mind.

To me, it’s not really about finding my voice. It’s about finding theirs.

About Roseanna's book A Stray Drop of Blood

Beautiful is a dangerous thing to be when one is unprotected.

For seven years, Abigail has been a slave in the Visibullis house. With a Hebrew mistress and a Roman master, she has always been more family than servant . . . until their son returns to Jerusalem after his years in Rome. Within a few months Jason has taken her to his bed and turned her world upside down. Maybe, given time, she can come to love him as he says he loves her. But how does she open her heart to the man who ruined her?

Israel's unrest finds a home in her bosom, but their rebellion tears apart her world. Death descends with Barabbas's sword, and Abigail is determined to be there when the criminal is punished. But when she ventures to the trial, Barabbas is not the one the crowd calls to crucify. Instead, it is the teacher her master and Jason had begun to follow, the man from Nazareth that some call the Son of God . . .

Born free, made a slave, married out of her bonds, Abigail never knows freedom until she feels the fire of a stray drop of blood from a Jewish carpenter. Disowned by Israel, despised by Rome, desired by all, she never knows love until she receives the smile of a stoic Roman noble.

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Roseanna's Website