Ogres Are Like Onions...

I haven't written much these past two weeks. My new job (yay!) involves co-teaching algebra, and assisting students taking virtual geometry and calculus classes. I love it, but my evenings have been full of numbers.

Lots of numbers. And then more numbers.

If Math were a guy, we'd be dating. He might even be meeting my parents.

Which is why it's lovely to play with words again.

Rachelle Gardner had a great post about proactive or re-active characters. I realized that in the beginning of the novel I'm working on, it's easy for me to let my MC fall into a reactive position. (No surprise to the Slushies- we've discussed this.) Now, part of that is because the story begins with my MC trapped in a completely new life. It can be hard to be active when your world's been upended. Sometimes, there's a period when you're just trying to get your bearings.

However, I think I've found a way to think about internal action. edittorrent had a great post on the layers of a character, using astrology as an example. I don't know diddly about astrology, but the idea is that each person has three aspects to them.

There's the sun sign, which represents their "core personality" and basic traits. I concentrate most often on this part of a character.

But then comes the interesting stuff. The ... (I'm looking back at the post- you really should read it.)

.... rising sign. This is what others notice about your character- first, second impressions. It also includes the persona your character wants others to see.

Then, finally, there's the ... (yes, I'm looking again)

... moon sign. This is what your character hides from others. It's what s/he doesn't want others to see. Doesn't mean it's bad, just something your character is embarrassed about. It's what makes your character blush or run for the hills.

Isn't that great? It really gave me another way to continue to wrap my brain around my characters.

And, bringing this back to active characters...

It gives me a way to keep my MC active. Even in a completely disorienting situation- when there isn't much physical action that can be taken- there can always be the tension between what she wants others to see and what she's afraid they'll discover- what even she is afraid to discover.

That sort of thing can make even the most basic conversation pop.

So what do you think? Do you like this way of looking at characters? What are some things that your characters are trying to project? What are they trying to hide? (I think that hiding part is my favorite.)

Scenes with Many Characters

It's so exciting! I'm writing the final chapters of my book--you know, the ones where all the action happens and everything gets resolved. Practically every character in the book shows up for these scenes and well, I keep writing myself into sticky situations.

I find myself trying to turn each scene into a two-person dialogue and ignore the rest of the characters. They're just standing around the room watching. You'll never miss them, will you?

I think I slip into doing this because two characters, even three, are manageable for me. I'm scared of more people. Maybe this mirrors how I am in social siturations, but let's not get into that.

So, I need help. How do you juggle five, nine, fifteen characters in a scene? They all want to do or say something at the same time, but there's not enough room on the page, or in my brain.

I welcome any and all tips, tricks, advice, or thoughts on how to do it. Or examples of writers or books that do it well. How do you avoid making a tangled mess?

Compelling Characters

Thanks to the recent flurry of blog postings, I've been thinking a lot about character--the ones I'm writing and the ones I have most adored to read.

Piggybacking on Sarah's post on quiet characters (March 10th), here are a few of my thoughts on what makes characters compelling, quiet or not.

1. They fail and keep trying. We don't want to read about people who get everything right the first time, nor do we like characters who give up too easily. Success in the end is so much more rewarding if we've been with the character through failure after failure. And that's how they learn and grow. Hence, a satisfying character arc.

(Sounds simple, eh? But right now I'm having a hard time allowing my mc to fail. I just don't want to write those scenes, or I rush through them so quickly they become eyeblink failures. I haven't figured out why yet, but I'm working on it.)

2. They have unique reactions to situations. I love it when a character surprises me, when they do something I wouldn't have thought to do. It makes me want to keep reading to find out why. On this, the author must deliver. It's not enough to tell me, "she lashed out because she felt trapped." Show me the buildup, so I feel it physically with the character. Then, when she slaps her own mother, I'm surprised, but I understand what drove Miss Mabel Clark to do such a thing.

3. The strange things that happen when I compare them to myself. When I read a character and find nuggets of myself there, especially those things I'm not proud of (or too proud of) or quirks that I try to keep hidden--that I find compelling, particularly when it's something I didn't even realize about myself until the author worded it so beautifully.

Or, there's the flip side. When a character is so utterly different from myself, their mind working in a completely different way, I want to keep reading to find out what this fascinating creature will do next. Of course, there's lots of in-between, but I'm always looking for myself in characters, and the compelling part is either finding it or so totally not finding it.

Which brings me to the thing I need most from a character in order to like them:

4. I need to understand them. Or at least feel that I'm beginning to. This is what the author must do--make me understand. Because the moment I start understanding a character, I feel connected, and it is this connection that makes me keep reading. (I will keep reading for other things--intriguing ideas, a dynamite plot--but it's not the same as caring about a person.)

Even if the character does horrible things, I can roll with it as long as I understand why (and it's a plausible reason). Even if they're completely wrong, I'll likely stick with them as long as they have some fervor to their belief. In Les Miserables your sympathies are with Jean Valjean, the escaped convict who didn't do anything all that bad. But you can also completely understand Javert, the by-the-book police officer chasing the "dangerous" convict. And it's because Hugo made me understand Javert.

I'm sure I have more criteria for likable characters, but I'll stop for now. And of course, we're all different. I have hated some characters that other people seem to love. (I couldn't stand that mamby-pamby Kite Runner mc and would have stopped reading if it weren't for the story.)

But really, I'll stop now.

Quiet characters

So first off, I should say we had a great meeting this evening. (Thanks to Michelle for attending to the technical difficulties with Skype.) Lisa was happy; Daylight Savings doesn't begin for a bit in the Netherlands, so she joined us at the early hour of 11:30 pm rather than the normal half-past midnight. 

But let's talk about me.

And quiet characters. I like them. They're interesting and conflicted and there's so much going on inside! My main character in The Looking Glass, Elsbeth, is quiet in the first few chapters. She's quiet anyway, but it counts more in the first chapters because I want readers to, you know, read. 

So I've been thinking about how to make quiet characters engaging. It started with Nathan Bransford's post on unsympathetic characters where Merry Monteleone commented that she also didn't like characters who "aren't strong enough for the task until midway through the novel."

Some of us begin our novels with 40 pages of throat-clearing. Others have 40 pages of figuring out what to do with the MC. So, like Pooh, I thought, thought, thought about some favorite quiet characters of mine: Anne Eliott (Persuasion), Sara Crewe (A Little Princess), and Ani (Shannon Hale's Goose Girl). Here's what I came up with for keeping quiet- even weak!- characters interesting.

1. They should have some strengths- even if they aren't recognized, even if they don't use them. Anne Eliott holds her family together. She's a sensible (though mostly ignored) voice at family discussions, and has a better understanding of her family than they do. Ani knows animal speech. It doesn't help her with life at court, but there's a sense- right from the beginning- that she possesses a powerful gift. Anyway, I had patience with both Anne and Ani because I knew they had some substance. I wanted to be there when their worlds encountered that substance.  (Why does that remind me of something hitting a windshield?)

2. They know they're weak.  Ani knew she couldn't interact with people as a princess should. Her distress that she couldn't make small talk with members of court, speak persuasively , or defend herself kept me reading.  It immediately introduced internal conflict. This is very different from characters who are upset about bad circumstances. Upset about circumstances = whiny. Upset that weakness caused circumstances = intriguing, at least for a few more chapters.

3. They're quiet because they choose to be. I still remember the first time I read the scene where Miss Minchin boxes Sara's ears, and Sara just looks at her and laughs. I almost wanted to have my ears boxed just so I could respond the same way. (Almost.) There's a big difference between someone who can't respond to a situation and someone who won't. I think the key to making such scenes work is to have significant provocation, and a clear sense of what the MC is doing instead of responding. (In Sara's case: what if Miss M had just struck a real princess?) If the reader doesn't know how the MC is handling the provocation, the MC will seem vacuous. 

(Can I add a pet peeve here? Please, please, don't let your MC's consistent internal response be snarkiness: someone puts her down and she has a scathingly sarcastic reaction in her narration, or to her friends, or in her diary. Sarcasm is fun to write, but it seems an easy- and often overdone- way to make a MC interesting.)

That's what I have so far. It's helped me to concentrate on what Elsbeth, my MC, is doing, rather than what she isn't. It keeps (I hope you agree, Slushies!) her an active, engaging character, even if she isn't saying much.

And please, I'd be happy to read your thoughts on how to keep a quiet character interesting. I need all the help I can get.