Character and Setting Specifically: Books and Lists

Many elements go into sculpting the characters and setting of a book. As I’m in the middle of learning the characters in the fourth book in my series, I’m finding new truths and new ways to put depth in character and setting.

For character and setting to become real, it takes specificity added with a light hand. To do that, I must know these details, not just pick interesting details out, but I must know them in the history of the character, in the history of the setting. It is a backstory, of sorts. It isn’t just the cabin, the landscape; it is the character’s feelings and attitude, too. It isn’t just the character moving through the story; it is the emotions and reasons when a character reaches for a hairbrush or a shotgun.

Sometimes, especially when I’m first sculpting a number of characters to people a book, I need some triggers.

A few tools I use before the Interview Worksheet or Character Worksheet:

Lists: I make lists, many lists, and lists of tens:  ten articles of clothing, pets, likes, hates, favorites

For ideas, I look through My Listography, My Amazing Life inLists by Lisa Nola or Listography, Lisa Nola, The Book of ME, A Do-it-yourself Memoir.  I do either/or, even both, with my main characters. 

I, also, look through, Who Are You? by Malcolm Godwin (1001 ways of seeing yourself).  Which reminds me of an interview I read with Anson Mount about how he has developed his character in Hell on Wheels. (I found this such an interesting approach, and as I’ve thought the way actors develop character very helpful to a novelist’s development of character, I remember it.)He thinks of himself as a horse. Horses react in specific ways as horses, they’re watchful, and have their own set of rules for right and wrong, their honest in the horse world. A little research or knowledge of animal behavior helps with this.

 There is a chapter in, Who Are You? titled The Animal That Hides in Your Heart, that explains animal personality (according to the Chinese)—the positive and negative. (I sometimes get the feeling the writers of the TV show Grimm read this chapter, then gave it a tweak. The show uses fairy tale characters rather than animals. How do they act in the old fairy tale stories? This is then what hides in their heart. Another chapter that’s great is titled, Do Your Emotions Rule You? Well, do they rule any of my characters? If they do, then this is how they will react to this or that happening in my book and it is how they reacted when such and such happened in their backstory. Other layers to characters and their actions, emotions.

There are chapters on horoscope, palm reading and questions such as: do you think with your feelings or are you imaginative, good at letting go?

On setting, too.  I try to be specific with detail and how it relates to my character, how they relate to the details of setting. So I have to look at setting, through my eyes, through my characters’ eyes and emotions.  I take tons of pictures. I use a magnified flashlight and study old pictures of the time period I’ve seeped myself in.

Another book for setting I love to use is Curious Lists, but I tweak the lists for settings, such as ten places you could hid in, ten places you could hid money or valuables in, ten places in need of repair in the setting, ten places just repaired, ten sounds, tens signs of seasons.

Another tool for both character and setting is simple observation and note taking. I make notes of actions in every kind of setting and situation.  I make more lists of particular settings: ten things I noticed first, then things it took a while to notice, ten sounds I heard first, last, ten gestures of people in the scene, best guess of conversation, emotion, etc.

You are unique. Just like everybody else. —Anon

Sculpting Characters

As I retype/rewrite the first book in my Heart’s series during the morning hours, the characters for the last book are beginning to form. After a morning of rewriting, I work on character sketches and plot for that fourth book. Something about doing that is giving depth and clarity to the first book.

I’ve been delving into my tear sheets and workshop notes, compiling them into one document of concentrated notes and information about character development, mostly as reminders. Truth is I know most of it by heart and only need a nudge or two to implement it. I have five different character worksheets from the workshops and conferences. Each similar, each with one or two smart items the others didn’t have. I consolidated the whole of them into my own worksheet and deep-sixed the lot of them.

I had to take a deep breath, exhale and close my eyes to do it, but I never really used them anyway. I held on to them though, as if that would be the secret to wonderful character development. But really, what works for me is what’s best, right? I did the same with the character interview. I sorted and shifted through the stack of them I had, wrote my own with some of the questions on the worksheets and some of my own, then tossed the old ones.

It has been liberating and frightening. I’m so worried I’ll forget something and yet, I did this once before on setting a scene. I read and studied everything I had gathered in all the workshops, classes and conference pertaining to setting struggling to write perfect settings for the scenes of my book, only to realize I was perfecting the heart and soul and me out of the scene, so I tossed everything and made my own checklist. Sure, some of the suggestions were there, some of my own ideas were, too, and that made all the difference in the way I felt about my story.

It’s time. Time to trust what I’ve learned and now, I must let it spin out from me. All right, I’m a little insecure—a lot insecure. After all, I have not published in novel form. Maybe, trust is the secret.

On that note: Several years ago, I read an essay printed in the paper. It changed the way I sculpt character more than anything else I’ve ever heard, better than the best writer’s workshop or lecture, better than every book I’ve ever read on character development. The title: Take Time Today to Reflect upon Best Memories by Bob Swift. It was a Christmas essay, just a list of Swift’s best memories. It tugged at my heart, took me back, made me smile and cry. It was perfect. It was amazing at just what it was, but it got me thinking. I knew this man. I had some of the same memories.

 With that one essay, I knew Swift’s history, age, attitude, loves, childhood, and heartbreak. I knew he liked Louis Armstrong’s horn, dogs, mountain mornings, walking in the rain, New York delis, and the color red.

Had he written a sister essay of his dislikes, I would have known him even better. That beautiful, simple essay, written as if I was sitting across from him, (though Swift even added rhyme and rhythm, bless him) in his words was the perfect character sketch. It was so simple in form and intention.

It’s my gold standard, my blueprint for character sketch. Two essays written from a character’s voice about best and worse memories. It works better, for me, than the interview, although the interview as a guide can help you remember all you need to include, if you tend to forgetfulness.

I read an article many years ago, can’t remember from which magazine, but the article talked about getting addicted to books on writing. Reading them rather than writing. Trying everything in every one. It is tempting. I’ve even tried; think it would spell success for me. I always go back to the way I think and work, no matter my determination to be ‘better’. I likely always will. So, along with cleaning out of my files, I’m taking hard looks at many of my writing books. I must admit, I love reading them. The writing and the passion in some of them gets my juices flowing, gives me that kick in the pants everyone needs, but they don’t get the words down, do they?

All I am doing is pointing. You must find it true yourself. —The Buddha

Epiphany

For me, building a story starts with character and I love building new characters. Figuring how they look, feel, react. Seeing their backstory, feel it from their point of view. I, even, love how the idea of the character, the first beginning seed, nags and tickles and seeps into my mind and just won’t let me go. I love the way it makes me feel that I’m in my world and theirs, too, for long periods of my day.

I love that tension, that urgency I feel as the character/story grows, has needs and wants that I have to fulfill. That I have to research, find, makeup. Only it doesn’t really feel like making things up. It feels like uncovering or excavating this hidden story. And there is always this intensity, this craving to find it all, right now.

Since I began rewriting the first book in my Hearts series, I’ve been in that state and it took me by surprise. When I began the series many years ago, I knew there were four brothers and I knew three of their stories, but the fourth eluded me. Most because I had a hard time visualizing the fourth brother, Gallagher. He was there, but his face was blotted out and every time he was in a scene, I struggled with his actions and motives. Who was he? What did he want?

But as I do, I just kept stepping forward; driven by the other stories I thought I knew. There was so much I loved about this series and the three books I finally finished, yet when I sent them out, I didn’t have great luck. At the time, Western Historicals had fallen out of favor, too, but I just kept writing.

It wasn’t until I started rewriting that I finally saw the fourth story, the fourth brother and that the stories, though separate, intertwined, and of course they did. Lives are like that, though each brother’s story was his own, it couldn’t really be told completely until I knew Gallagher’s. It didn’t matter that none of them happen simultaneously, that Gallagher’s story was the last chronologically. What mattered was they were family and what happened to one affected all.

An epiphany.

Plot springs from character…I’ve always sort of believed that these people inside of me—these characters—know who they are and what they’re about and what happens, and they need me to help get it down on paper because they don’t type. —Anne Lamott, novelist and essayist

Now, Break It

So, after all that planning for the New Year and the writing in my planner a loose schedule, all that hope for weight loss and writing gains, I’m into this New Year life one week and I’ve ditched it all. Well, not really, but sort of.

See, I did all the planning for a reason and that was to push it aside and instead—don’t plan but do. The plan showed me what I want, but all the pieces of papers and calendars and planners can’t make me do a thing. Only I can. I wanted to see my plan and I wanted to break it. Break it into little pieces I could swallow up with determination and hope.

And then I started. I dusted off the old Western Historical Romance Series I wrote many years ago, the one I mentioned last week, all right. As I said, I read the three books I’d written, jotted down a ton of notes, found the gold mine of editors comments, I made notes and started an outline for the fourth book, but best of all, I started rewriting the first book in the series.

At first, I stumbled, undecided. Did I copy, correct and work over, or did I start over? Open a new document and start typing? There were advantages either way and the idea of completely rewriting a 100,000-word manuscript was daunting and yet….

The idea of starting fresh wouldn’t let me go and so, disregarding my carefully noted schedule, I opened a new document, typed in Virginia City, NV, October 1875. From that moment, my fingers have galloped away with the story. I know it. I know it better. I know where it’s going, all of it, including the last story.

I was so afraid it would be a little same old, same old story new year. I didn’t want that. I don’t think my writing could stand that. I think I had a little of that editing Ella and the Tie-down Man at the last. While I love the story, it had been with me too much through a bad time in my life and I needed it finished. I worry that will come across in the finished product, but for now, I must move on. I’ve sent it out in the world. I have to see how it is received. If not well, I may have to begin again or leave it.

For now, I move forward with this series. Like so many long distance races, it’s the finishing that’s important, but you can’t finish if you never start.

New Year, New Resovle

Everywhere there is a reminder that with the New Year there are certain expectations of self-improvements. Television and newspaper ads, internet popups and your own mind all nip at you. And we all expect that of ourselves, for now, but it’s hard to stick with any of it—the weight loss, exercise, saving money, time management, organization and purging clutter. The year begins with the hope and thoughts, with those goals.

And maybe, it is all doomed for failure, but even a little, tiny, smidgen of a change for the better is good. And so I begin and with the first thing, the fun thing, the hopeful thing: My yearly planner—A new one—pretty, smart, well suited to me. This year it’s purple—for no other reason than it caught my eye and it’s different from the hundreds of others I’ve had over the years. There are big splashy tulips across the front and randomly through the pages. It makes me smile.

First order of business: My quote from Josey Wales (The Outlaw Josey Wales) taped to the inside: Now remember, when things look bad and it looks like you’re not gonna make it, then you gotta get mean. I mean, plumb, mad-dog mean. “Cause if you lose your head and you give up, then you neither live nor win. That’s just the way it is. A good quote for any circumstance, don’t you think?

Then, a quote from me, just below that: Be a different writer, just for a moment and surprise even yourself. And finally a quote by Bernie S. Siegel, M.D.: In the face of uncertainty, there is nothing wrong with hope.

On the title page, up in the left-hand corner: You can be bitter or better, and on the right-hand upper corner: Writing begets writing.

Next, I read last year’s goals and give myself credit for all that I did accomplish—No, I celebrate. Never do I let myself dwell too long on those things I didn’t get done. Last year is over and done. I wait to write down my goals for this year. Time enough for that tomorrow or next week. If I do it too soon, I’ll put too much on the list, things that might not be best for me, but in the heat of the moment and to fit into the rest of the world, I’ll listen to the hype and ads.

 Instead, I read my planner and write down those things that still have a meaning for me. Like the message on the last page. I know it’s from three planners ago and yet the bullet points apply to every difficult situation, even, especially, writing:

(MPGN) For Chronic Illness:

•             Get support

•             Don’t forget to breathe          

•             Get an advocate

•             Get a second opinion 

•             Become an expert

I enter anything the needs to be done regularly during the year: computer cleaning and tune-up, file purge, yearly contests. And I figure out a loose weekly plan.

Once my book is exactly how I want it I sit back and smile because I’ve begun and that’s the hardest part.