Characters: Keep on Surprising Me

When I wrote chapter 1 for my WIP, Dropping Like Flies, I was following inspiration and just spit those 1500 words out. I liked the thing, but it sat for months without me giving it much thought as I finished Sapphire Reign and jumped into an agent hunt.
Now that I'm picking it up again, I realize my character was not at all who I thought she was. I thought she was a peppy girl, left broken by abusers and now had to grapple to cope and move on. Nope. Wrong.

She's not that girl. She's jaded and angry, pissed really, even vowing to hurt those who've hurt her. Due to bottled-up pain and turmoil, she cusses like a trucker and blows my aim for a profanity-free work right out the window. She's cool one minute, furious the next. She's both withdrawn and outspoken. Oh, what. You didn't think such an oxymoron was possible? Neither did I! She's seriously a walking contradiction.

It's so weird how I had one idea and she came out with fists flying and a completely different agenda and way of doing things. She ransacked my perceptions and said, "Um, no. THIS is me. Don't like it? Too bad. Write some other story then! This is mine." She wanted a new name, so I gave. She hated her appearance, so she took it upon herself to change her look, adding magenta streaks to her hair. She sounds just like a real teenager, so I guess that's a good thing.

But wow. How did my creation get so far away from me? How does that happen? She's not real. I invented her. So, how can she shock me? How can she be so ready to own and distort the pages I'd planned when I didn't even do a character sketch? She's emerging however the hell she wants as I'm lending ink to her story. And after writing chapter 2, I had to change chapter 1 to sound like the real her.

Though she bounces from extreme to extreme and may do or think things that make her lean more anti-hero at times, her thread of decency and pain, I think, is what will make readers connect with her. She's brutally honest, real and raw. With her life in complete turmoil, with crazy things happening, she has no one to talk to, nowhere to turn, so the story she's relaying is her only outlet.

My characters always surprise me, no matter how well I think I know them. I'm only three chapters in, and I can't see where this girl takes me. I love the unexpected.

Do your character surprise you? Or am I the only freak with a pen?

~ Signing off and sending out cyber hugs.

Stir Up a Whirlwind of Curiosity

I tend to enjoy novels that have multiple threads. They are the most memorable for me. To give your book more interest and originality, consider working in some subplots to further pique curiosity in your readers and make your book harder to put down.

Let’s take a look at Dark Rivers of the Heart by Dean Koontz. Here’s the summary from my book review:

When Spencer Grant, an ex-law enforcement officer, who’s living off the grid, tries to reacquaint with Valerie Keene, a waitress who dazzled him in a bar, he discovers she’s being hunted by government officials on a mission to kill her. From what he knows of her, they can’t possibly have good reason for wanting her dead. His quest to find her makes him the target of an assassin, who works for the shadow agency hunting Valerie and kills emotionally wounded or physically hindered individuals to show them mercy.

While tracking down Valerie with his trusty, skittish dog, Rocky, by his side, the internally and externally scarred Spencer must not only uncover a buried memory that haunts his dreams and is just a breath away but also avoid the most efficient eyes and ears on the planet. Finally reuntied, he and Valerie embark on the run of their lives in a nail-biting chase. Frustrated and peeved, the assassin pulls out all the stops and drudges up Spencer’s worst nightmare to use as a snare, jerking various characters into a stomach-churning climax, leaving readers cringing and unsure as to who if any of them will survive.

Now, in this book, not only does the main character have a desire to find a woman he likes, he also must unravel the mystery of something from his past he can’t remember. Then when he finds her, he aims to win her heart and has to face the reason for his scars in order to beat the man who's out for their blood.

The book also opens us up to the antagonist's mission, a partner in crime he finds, and we learn about the flight MC's love interest is in.

The best way you build in subplots is by constructing well-rounded characters, who have many goals and desires as well as pertinent pasts. You can also have several characters with different goals, all aiming for something they want or need.

In my latest work, Sapphire Reign , I have several storylines that seem completely different and separate, like individual rainbows, but they all move towards each other and finally intersect and collide in a big dome and explosion of color.

Dig into your story and your characters to find the extra extras you can add to enhance the read. Go for depth, breadth, scope. Stir up a whirlwind of curiosity with your work. All the unmet goals will be as important to your readers as they are to your characters. Keep writing. Rock on!

~ Signing off and sending out cyber hugs.

Finding Your Characters in Questions

Sometimes characters spring to life easily through your fingertips and other times they kind of plod out without much fanfare or dimension. If you're halfway through with your story or struggling to get it going, go back to character. Even if you have a thin plot, you can make a character-driven novel interesting and gripping, as long as you make your MC someone worthy to read about and follow.

You may need to go back to the character drafting board.

You already have your who, but have you asked "what" questions? What questions are pretty generic, just digging into the surface of desire and motivation.

What does she want most?

What is or will be her biggest obstacle in getting it? Internal and external.

What does she do under pressure?

What does she fear most?

What secondary things does she want?

What will stand in her way at getting those desires?

What does she regret, dream about, fixate on, run to or escape with?

What habits enhance or hinder her choices and actions?

Once you've answered several "what" questions, you can delve deeper into the psyche by answering the "whys".

Why does she want to dye her hair pink? Why pink, why not auburn?

Why does she hate her father?

Why does she believe she'll never find love?

Why is her room painted black?

Why does she want revenge?

Answering those questions will give you a more fully developed character and spawn other questions and surprise you with things you didn't know. Once you know who your character is, what they want and why, brainstorm the hows, which takes everything you learn and puts it into action. Discovering the hows is the best way you show character rather than tell.

How will she get the attention of the millionaire when he has that selfish twit Bambi on his arm?

How will she get home or to some place safe when her car dies in the middle of nowhere, at night?

How will she get away from her kidnappers?

How will she accomplish her goal?

How will she deal with moving to a new locale?

It makes an even better story if your characters fail in their hows, if things go awry or set her three steps back. So brainstorm the "hows" of destruction and deterrence as well.

Once you answer questions as such, your characters will cease to be flat; they'll be well-rounded and seemingly real, and in knowing them so deeply, you'll then be able to build a more gripping plot in the same creative breath. Anyone can tell the difference between a stick figure and a flesh-and-blood person. Aim to create characters on the later end of the spectrum, then those babies of yours will be unforgettable.

~ Signing off and sending out cyber hugs.

Your MC Did What????

In Quincy, MA two patrons at a Mc'Donald's chucked coins and safety cones at three cashiers after receiving small fries instead of the large size they ordered. This isn't supposed to be a funny story but I laughed reading the whole article, which you can read here.

It's just such an extreme and INSANE reaction for such a small infraction, one where a simple, "Um, you gave me the wrong size fries," should fix the problem. This misalignment makes a moment of rage comical. What's even funnier is it was the second fast food altercation in the area within a four-day span. What is wrong with people though?! Seriously.

An important aspect for believablitity in fiction is stimulus and response. In order for your characters to be believable, you must provide appropriate stimuli and catalysts for story directions and the decisions and choices characters make. Keeping stimulus and response in mind, you can get your character to do anything you desire. You just need to brainstorm and come up with an appropriate stimulus.

In the movie Falling Down, Michael Douglas's character, Bill Foster, gets pushed over the edge after a hellacious morning where everything possible has gone wrong. He pulls a gun on a cashier at a fast food restaurant because they stopped serving breakfast. Such a small infraction again, but now we have a reason for the postal moment. Because the tension/stilumus was built up beforehand, it still looks as crazy as the Quincy nuts, but we can understand what made Bill snap. He's a believable and identifiable anti-hero and we follow along.

Make sure you provide the nudges your story needs to make sense and not be laughable.

~ Signing off and sending out cyber hugs.

Going to the Dark Side

Before sitting down to write any novel, I draft up complete sketches of all my characters with their likes, dislikes, background info, quirks, temperaments, etc. By doing this, I can shift into writing the story and show more, tell less. My characters can jump on stage and be who they are and I don’t try to explain them. If you don’t have fleshed out characters, it doesn’t matter how cool your plot is, no one will care enough to read on and find out about your never-seen-before twists. I’m going to talk about creating great villains because they’re just so much fun to think up and read about.

Epics and character studies show character growth, some big change or a time period I'm supposed to care about, but for me, the most compelling stories have a driving force coming against the protagonist, whether it be some greedy corporation, a massive asteroid on a collision course with earth or a relentless person hell-bent on bringing destruction and chaos to the novel‘s hero. Entra…the antagonist. [Cue Darth Vader‘s theme, because it rocks and makes this particular character seem all the more villainesque.]

Villains can be hidden in the shadows, causing misery behind a mask of obscurity until the very last page or front and center with his or her own perspective, revealing justification at every plot turn. Pure sadism is difficult for readers to believe in because a landslide of evil schemes and desires without good reason backfires and turns your Prince of Darkness into a cartoon. Presenting utter malevolence without motivation means you were lazy and didn’t bother to flesh out your bad guy. Even Hitler, one of the worst monsters in history, had motivations. Societal cleansing. A desire for a stronger Germany. European domination. In his mind his actions were justified, which is how your villain needs to be.

Think of Darth Vader. [Yes, I’m a geek and you can cue the theme music.] Has there ever been a more interesting villain in film? Well, Hannibal Lecter is up there too, but still, Vader’s evil, yet pretty cool. We understand he used to be a good guy, a Jedi, who tried to balance the Force, but succumbed to the dark side. True, we may hold some sympathy for him, but conversely, we don‘t want him to win. George Lucas is often criticized for the newer films he made, but as an artist and writer I can completely understand his use of contrast. The overabundance of Jar Jar Binks aside, Lucas wanted to show the innocent, adventurous young Jedi-to-be, then a glimpse of the man he could've been because we know the outcome and it makes Anakin’s fall to the dark side all the more tragic.

Give your villain a past, interesting facets and ideals, friends, a job, a church home, quirks and reasons for evil doing. You need to find the balance and make your villains credible, logical, and believable, yet not likable. Don’t pull back on your writing or be afraid to get inside your character’s head. Characterization and motivation need to pop to show your antagonist is capable of winning the battle and that the final outcome is anyone‘s game. That kind of uncertainty heightens suspense and gives you the perfect opportunity to showcase your hero's strengths and weaknesses by contrast.

You can make your villain a twisted reflection of your hero, both owning the same core qualities but being bent in different ways. Take Hannibal Lecter and Clarice. They’re both analytical, methodical, brilliant, never impetuous--everything must be thought out before action is taken, yet they're polar opposite in proclivity.

When you’re writing stories with a mystery thread, the villain is often unknown. Then you can look for ways to hint at evil beneath the surface to throw any character into question. The guy who’s toooo nice. The obvious suspect you just can’t read, likable sometimes, deplorable the rest. The jilted old flame, the bizarre new worker in the office, the societal outcast, the nosy neighbor, the know-it-all postman. You can also use prejudice, a reader’s inclination to make assumptions about people, to your advantage. Secret villains need to be equally enthralling, maybe more so than exposed ones. And still, provide motivation in the end.

A great way to bring some facets to your villains is to look at evil itself. Evil can be subtle, beautiful, seductive, frightening, complex, suffocating, confusing, witty, cunning. Build and draw various shades of evil. The Phantom of the Opera. Scary, but sexy and alluring, intoxicating, nearly irresistible. Your villain will appear more intriguing if you show various sides of his or her particular brand of evil. Make it unique. The better the villain, the better the hero, the better the story. Keep at it...and use the Force.

~Signing off and sending out cyber hugs.

Build Characters with Depth

Ok. You began with a good sketch of your protagonist for your plot-driven novel. As you wrote your book, he practically came alive for you and veered your story in ways you never intended, making your work exceptionally better than you'd planned, but still, something is off. Test readers, or worse, agents, are saying they loved your twists, the suspense was riveting, but your main guy was one-dimensional…not fleshed out…not believable. Hmmm? Where did you go wrong?

I've read books that were packed with conflict but not so engaging. These are generally works readers on Amazon will say were strong in plot but weak in characterization. In creative writing class, after you've made your character sketch, this is how we’re told to write. Let every scene end with some kind of disaster, where a goal is not fully met, an answer is not found, a hero turns towards certain peril. The problem with having every scene be about achieving a goal or fighting through conflict is it can leave your work feeling stark…and it probably is. All scenes need to be related to the story, they need to be pertinent, but they don’t ALL have to be about having a goal or showing a conflict. Sometimes it’s important to show a piece of a puzzle or a hunter getting closer to his prey or a phone conversation after another nightmarish date or a police officer tucking her daughter into bed at night. Don’t get so wrapped up in structure that your work can't breath and be told in its own unique way.

Unless your audience is middle-grade boys who care more about blood, battle and boogers, (Good title!), don’t cheat readers. You should aim for both solid plotting and intriguing characters. Delve deeper and find out who your characters are, who they truly are, from top to bottom, inside out and then present that to readers.

With my novel, Kings & Queens, readers are always asking me what’s happening with my characters or how they’re doing as though they’re real people. When I tell those inquiring minds I’m writing a sequel, they say they can’t wait to pick up with their lives again. What lives? They’re not alive, people! But they almost feel like they are, even to me, like they’re living off in Fantasia or a parallel universe. That’s what you want. Readers to feel like they’ve met real people and to feel a little bit sad and miss them when the ride is over.

Here are some things you can do to ensure your main characters pop off the page.

Humanize: No character, friend or foe, is all good or all bad. Characters needs various shades and facets to stand out and be believable and identifiable to readers. Your villains need to have a dash of something good, even if it's just concern for the environment, or their motivations need to be clear, and your heroes or heroines need to have flaws and weaknesses. Perfect characters are bores on the page.

Layer: Make sure you’ve peppered your narrative with your main character’s tastes, interests, contradictions, quirks, props (lucky sneakers, glasses bent just right so they don't appear crooked on his slightly uneven ears), ghosts from the past, secrets, connections to other people who never grace the pages of your book like grandmas and old lovers. Characters need to feel like real people, who have lived their lives up until the moment you started to pen their circumstances. Layering will give your characters greater depth and dimension. However, your work should NOT be so saturated that it creates drag. Attempt to show much of this or spill it out through dialogue and action. Balance is key. If a point doesn’t belong or is too obtrusive, get rid of it.

Texturize: Don’t forget to tickle the senses beyond what’s seen and heard. By showing how your character responds to chilly mist, to the wall of scorching humidity when he steps out of his hotel in Shanghai, to the salty anchovies on his boss’s pizza, to the peppery chocolate scent emanating from the kitchen where her mom is baking another batch of experimental brownies, you can add texture to both your scene and character at the same time.

Shift: Let your heroine take a detour from her mapped out sketch and break type. When pressure is applied or danger bursts in or a grim diagnosis is given, real people deal and cope in different ways. They do stupid things, make mistakes, crumble, take wrong turns, cry, turn to God, say things they later regret, backpedal, contemplate suicide. So in fiction, your characters can do this. Shake things up and surprise readers. Just remember, every major action a character takes in fiction should stem from some sort of stimulus. As long as you make your variation believable and make it seem like an appropriate response or action by your MC, readers will buy it. If your heroine becomes too wimpy or stalls too long, readers will stop caring. No one likes a wimp or a loser. Keep the story moving. Kick your MC in the butt.

Show: Are you doing too much telling? Look for places you may have been able to show what you told. Readers will become more drawn into your work if they can experience what the character does. Showing helps to transport readers into your fictional world and identify with your hero. You can reveal so much character through speech and action.

Push: Do your characters have goals? All point of view characters need to want something in order for readers to care: revenge, love, justice, one day of tranquility, an Ivy League education. Up the stakes and the opposition. Make your MC work harder to attain his goals. Show the struggle, sweat, tears, determination, disappointment, passion. Overcoming seemingly insurmountable odds makes victory all the sweeter. Don't hold back or be afraid to stack up the obstacles. That creates tension and suspense, which makes for an all around stronger work.

Expose: Get into your character's mind and explore their desires and motivations. The more fully you relay this information to readers, the more readers will care about the outcome and connect. Sometimes characters live behind a facade or they vary their persona based on the company they're in. They act prim and proper with coworkers, cut loose with friends, or they say one thing and think another. Look at The Good Son. The parents are oblivious to their son's evil bent, but little by little he exposes it to his cousin. Allow your characters to reveal their innermost selves.

Build those memorable characters. You can do it. Give your babies every chance to not only reel in readers but leave a lasting impression.

~ Signing off and sending out cyber hugs.

Make Good on Your Promise...Go Visceral

If two people enter a white room and sit at a booth to have a discussion without food in front of them, without other people around, without interruption, background clamor, color or scents, how thrilling would it be to read about, unless it's in The Matrix? How realistic is that? Not very. It's pretty sparse and empty in fact, right? But it’s done often. Too often. When a reader is invited into the world you’ve created, you’ve made a promise to them that you're going to give them an entertaining and/or thrilling ride. You’re shortchanging readers if you have naked, blank-faced blokes in barely there spaces.

When readers enter a scene with those characters talking, if you don’t have anything to ground them in the setting, then all they’re getting is TV snow. I’m not talking about adding buttloads of description, but just a few details to set the stage to show where the characters are, a few impressions to help them experience what your MC does.

If I’m not paying attention to my own work, I can be so focused on getting the dialogue right and advancing the plot, that I forget to include a little bit of spatial content or a character’s sensory observation. I’m so grateful to have critters who find these kinds of noids and voids.

If you take those two same characters, put them in a booth in a 50’s diner with a checkerboard floor, a tune playing on the jukebox, red covered chrome stools with a busy lunch crowd with greasy smells in the air, patrons yelling for things. Which one is more lively, more captivating, more realistic? The second. Readers' senses need to be tickled to get them to not only get a feel for the scene but develop a closer, more identifying bond with your characters as well. The little extras make your story come alive.

Yeah, everyone knows there are five senses. But if you think about it, there are more and various shades and blends of senses and physical and emotional triggers and experiences. So dig a little deeper.

You can have a heightened sense of awareness or dead-on intuition. People can have chemical surges, drunkenness or acid trips which alter and exaggerate senses. One can have a spiritual sensitivity to an external nudger: a guardian angel, a spirit guide, a dead grandpa or God. Some people experience spiritual sight, a higher level of consciousness or frequent epiphanies, like a thousand words flooding into the mind at once. There’s déjà vu, which I get all the time, or gut instinct. Some people can predict the weather based on what their knees tell them or the intensity of a migraine.

And there’s me, with my crazy super power. In the split second I see someone, and every time, I detect this texture in a person’s soul that triggers an instant yet momentary emotional response. Some are dull, others vibrant. Like whenever my husband walks into the room, I get a peace that’s so soft, like a dryer-fresh towel, all smelling nice and feeling warm. My best friend from college = a teddy-bear warmth. Another friend = a zippy jolt. She loves to travel and is always on the go. It can be linked to personality, interests, what a person’s going through at the time I first see or meet them or how they’ll make me feel in the future. It’s a weird sense, it’s unique and hard to pinpoint and describe even, but it’s mine.

In fiction, you can create senses people don’t normally have. In Eighteen Seconds, by George D. Shuman, a blind character can experience the last eighteen seconds of a person’s life if she touches a corpse. In Wicked Lovely, by Melissa Marr, the MC can see faeries walking among mere mortals. Characters can have normal senses or strange ones. You can use your imagination. That’s what’s so cool about fiction. You just have to make it believable. Think of ways beyond the five senses by which you can bring your work to a new height and a deeper dimension. You can find your entire plot in an invented or blended sense. And when you include sensory details, familiar and not, don’t write, he smelled, she saw, but rather lace them into the narrative.

One of the ways to get the attention of an agent, as mentioned on Anne Mini’s blog, is to have scensory impressions at the beginning of your manuscript, beyond seeing and hearing. So I wrote an intro that included many impressions. Here are some examples of sensory input from my novel Kings & Queens.

♦ Ignoring the call of fresh-baked banana bread, she turned to slink up the stairs, but her mother met her at the door, which made her grouse.

♦ Majesty bit her banana, sugary with ripeness, and followed Alec and Aislyn with her gaze as they headed toward the exit with Snapples in hand.

♦ With her mouth gagged, the taste of dirt laced her tongue. She wrestled the bonds wrapping her wrists and ankles to a chair and let out a muffled scream.

♦ He cut pieces of apple with a knife and fed them to her, and the tart Granny Smith pleased her palate.

♦ Wind delighted her, caressing her face and tickling her sense of smell as it braided with the aroma of lilacs and apple blossoms.

I’m not a writer or reader who’s enthralled with tons of description. I’ve read some works that have turned me off with an overabundance of detail, like a whole paragraph devoted to an outfit a woman was wearing. In my sequel, I’m experimenting with way more description and sensory impressions than I need for some plume stretching, but when I edit, I will burn away and cut off anything extraneous.

In the correct scheme of things, balance is key. Give enough so readers don’t feel like your characters are walking, talking and living in vacuums yet don’t smother them with detail either. With sensory imagery and description you can set tone, establish setting, paint contrast, give some uniqueness to your characters. Grounding your work with some description and sensory impressions will bring your story and characters to life. You made a promise to tell a good tale. Now you just need to fulfill it.

~ Signing off and sending out cyber hugs.

Finding Plot in Your Characters

Though characters are invented to highlight a block of moments in Fiction Land, they need to feel like they’ve existed before that time. If your MC is 24, this means 24-years worth of relationships, past experiences and events have shaped her and made her who she is in your story’s today. Build her yesterday as fully as you can. You not only have roots and depth to expose, you can find inspiration and angles of conflict you never would have considered or seen. Out of great character development, you find plot.

As an example, let’s do a sketch for a romance suspense novel.

We’ve got a heroine, a month shy of 26, 5'6", not stick thin or heavy, but a little curvier than she’d like to be from eating frozen dinners and ice cream out of the carton on nights when she feels bummed. She has golden brown hair, which falls slightly past her shoulders, jade green eyes, nicely curved eyebrows, a sweet round face. She's a college graduate, but like so many, she can't catch a break or get recognized for her talent in photography, which is her passion. She loves to capture not just beauty but true life and grit. Her main desire is to work fulltime as a freelance photographer or photojournalist so she can quit her job working for Jonesy, a sleazy investigator. She FINALLY just moved out of her parent's house and has an apartment. At least it's her own space, decorated without one gaudy flower in sight, smelling of yummy dessert candles and NOT fried onions, but it's not exactly in the best neighborhood. She would also like to find love at some point but doesn’t believe it will happen for her. She wishes to be more optimistic but turmoil seems to find her. She’s feisty, spontaneous, strong-willed but shy.

Why is she shy? Was she abandoned, abused, picked on all through school? Maybe something makes her self-conscious. A physical problem like a limp or a scar. I’ll go with scars. And she was ridiculed for those scars, so they go deeper than skin. I’ll put a scar on her left eyebrow, where she has to pencil in hair, and a few faded gouge marks on her cheek. She’s very conscious of them. She never, ever puts her hair up, preferring to style it in waves to somewhat conceal them. She usually dips her chin when talking to people she doesn’t know. She hates that she does that because she wishes to project confidence, but it almost seems to be a response she can’t control.

What caused these old scars? Fall through a glass door? Car accident? Dog attack? Dog attack seems right. That will give her a hatred and fear of dogs with which I can use to create conflict?

Who will not only compliment yet contrast her but also have a love and appreciation for dogs? Our hero will be 28, legally blind, 5' 10". He can see light and vague forms, but everything is drenched in deep, blurry shadow. He never uses a cane in familiar places. Everything's mapped out and paced in his head, like musical numbers. He lives on the heroine's hall, and since she's moved in, they've been quibbling almost every day over trivial things.

He’s adventurous and loves to shatter the limits people place on him. He lives in routine: shaves his head every morning, eats a good breakfast, always something with eggs, works out at the gym, gets his coffee black then spikes it with a dash of cayenne pepper. He's a journalist by day, gourmet chef by night. He’s chatty, witty and opinionated. He’s built and athletic. He can play a good game of 3-on-3 b-ball, learned by paces and sound. He's a little too self-assured, thinks he's Han Solo, and doesn't know when to quit.

Everyone is always complimenting his eyes, but there's no agreement on color, some say blue, others grey, others green. He knew those colors in early childhood before he lost his sight from a head injury, but they’ve become shrouded by new ones brought on by sound, colors he’s sure no one on earth has ever seen.

He can identify people long before they speak, by their footsteps, jingling keys or scent. Despite his quick ascent up the reporter ranks, people tend to treat him like he’s deaf, mentally handicapped or incapable of living alone, with the exception of his best friend Teddy, the hot dog vender on Court Street, and this little spit fire on his hall. She's never once treated him like some freak of nature. He gets kicks out of picking fights with her because she gets so easily steamed.

With a hunger to take on meatier work, he decides to get a guide dog to help him on self-imposed assignments. Suddenly his hall friend is no longer around, at all. He was getting used to her too. Not like he was going to ask her on a date or anything. Finding love is the very last thing on his mind. His previous girlfriend, who often boasted of her 15/20 vision and attractiveness, moved out nine months ago after three years and left him with nothing more than some kissoff note his crazy mother, of all people, had to read to him.

His new dog pal, Skippy, a chocolate brown retriever he's told, is cool, adept and friendly. He never barks or growls, but he gives out a little gruff any time he's called Skippy. Our hero changes his name to Bud, which seems to be more to his liking.

Just as our heroine realizes her irritation with her hallmate is actually a scorching attraction, he gets of all things, a dog. A DOG. She knows it's one of those aid dogs, but still, it's a dog, and all dogs are evil.

These two destined lovers need a plot now, something that pulls them together and additional conflicts that threaten to drive them apart.

Since he's a reporter, maybe he’s following the path of a serial killer/rapist, who’s been terrorizing woman along the East Coast. And maybe his blindness gives him a keenness for seeing things others can't. Nuances. True character. Patterns. Our guy studies the facts and sees a pattern emerge regarding location and type of girl chosen. He tells his theory to the police, but they disregard him because he’s blind, and therefore stupid. He ends up being wrong in his first guess. He persists, sure he's on to something, and learns his spunky neighbor is hunting too. When they report their joint findings to the FBI, everything around them starts to squeeze, making them think the rapist could be a high ranking official or cousin of the President or something. They're forced to go on the run while they hunt and try to prevent another slaying.

So, we’ve got these two sparring individuals and a dog stuck together, which opens up a lot of conflict possibilities and emotion. How will they deal? Will his hellcat ex enter the picture, or his overprotecting, overbearing mother? Will our girl overcome her fear of dogs, at least enough? Who's next on the raping killer's list? Is the FBI really letting him get away or is something else going on? Will he be caught and punished? Will I make the heroine doubt the man she's with? Will love find a way and win out beyond all obstacles and dogs? Will I scrap the serial killer angle altogether and go for something entirely different? A fight for survival in some catastrophe? A tag-team effort for a story and while investigating, they uncover some conspiracy? No. That last one won't work because she'd never voluntarily be anywhere near a dog. Needs to be by force, no other option.

Guess you’ll have to read my next novel. ;)

This is the start of a brainstorming session. I did all that on the fly by simply looking at her and dissecting the word shy. Then I'll take this primary workup, and go deeper, studying motivations and what makes these characters tic so I can discover ways they can help each other. Both of them are self-focused and need to break out of that mindset in order for their love to work. The hero needs to help her see the beauty in herself that she can't see. And she needs to help him to trust and to not be so averse to relying on others sometimes.

This is why getting into a character’s head and examining those whys and what-ifs is so important. It’s not just about placing a marionette into your story to fluff it out; it’s about fleshing out, examining, finding the story that’s beneath the one you want and hope to tell. Characters can shape and steer your work in completely unexpected ways and give you fresh and interesting plot ideas. So go introduce yourself and get to know those creations of yours, inside and out. Then tell that story. That's your winner.

~ Signing off and sending out Cyber hugs.

What's in a Character?

Every good character lives and breathes in his or her own fictional world and crosses the barrier of time, space and ink to reach outsiders and pull them into that world. For a character to successfully wield skills, magic and charm, be they friend or foe, fleshing out needs to occur. It's easier for some writers to do a complete sketch of their characters before ever writing one word of their novel. That's what I do. With them fleshed out, I can easily jump into the story and show who my characters are without having to explain anything. Here's a list of prompts you can use as a starting point for character makeup.

FLESH:
Full Name
Age/D.O.B.
Locale
Race, Ethnicity, Nationality
Stature
Weight/Body Build
Hair
Eyes
Consistent Props
Vices
Nervous Habits
Distinguishing Marks
Physical Traits
Overall health
Scent
Voice
Appearance
Property, wardrobe, vehicle

MIND:
Occupation
Obligations
Socioeconomic Class
Education
Intelligence Level
World Views or Religious Beliefs
Convictions
Sexual Orientation/Values
Background Info
Main Desires/Goals
Minor Desires/Goals
Typical Day

SPIRIT:
General Disposition
Personality/Temperament
Optimistic/Pessimistic?
Real/Feigned?
Morality Level
Confidence Level
Trust Level
Quirks/Idiosyncrasies
Habits
Strengths
Weaknesses
Hobbies and Interests
Recreational Activities
Likes
Dislikes
Greatest Obstacle
Greatest Fear
Motivations/Driving Force
Talents

BEYOND:
Significant Other/Relationship/Marital Status
Love interest?
Lives with?
Fights with?
Spends time with?
Wishes to spend time with?
Family members/relationships, ages, occupations, conflicts
Best Friend
Other Close Friends
Acquaintances
How does he/she view his family, friends, boss/co-workers, employees?
How is he or she seen by others?
By Society?

This is just a beginning list. Even if you never put most of these elements into the narrative or reveal them in dialogue, keeping them in mind when you're writing will help you think of your characters as real people and present them as such. But don't just fill in the answers and assume you're done. Delve deeper and find out the darkest, coolest, most fascinating aspects of your characters and make sure all that comes to the surface in your work. That's pure creative breath. That's what will make your work stand out and your characters unforgettable.

~ Signing off and sending out Cyber hugs.