Bear with me as I move through a chain that I hope connects in the end:
At the beginning of every Intrigue there is a Cast of Characters where you give a thumbnail sketch of the character and because it's suspense, try to inject some mystery or unanswered question. Example: "Harry Potter--this young boy is about to discover something about himself that will change the course of his life. Will it also lead to his untimely death?"
These are written after the book is completed. You choose eight or nine main characters and write something about each of them, attempting to make them sound like the bad guy or a hapless victim or a part of some large subversive plot--you get the idea.
I'd already sent off my last book when I started this process a week or two ago. For the first time, I found myself struggling with the main two characters--how much to reveal, etc… After dithering around for ages, I decided to take care of the minor characters first and therein lies my tale.
I began with this example:
George Abbot--he's Julia's boss and former lover and will do what it takes to watch her back."
The light bulb in my head began to glow. I couldn't say "former lover" because I'd made it clear they were never lovers. I also couldn't say something like "Never fully recovered from their aborted love affair, George seems to be a friend--but is he?" because I had made it very clear he was way over her and had a new girlfriend he was crazy about.
I had gutted my options early on and most efficiently. And not just for George. I was on a roll, I gutted almost everyone! Oops.
I knew I could fix this in the editing process though it would have been %100 easier to fix it before I sent it. That's when the bulb in my head not only glowed, it started blinking: Wait. Perhaps in the past, I've used the cast list to tweak my characters. Perhaps because I did it before the book was sent, making correction and tweaking a simple matter, I never gave it another thought.
Which got me to thinking. Wouldn't making a cast list as you go along, whether for Chick Lit, straight romance, mystery or humor--whatever--wouldn't it help see the facets of your characters that need to be nurtured and kept? Might it not point out that Grandma's crankiness is integral to her personality and WARNING, WILL ROBINSON, keep it up? Or that the heroine's troubled past should be left up in the air as a possible red herring? Might it not be a useful tool in a writer's arsenal to keep a check and balance on the characters and maybe even suggest aspects that would make them a lot more interesting?
But even more exciting, might it not be very useful when it came to securing that most important of matters, something more integral to your book, to your reader's enjoyment, to the salability of your work than using the proper adverb or aborting a dangling participle or creating lyrical narrative (all very nice things indeed.) I speak of FOCUS (also known as POV though the two are different. I think.) Might not that cast of characters help define each character's focus?
Exercise: Four people are standing around talking. Choose the place and the people. For example, four people are talking about buying a horse. Now give each person a very clear focus. In my example, one person wants desperately to sell this horse because it bites. Another wants to keep the horse, to heck with the biting, there's love involved. The third wants to buy the horse, but at a bargain price though he/she doesn't know about the biting. The fourth wants to get one of the others off alone so she/he can shoot them dead.
Think of how their conversation would go as each angled for what they wanted from the others. There are a million permutations. Might the one who loves the horse try using overt guilt to get the seller to reconsider? Or might they reveal the biting to the buyer to make the horse less appealing? Or might they be so devastated that they barely say a word and the seller ultimately caves in to their quiet desperation? Each take on this one chacarter's POV will influence the other's dialogue and thus it creates a real conversation.
That's my example, yours can be anything you want. You have four days. While the DH watches football, the dogs wail at the moon, or the kid's break their Christmas toys, try this. Create a conversation giving each character a voice that focuses on their unique POV as long or as short as you like. Then create a cast of characters and see how you did keeping true to your focus. Or do it the other way around. It's up to you. And if you hate homework assignments, then just sign in and share something because I'm with Paty, this blog has been way too quiet lately!
Happy New Year, everyone.
