Mary Rosenblum

Good morning all! Welcome to our Tuesday Lunchbox Forum and you don't know how GLAD I am to be here!

Mary Rosenblum

I had a malware attack that got past my Norton Antivirus and escaped scans by every high-end scanner my computer PhD son could send me to.

Mary Rosenblum

So I had to reformat the hard drive and start over. Everything that could go wrong went wrong. SIgh.

Mary Rosenblum

So I'm still putting the pieces back together, which is why you didn't get an email notice that the Newsletter is up. And it is up.

Mary Rosenblum

You'll get a reminder of Simon Rose's chat with me this Thursday.

Mary Rosenblum

But I imagine we'll have a pretty small house today, since I didn't remind folk that the chat is taking place.

Mary Rosenblum

A lot of students ask me about characters...should they come first, do you create them after you have the story figured out.

Mary Rosenblum

It works both ways.

Mary Rosenblum

Sometimes the story comes to you first. Sometimes the characters come to you first and you have to find a story for that person.

Mary Rosenblum

Whatever works, works. BUT...

Mary Rosenblum

not all characters are suitable for all stories.

Mary Rosenblum

One of the big problems I see in stories by novice writers is that they character they have fallen in love with simply does not work for a particular story.

Mary Rosenblum

So they make the character do what the plot demands or they let the character run away with the story, wrecking the plot arc.

ltsonya

what's the best way to spot that your character doesn't 'work'?

Mary Rosenblum

You're not going to spot it unless you have created a solidly real character. And then you really have to think about what's going on. That's why it happens so often.

Mary Rosenblum

The writer doesn't realize what he/she is doing.

Mary Rosenblum

It is a good idea to continually ask yourself 'would my character really do this?'.

Mary Rosenblum

And think about it so that your answer is honest.

Mary Rosenblum

Say your character is a quiet kid, kind of shy, not very physically aggressive.

Mary Rosenblum

There's a problem at school. A little kid is getting picked on by bullies. Your character intervenes, decks the bully, and gets the little kid safely home.

Mary Rosenblum

Well...would your character really do this?

Mary Rosenblum

He spends his free time playing computer games, he's not very social, he has been the target of bullies in the past, and he's a wimp physically.

Mary Rosenblum

Is it really likely that he'd do this or would he go tell a teacher or simply go home feeling sorry for the kid because he's been there, too?

Mary Rosenblum

So you have this situation. What do you do?

Mary Rosenblum

You have choices.

Mary Rosenblum

You can change the plot.

Mary Rosenblum

He goes home feeling sorry for the kid and later on, he meets up with the kid and somehow makes up for this moment when he did nothing. Or the kid makes him aware of his failure and initiates a character change.

Mary Rosenblum

You have changed the plot to suit the character.

ginas

why wouldn't I be able to spot that?

Mary Rosenblum

Well, you SHOULD be able to spot it, and hopefully you will. But you'd be amazed how many novice writers don't. :-) And this is an example, so it's a bit more obvious than many charcter/plot interactions in a real story.

Mary Rosenblum

Your other option is to force the character to act against his nature.

Mary Rosenblum

Say he's full of resentment for the bullying he has endured. This little kid pushes him over the edge and he leaps at the bully as all the pent up rage bursts out.

Mary Rosenblum

He may get clobbered since he's not a skilled fighter, but he has stopped the bully from beating up on the little kid and he's done it in a way that suits his character

Mary Rosenblum

rather than turning into Superman suddenly.

Mary Rosenblum

So you have left plot and character intact and made the interaction plausible. You'll probably have to go back and weave in some foreshadowing that he could blow up if pushed too hard.

ginas

so you need the right build up for him to step out of charecter?

Mary Rosenblum

Exactly!

Mary Rosenblum

You have made a seemingly implausible action plausible. Usually it requires foreshadowing, weaving in hints that this could happen ahead of time.

Mary Rosenblum

Your third choice is to change the character.

Mary Rosenblum

Now our kid is not shy, retiring, a computer nerd, a wimp.

Mary Rosenblum

He's a quiet kid who volunteers at the local animal shelter, he does what he perceives to be the right thing, but he's not the school star in any way.

Mary Rosenblum

As he sees the bully picking on the little kid, he knows he can't just walk away, even though he'll probably get in trouble for fighting. So he steps in.

Mary Rosenblum

Here, you have changed the character to suit the plot.

keslas

Is it best, then, to wait until you have a solidly developed character before you write your story? How do you know if your character is solidly developed?

Mary Rosenblum

It depends. Yes, you need to develop your characters solidly before you start ANY story or they'll be plot puppets right from the get-go.

Mary Rosenblum

But in my experience, no character is completely developed until the end of the first draft. That's what revisions are for. :-) To make everything consistent in the end.

Mary Rosenblum

But what if the story idea comes to you first?

Mary Rosenblum

Then you really need to think about what that story will require of your character.

Mary Rosenblum

Will he need to be active and athletic? Well maybe our computer-nerd kid without any physical skills isn't quite the right choice.

Mary Rosenblum

Maybe the quiet kid who helps out, plays sports but never stands out, is a better choice.

Mary Rosenblum

Is that character going to need to make quick decisions in a crisis situation?

Mary Rosenblum

Maybe that character who lacks self confidence and lets others lead isn't right.

Mary Rosenblum

Of course you can force that character to act against his/her nature. That powers a lot of novels. You see that theme in Fantasy particularly.

Mary Rosenblum

And YA of course.

k c morlock

I hear a lot about writer's who have characters taking over, doing what they want to do, mine are not allowed to run loose and wild, ever, am I missing a writer's rite of passage?

Mary Rosenblum

No. My characters don't run away either. Or rather, if they do, they get removed and shelved until I can give them a story that works for them!

Mary Rosenblum

What that really means is that the author had the wrong character/story pair and he/she let the characters decide what story they worked well in.

Mary Rosenblum

You can do that. But most likely you'll end up with a sprawling story that is going to require a lot of revision in order to construct a tight plot arc.

Mary Rosenblum

That amounts to rewriting. Something I am highly allergic to. (I'm lazy). I don't mind revision I try to avoid rewriting!

Mary Rosenblum

I have removed characters more than once when it became clear that the character I had created didn't suit this story.

Mary Rosenblum

Now that happens much less often.

Mary Rosenblum

As you gain experience you'll know what a particular story demands in terms of character and you'll create one that suits.

Mary Rosenblum

Conversely, you'll create stories to suit the character who sprang full-blown into your imagination while you were raking leaves. :-)

Mary Rosenblum

I write both ways -- character first and story first.

snow

What if you can't find a suitable story for the characters that scream in your head to write about them?

Mary Rosenblum

Tell them to shut up or give you a story idea to work with. :-)

Mary Rosenblum

What I am really saying is that you do need to wait until you have a story that will work with them.

Mary Rosenblum

Otherwise they're wasted. The story will fail because everything doesn't work together.

k c morlock

many writing courses suggest starting with a character and putting them into a situation, does that enocurage the 'run away' character problem?

Mary Rosenblum

Not really. That's a perfectly valid way to start a story when you have a cool character and you don't know what to do with him or her.

Mary Rosenblum

Think about ways to make that person's life difficult. See what happens. I tend to do this in my head before I start typing, but that's how I start stories where I have a character and nothing else.

Mary Rosenblum

I'll throw conflicts at that person until one sticks and I get an 'aha' moment.

Mary Rosenblum

Sometimes that process takes me days or even a couple of weeks.

Mary Rosenblum

Where you get 'run away' is if you simply start writing.

Mary Rosenblum

THe story can wind on and on as you kind of grope for something strong.

k c morlock

in your book Horizons, for example, did you create the world your MC lives in along with her character or did she come first and the world later?

Mary Rosenblum

The story came first there...and it started as a short story, not a novel. (It was published in Asimov's first as Green Shift

Mary Rosenblum

In this case, I had to create a character who would reveal the orbital platform world that I wanted to play in.

Mary Rosenblum

So I needed a newcomer who would see with the same naive eyes as the readers, but someone who was driven by an agenda and would be ensnared by the story.

Mary Rosenblum

Thus my main character was born.

Mary Rosenblum

And I needed a strong character who was a insider and had a lot of power, but was able to play outside the rules.

Mary Rosenblum

So I ended up with my other MC.

cherokeeoutlaw72

What if you have a character that works well with your story and then you realize you don't like that character, what do you do?

Mary Rosenblum

That's a challenge, outlaw. I just worked on a very nice urban fantasy from a talented student of mine. Great story, but he didn't like his character much and boy did it show.

Mary Rosenblum

Because he didn't like the guy, we readers didn't really care if he succeeded or not and the story lacked the power it might have had.

Mary Rosenblum

So I told him that he had to redo the character and find a way to like him. I told him to put himself in that situation and figure out how he would have gotten there.

Mary Rosenblum

That will allow him to identify with the MC and make that person more likeable and real. Sure, he's flawed, but we can like a flawed person.

Mary Rosenblum

It can be painful to put yourself inside the skin of someone you don't really care for and figure out how YOU came to be this person, but it can sure do a lot for the way you see the character.

Mary Rosenblum

If there's no way at all that you can see yourself in this role, then you probably need another MC.

Mary Rosenblum

Every real character carries traces of the author. If you can't find any connection between you and this person, that character is never going to seem dimensional to the readers.

Mary Rosenblum

I deleted an entire novel draft from my hard drive and tossed the manuscript because I had the wrong character.

Mary Rosenblum

It was 'Chimera' my second novel.

Mary Rosenblum

I had used a woman from a short story, something I do often.

Mary Rosenblum

But she was simply too wary and defended to ever trust in the way the novel plot demanded her to trust.

Mary Rosenblum

The novel simply did not work because she was too wary.

Mary Rosenblum

It would have felt forced to have changed the character and kept the exact same scenes...they were scenes created for the wrong character and the suited her, but didn't suit the story as a whole.

Mary Rosenblum

So I trashed the draft and started over with a new character who wasn't so hardened.

rae

Can a novel work with 3 MCs?

Mary Rosenblum

Sure, rae. It's about three times the work to make them real, but you can do it. Remember that just because you CAN do it does not mean you WILL do it.

Mary Rosenblum

Readers need 'quality time' with your characters and if they skip around from MC to MC a lot, it doesn't happen.

Mary Rosenblum

You see multiple MCs mostly in strongly plot driven novels.

Mary Rosenblum

Quest fantasy where you have a whole group on a quest often use that form.

Mary Rosenblum

The characters are vivid and memorable, but not deeply developed, and it's the story as a whole that carries the weight of the novel, not the character/reader engagement.

Mary Rosenblum

My friend Jay Lake's fantasy is like that.

Mary Rosenblum

Strong, cool plots, but not a lot of deep characterization.

Mary Rosenblum

Fiction takes all forms. It simply has to work. :-)

Mary Rosenblum

One of the benefits of thinking about your story before plunging in is that you can play with character and plot.

Mary Rosenblum

If you have come up with a cool character, play with that for awhile. What could complicate this person's life?

Mary Rosenblum

How will this character react? What could happen then?

Mary Rosenblum

Wait until something really grabs out.

Mary Rosenblum

Or, if you have a cool story idea, try different characters in it. And never be afraid to change characters in midstream. :-)

Mary Rosenblum

I just started a story set in a future where the middle part of the country has been restored to a version of the Pleistocene environment.

Mary Rosenblum

My original character was male and as I got into the story, I realized that this really needed a female main character.

Mary Rosenblum

So I had to start over with a new character. She works much better.

rae

I have a character that I really like, but she is so predictable, I'm not sure she will be good for the story. Should I not use her, or change her?

Mary Rosenblum

If it was my story I probably wouldn't use her if she was really predictable. That's going to bore your readers. But can't you change her? I change characters all the time. Unlike your spouse or your relatives you CAN change your characters. :-)

k c morlock

when I work with my mcs I often try to find what I call motivation for behaviors, I have been known to provide it if it isn't naturally occurring. This is a control issue for me, is it okay to do it?

Mary Rosenblum

You NEED to do that, KC. That's part of characterization. If you don't know what motivates your character deep down, that character will be a plot puppet, blindly following the dictates of the plot. Shallow!

Mary Rosenblum

Let's take our wimpy little computer nerd from my first example.

Mary Rosenblum

He's quiet, avoids conflict, keeps to himself. What he really really wants, deep down inside, is to impress his father. And his father -- a football dude who thinks a good bar fight is fun -- thinks he's a total loser.

Mary Rosenblum

So when that bully says something that is similar to his father's disparaging comments, the kid blows up. As he hammers that bully into the ground with adrenalin fueled rage, he is not only hitting his father who doesn't like him, he's uisng his father's own tools of masculine violence to do it.

Mary Rosenblum

You really should know the reasons for your character's every action at that level. Then you have a really strong character who is real and utterly consistent.

k c morlock

I am discovering that character traits I possess as a writer, control issues, do not work as well in the real world, I suppose a writer isn't necessarily gifted with social grace. I guess I am saying I like a work I control. I might very well be a dysfunctional writer, is this a trait I'll need to work around if someone wants to publish my work?

Mary Rosenblum

I'm laughing KC. I listened to an interview with Woody Allen. He was talking about being a producer and said essentially, 'hey, I get to create the worlds I loved as a kid at the movies and I get to CONTROL 'em'.

Mary Rosenblum

That's all of us, writers, film producers...it's all about controlling worlds. I think if we were socially functional we wouldn't be writers, we'd be out partying with our friends!

reece

When you love certain characters so much how can you avoid inadvertently using them over and over by renaming them and putting them in new stories? I have seen even highly acclaimed long published authors fall into this.

Mary Rosenblum

You're going to reuse the archetypes that are important to you, whether you mean to or not. But you are simply aware of that and you make sure that your characters are not just 'another so and so'. I have created hundreds of characters in my fictional life

Mary Rosenblum

and if you line them all up, you can see certain 'types' that I've used over and over. But I guess they're not that easy to spot, since no reviewer has ever called me on it and that's the kind of thing they love to spot!

Mary Rosenblum

It's a good idea to make the next character you work with very different from the one you just finished or they will blur.

barbiq

Better yet, how can we avoid as new writers putting ourselves into our work as a character?

Mary Rosenblum

Every character is you to some degree, but you don't want carbon copies, especially if you don't suit your plot! Start with a very different voice, so that you and your character can

Mary Rosenblum

talk and you'll sound quite different.

snow

What was it that you changed, Mary?

Mary Rosenblum

What do you mean, snow?

snow

in your characters, so that no one could catch that they were being used again?

Mary Rosenblum

Oh, goodness, many things!

Mary Rosenblum

Their past, their deep motivations. It's probably only me who can see the similarities. :-)

Mary Rosenblum

Well, this has been a fun discussion and it's nice to be back in a familiar place. A lot of stuff looks different on my computer now. I upgraded a lot of software since I was crashed.

Mary Rosenblum

I'll post the transcript in the usual place: Writing Craft/Forum Transcripts. And remember...the new Newsletter is up in Writing Craft with the second batch of prompts.

Mary Rosenblum

Nice stuff, too! Next week I'll pick my favorites.

Mary Rosenblum

Have a good week and I'll see you Thursday for my chat with Simon Rose about writing Fantasy. That should be a fun chat.

Mary Rosenblum

Have a good week!