Category: Musings

Musings

Weekly Musing: I Must, I Must Develop My Character!

DH Hanni

Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve been working on developing the four main characters for my first novel. Since the novel is in the historical fiction genre, I’ve been working on research, a LOT of research, over the past 1.5 years. Even before I sit down to formally write even one sentence, I’ve begun reading up on novel structure, plot, setting, emotions, POV, and character development.

As I’ve been learning about character development, one tool in particular has come to my attention: character sheets. Characters sheets are a series of questions designed to help a person create a character, to get further inside the mind, body, heart, and soul of a character. When I was first researching character sheets, the top results that popped up were character sheets for role-playing games like Dungeons and Dragons. Eventually I was able to find some for just fiction writing. Characters, Emotions & Viewpoint by Nancy Kress has been a great help to me because it includes mini-bio sheets as well as advice on what questions to ask.

A lot of questions on character sheets are the basics such as age, birthplace, appearance, family background, etc. But the meat of the questions, what motivates the character in life, what kind of person does he see himself as, what’s her happiest memory, what’s his worst memory, etc. are to focus the writer to dig below the surface. To transform a character on a page to some living, breathing entity.

After collecting various character sheets from the internet and from books, I noticed a lot of the questions asked presume the character is a modern one. What kind of car does he drive? What high school did he go to? What’s his favorite movie or TV show? But what about those of us whose minds and characters like running around in the past? I have yet to discover character sheets geared at historical fiction so I just highlight relevant questions or adjust others for the time period I’m in.

But this has gotten me to think; why aren’t there character development sheets for different genres? A modern day character is different from an 8 armed robot designed to look like an octopus. Granted the ultimate goal of both these characters could be the same but it does feel silly asking an 8 armed robot designed to look like an octopus who did they take to their senior prom. Different genres have their own tropes; conventions if you will, so would it make a bit of sense for each genre to have their own character sheets?

For example, the needs of a romance writer are different from a western writer. A western writer is going to what to know what kind of horse(s) are my characters going to ride? What kind of gun(s) do my characters use? What time period? Location? Are there going to be Native Americans in the story, which tribe(s)? What building materials are available? But a romance writer, unless it’s a historical romance writer, isn’t going to be worried about this information so a guide more tailored to the romance genre convention would make sense.

I think having character development sheets by genre would really help writers’ lives easier. Having to comb through general questions to find relevant ones or rephrase others, adds to my workload. Time that could be spent getting to know the character and transforming them into a person.

But that’s just my view on it. Like everything else with writing, there is no correct approach. This has been an interesting experience for me since I don’t really do a whole lot of character development prior to writing a short story. Short stories by their nature, are supposed to be much simpler and deal with a single character’s journey. I let the character guide me more than actively spending hours a day, like I’m currently doing, thinking about them.

If anyone knows of any websites or books that contain character sheets more genre specific, feel free to wave your hand and let the class know!

Musings

Weekly Musing: Give Me Some Inspiration, Baby!

DH Hanni

This is my sixth stab at trying to write this Weekly Musing. While I have a list of topics to choose from, deciding on one for this week has given me fits. One topic seems intriguing but when I start typing up my thoughts, it starts to feel not right. The inspirational flame instead of being Olympic size is a mere flicker in a dying candle. So why not talk about what gets me inspired?

I am still quite a ways way from tapping into my full potential. Being creative and letting that out is an incredibly new experience for me and one I struggle and fight with at times. When I first began writing, a wonderful source of inspiration was listening to NPR. Listening classical music with hosts giving brief backgrounds into the composers and news stories, kick started my creative side. Truth and history are very much stranger than fiction. One of my earliest inspirations was from a story NPR ran regarding the Cook County morgue in Chicago. They had an unbelievable backlog of bodies, months’ worth of bodies. The bodies were pretty much homeless people or people no one wanted to claim. So they sat in the morgue waiting to be buried in the county cemetery. I began playing the ‘what if’ game. My mind immediately thought of a horror story and the voice of one of the bodies spoke to me. What if one of the bodies came back to life and wanted to avenge a system that had let him and the dozens of corpses in the morgue down?

Another source of inspiration for me, and for many other writers, are books, TV, and movies. Sometimes it’s a sense of ‘I could do better than that’ but that’s an entirely different posting all together. I’m specifically referring to a time period, genre story (Steampunk, fantasy, etc.), character (historical character in my case), or concept. If I’m inspired by a TV show or movie, it’s usually because I’m a crazy fan of it. I get excited about a concept and start spinning in my head what I would do differently or how could I make my idea just even a little bit different from someone else’s? Again, characters pop up and say hello.

As I mature as a writer, I’m trying to move beyond these to keeping my eyes and ears open for inspiration in everyday things. For example, I was thinking over something, happened to stare at my wedding ring, and began thinking of an idea for a story based upon it as it contains 3 generations of diamonds and is a family heirloom on my husband’s side. Shortly after that initial thought, I went on a cruise to Alaska so now I’m thinking about combining the history I learned a little bit of to make some kind of multi-generational story. Whether or not I ever get around to writing this story is another matter.

I have also started keeping a dream log. For a while I was having a lot of off-the-wall dreams that combined so many different elements of my life twisted into some kind of giant rubber band ball they just begged to be written down. The problem with having a dream log is to actually remember to write the dreams down and first thing in the morning. And I am so not a morning person so I usually have forgotten most of the dream by the time I get to brushing my teeth.

But for all the ideas I manage to write down, there are so many more that I forget. I do keep a small pad of paper and pen in my purse for just such occasions. It helps immensely. At my last place of employment, I frequently sent e-mails to myself as something popped into my head. Having my laptop available is a huge convenience, too, because I can just open up the Word doc I’ve got going and jot down an idea. I have a notebook and pen by my bed because I often think of stories as I go to bed but dammit, I can’t remember to write down scenes or snippets of dialogue because well, I fall asleep. It’s like a machine needs to be invented one could plug into the mind and have it transfer thoughts into a program. Actually, that type of machine sounds like an incredibly BAD idea. Or a good idea for a sci fi story. Hmmm….Must learn to keep myself awake enough to write it down!

I’m sure I’ll discover more and more sources of inspiration. I’ve already got 16 pages worth on my computer and countless others tucked away into a binder. Whenever I see something even remotely interesting, I print out the article or I flag it if it’s in one of the history magazines I read. The idea dam may have tickled at first but now the waters flow briskly. At times they rise to flood stage, dump the ideas out quick before it drowns you! Other times it’s calm.

Musings

Weekly Musing: Fear and Loathing in Washington State

DH Hanni

I decided to take a break from writing this week to use the time to recalibrate myself. I attended an excellent and informative workshop last Saturday presented by J.A. Pitts and Ken Scholes where the main topic was about short story writing. In addition to getting a very simple way and effective way to brainstorm a short story, the biggest thing that stuck with me was goal-setting and what I really want out of writing and why I write.

Lately I’ve been feeling very confused, lacking a clear path about what works for me. I feel like I’ve been trying to shoehorn all the advice I’ve read and heard into my writing. I’ve been hearing the evil old me regurgitating such classics as ‘Well, this is what I SHOULD be doing’, ‘This is how I SHOULD be this’, ‘That’s not the RIGHT way’, and ‘What the hell were you thinking?’

The impact has been unfortunate because I have struggled mightily in new pieces. It’s not so much the writing gremlins as my personal gremlins. The ideas are there for the stories but as soon as I sit down to write, it becomes too much. That fear aggravates my writer’s ADD so I get distracted by the junk food on the Internet.

After I get overly full on that, I try to set the ship back on the right course by reading writing websites. Instead of soothing me, it makes my anxiety worse. And annoys me. I’m noticing the same advice over and over and over. I think I’m on advice overload and just need to step away.

Just get back to the writing!

By taking this week off from active writing, I aimed to rest my brain and soul. The quiet from not being concerned with anything in particular other than this blog post, has been beneficial. I need to limit the amount of professional reading I do and absorb. Just pick up the bits that I think I need. I need to work more on telling myself to just go out and write whatever comes to mind regardless of word length or any due date (an advantage of not being a writer with a contract, any deadlines I have are either self-imposed or due to an anthology or submission to a magazine.)

Oh, and did I mention, just get back to writing!

No way can I even begin to make a dent in the pages and pages of ideas, thumbnail sketches of stories, bits of dialogue, and bits of plot I have if I don’t actually write!

I came up with an analogy that I hope makes sense. I started learning how to cook when I maybe in 5th or 6th grade. This was when the Food Network first came out and was available on our cable system in the town I grew up in. Back then they had a lot of great just basic cooking shows. I watched those for several weeks before pawing through my mother’s cookbooks. I looked at the recipes, realized I understood the terms, and ventured into the arena of putting what I learned into practice. For several years, I followed the directions to the letter, carefully measuring everything, using only the ingredients listed. I made good food. I enjoyed making it, parents enjoyed it (maybe not the gazpacho I made one time), all is well.

But I got bored. I was following the rules and that began to feel very, very confining. I don’t like being confined. Plus as the Food Network expanded their programming, I saw more and more chefs who didn’t measure everything out. They urged getting creative and playing around with spices and flavors. Once I got permission, in essence, to play with spices, it opened up a whole new food world to me. The older I got, the more my palette expanded and I began venturing out to other cultures and plucking flavors from those. Now I just use a recipe as a guide, a mere suggestion, before just going off on my own or make up my own stuff without writing it down.

I realized this is an approach I should take with my writing. I think I’ve got the basics down. I’ve got a good start on my writing ‘cookbooks’ and resources, all easily accessible. If I need to get more as my tastes change or I find deficiencies, I can. Now I need to transition into going beyond the set recipe. If I want my writing to develop its own flavor like my cooking does, then I need to start playing with the spices and the amounts used. But I can only do that by ‘cooking’ every day.

Different types of writing should be viewed as different meals served throughout the day or like an extensive dinner packed with several courses. And the freeing notion of equating writing with cooking will, I think, help calm lingering doubts as to the value of what I write. Some recipes work, some don’t. Sometimes you accidentally set your toaster oven on fire because you think it’d be a great way to toast coconut until you go to the bathroom and forget.