This speaks for itself.

Hope, 1971

thumpthumpthump

The helicopter lands on the roof of San Francisco General. General is the only local hospital with a copter pad. It's also one of the few hospitals around here that are doing this kind of operation right now.

The surgeons don't take delivery themselves; they've requisitioned an OR and they're scrubbing up. An orderly runs upstairs, shying away from the wind kicked up by the chopper's blades. Upstairs, a slender man with brown eyes waits.

The orderly signs his name, and takes receipt of a small, innocuous lunch cooler. Contents: one kidney, the one thing Pandora didn't count on.

That's powerful, Deb.

Anyone have any ideas for non-cheesey character interview type exercises? It's been brought to my attention by, like, practically everyone who's read the wip, that Jack is a vividly drawn character and sexy as hell to boot, but that Anna is a bit fuzzy, unreal, as though I'm holding her at arm's length.

When I first started writing this story, if anything the opposite was the case. And I realized today that my breakthrough on being able to write Jack came at the conference this fall when I attended a workshop where we did all these exercises like pairing up and having your partner ask you the same question over and over again. Basic stuff like "Who are you?" or "What do you want?" that you answered as the character. Also free association things where you'd do something like grasp an unusually textured object and write about whatever it brought to mind WRT the character. And while I could try those same exercises, I'm not sure how they'd work without the group dynamic, so I'm looking for other options, too.

Basically, I'm not expecting the exercise itself to work the magic. It's just that I realized I am pushing Anna away from me a bit, and I need to try a few tricks to make me break down those barriers so I can become her the way I've learned to become Jack.

I used to make my screenwriting students answer a whole list of questions on their characters-- the most useful and/or interesting ones were:

What do they value most in others?
What did they do on their last birthday?
What do they most regret?
Are they more likely to talk or to listen?
How would a close friend describe them?
Which was their favorite parent and why?
What does the character think are their best and worst traits?
What do you, the writer, think are their best and worst traits?
What is their most treasured possession?
What is their best childhood memory?

Thanks, Robin. I might try some of those.

The toughest part is I feel in some ways like I'm writing S6 Buffy, at least in the early part of the story, and I don't want to make it as much of a downer for my readers as S6 was for me as a viewer. I feel like I know who Anna was when she was a secondary character in my first book, but in the two intervening years, she's been through a sustained personal hell, and I'm having to figure out exactly what that's done for her, how the walls she's built around herself would manifest, and how honest she's capable of being with herself about what she's made of herself just to survive.

Susan, I always treat a new character - whether I see the character clearly from moment one or not - as someone I've just been introduced to, and about whom I'm curious. Basically, I think of her/him as someone with whom I have an immediate frisson, and I want to find out why.

And since I have very little natural reserve in those situations, I just ask away. And the questions keep coming, and get added to, as the character grows; midway through FFoSM, I asked Penny if she was always that big a control freak, and got an immediate "yes" response, because it was the only way to run a theatre troupe and keep it together.

But initially, I ask the character questions in my own head, just as Robin says. And I have conversations in my head with said character, and get insights into that character from the responses.

I invented a character exercise at one point wherein I asked each one whom he/she had voted for in 1984, 1988, 1992. (Not that this would work for a female in the 1800s not actually living in her country of citizenship.) It was very illuminating, because 1 of the 3 characters had never voted in his life, and another sent me into a long tangent justifying her reluctant Reaganism.

Further proof, perhaps, that the political is indeed personal.

Nutty, I'm desperately predictable, I think. If my characters are humanists (of any stripe), they're written as mostly likeable, because I like them. If they aren't, they tend to fetch up as one of my very occasional bad guys. I don't really do bad guys much - good/bad isn't a conflict I usually find interesting to read or write - but when I do write a Bad Bad Character, like Andrew Leight in Matty Groves, they tend toward mammon-worship and Toryism. Mostly, though, they're self-entitled.

Huh. Susan, that started a very interesting series of thoughts and mental ramblings. Thank you, ma'am. I spent a bit of time last night thinking about it, and discovered that the more memorable characters I've written were basically very clear emotionally in my head before I ever started, but that the more interesting bits showed up as I went along and got more familiar with them, and that I very often will ask them those bits in my own head as I'm working.

Challenge to Deb: write a likeable Tory. Think of the gushing reviews you'll get.

Challenge to Deb: write a likeable Tory.

Not sure the gushing reviews would be worth the repeated times I'd be struck by lightning, or the eternity in Hell I'd be sentenced to.

In fact, I nearly did - Albert Wychsale started out as a Tory, but he's essentially far too much of a humanist to toe the party line. So I settled for having him make shameless use of his position and power when the cause demands it.

And BTW, my editor, an 86-year-old leftist secular humanist, says Albert's her favourite character in this series, because he' so surprising, for who he is.

31 and holding... I thought I’d be Murphy Brown by now, asking the questions that make politicians cry. Now I e-mail the politicians, and ask the questions that make me cry. I thought by now I’d be a big novelist, but this month I finally stopped typing “my book” like that. I thought I’d be doing some foreign guy whose guts my dad would hate. Now the closest to sexual holding I get is my breath when I send out some smut. When I was eighteen, I held my breath until I didn’t live with Mom anymore. Now I hold my breath over her mammograms. I can’t hold a happy thought for as long as my righteous rage...which means I can’t hold back.