Fearless Finn turns out to be a wuss

After delving into my heroine's character, I turned my attention to my hero. About time too, really, because so far he's just been a bit of sketchy idea in my mind. I thought I'd worked out who he was, but it turned out I'd only scratched the surface and kidded myself I'd dug a pit.

Anyway...

Finn McLeod is an all-out action man and survival expert, who likes nothing better than discovering new things about this wonderful planet we're all stuck on. He says he likes adventure, that he likes going into uncharted territory. He's lying, of course. Oh, he loves the great outdoors all right, but when it comes to human relationships, Finn likes to play it safe.

Here are Finn's five questions (see here for an explanation):



What is my hero's longing?

• He longs for connection.

What is my character's wound?

• He was an army brat who was always moving. It was great fun and he saw lots of the world, which fuelled his thirst for travel and exploration, but he learnt that it hurt to get attached to places and people.
• Learned not to put down deep roots, because they got ripped out of the ground and that was painful. He keeps his roots wide, but shallow. However, this means there isn't the same depth of satisfaction in his life. He keeps looking for more adventure, thinking the farther he spreads his roots the more fulfilled he will be, when actually what he needs is to go deeper.

What is my character's fear?

• Fear of not being connected to anyone or anything, of too much empty space in his life.
• Just don't ask him to rely on one person completely. That's a little too connected for itchy-feet Finn.
  

What is your character's identity?

• Intrepid explorer and emotional tourist.
• He's got a wide circle of friends and acquaintances - people love his happy-go-lucky nature - but he doesn't actually let anyone close, even though they all might feel as if they're his best friend.
• His thirst for exploration comes from a need to feel connected to the world he lives in. He doesn't just travel widely, but he's become an expert on certain types of habitat.
• However, he has neglected to explore human relationships with the same thoroughness. While he despises people who never leave their TV sets, or only do day-trips and package holidays, he is guilty of the same superficiality in his emotional life. When it comes to relationships, Finn is just a tourist.

What is my character's essence?

• A man who is not afraid to put down deep and lasting roots. A man who can choose to stay in one place, and who can find the same thrill from discovering new things about the woman he loves every day for the rest of his life.

Which leads me to Finn's lessons:

What will my character have to learn to make the journey from IDENTITY to ESSENCE?

• To own up to the fact that, although he is totally free, there are areas in his life that he chooses not to venture into, because he is scared of what he might find there.
• Finn is a man who loves everything new, everything wild and unexplored, but he's going to have to learn the joy that can be found in cultivating things, because that is what long-term relationships require.
• Freedom is a gift that he has not been using wisely.

Allegra's journey

I'm continuing to blog about my writing process and what I do when I hit a slump and just don't feel like writing any more - what I do when the story seems to have lost its magic (and there are always several places in the course of writing a book where I feel this way).

Yesterday I prised myself away from the keyboard and got out my pen and paper. There's something very freeing about doing that. I often write large chunks of my first draft longhand instead of typing, because I feel less constrained creatively when I have a pen in my hand and I'm free to scribble and cross out and not keep to neat rows and lines.

Sometimes, when I want to brainstorm, I do the same. I often get a large(ish) art pad (A3 size) and write my character's name on it, and then start scibbling down all the things I know about them. They can often end up looking very messy, with scrawled writing in different colours at different angles, and arrows all over the place, connecting thoughts and ideas. Here's what Allegra's page looks like at present (see left).

Quite neat, isn't it? (Don't worry, I'm sure I'll messy it up nicely as the days go by.) But that's quite fitting for Allegra, actually. Let me tell you a little bit about her:

My heroine for the current book (Allegra) was a 'baby ballerina' - a child prodigy who was thrust into the limelight early, but her talent has isolated her and set her apart from other people. Ballet is a world where the choreographer reigns supreme. Dancers aren't asked to collaborate in the creative process much; they are just told what to do. They are the vehicle for another's vision. And Allegra's early start in her career meant that her father has had a very firm hand on her life, especially as her mother died when she was eleven. He is her mentor and her worst critic, her manager and her parent - a very cluttered and complicated relationship.

Once I knew all this about her, I asked her the five questions (see my last post).

What is my character's longing?

• Allegra longs to feel free, both in terms of exploring the big, wide world, but also she craves inner freedom.
  
• She wants to escape.

What is my character's wound?

• She's a child prodigy, and as such, she's never had a normal life. She's had a very sheltered existence, very focussed towards one goal.
• She has her life directed for her. On stage by the choreographer; off-stage by her father and the demands of her career. Has very little personal freedom.

What is my character's fear?

• That she will never be free, that someone will always hold her destiny in their hand and superimpose their will over hers.
  
• BUT she's also secretly scared of all that freedom. Too much room, too many possibilities. While her life stays on its stagnant little track, she might moan, but it's safe. She doesn't have to take responsibility for her mistakes and choices, because someone else has always been at the reigns - it's their fault. With freedom will come the opportunity to succeed spectacularly, but the flipside of that is that she opportunity to fail spectacularly will also be there - something that won't sit easily with the former child prodigy.

What is your character's identity?

• Dutiful ballerina. She does what she's told, because there is no point in expressing her opinion - her choreographer isn't interested in what she thinks or wants; he just wants her to do as he says. She is the blank canvas for another to paint their vision on.
• A mute, who always keeps her wishes silent. She never expresses her desires, because in her world, there is no use. She has no control over her life. She has also learned to keep herself strictly under control - and she will find this her greatest obstacle to inner freedom. She will be her own worst enemy, because that inbred sense of control if going to make it very difficult for her to LET GO.

What is your character's essence?

• Woman (not just a ballet dancer) who is free inside - Free to live. Free to love. Free to make her own choices.
• She won't mind taking on board other people's ideas and suggestions when she feels free inside, because they won't threaten her sense of self (and this will make her a better artist).

Once you know your character's identity and true nature, you have the beginning and end points of the emotional journey they must take - their character arc. So, once I have that worked out, I ask myself one further question:

What will my character have to learn to make the journey from IDENTITY to ESSENCE?

• To speak up for herself, articulate her feelings and desires.
  
• To take responsibility for her life and make her own choices (not easy at first).
  
• To let go of the resentment that's been building up inside her, that sense of rage at being caged by other people and robbed of her freedom (even though she has allowed them to do it).
  
• To find the courage to use the freedom she claims she wants. Not to 'escape' again, back into her gilded cage when the going gets tough, but to face her fears.
  
• To not use her new-found freedom to impose her will upon others - she has to learn to respect other people's freedom as well.

Now, I feel as if I've got something a little more concrete to work with. Hero next...

Inspiration and Royal Weddings

Well, after I blogged yesterday I kept digging deep into my characters - or character mining, as I'm starting to refer to it. More detailed posts are to follow, but I'm out of my writing rut already and the ideas are popping like popcorn. (Love it when this happens!)

I find that beating the writing doldrums isn't so much about getting the words on the page perfect (I haven't even looked at my manuscript in the last two days), but about getting my head in the right place. I was feeling unenthusiastic about my story, and when I feel like that I feel as if I'm trying to write through treacle. No, wait. Treacle isn't the right sort of substance - too sticky, too sweet. Porridge or semolina is more like it. Sludgey. Grey. Slighty uninspiring, although you know it's good for you.

After a day of character mining I'm feeling mentally energised about my story. All I have to do now is organise those ideas that have been a-popping and words will start to fly. It might have seemed stupid to stop writing and mess around with character charts and questions, but I know that I will now make much faster progress than if I hadn't. And who wants 500 porridge-like words when they can have 1000 bright, zippy, zingy ones? Not me.

And just to cheer me up even further, I've discovered that Three Weddings And A Baby is part of M&Bs new Royal Wedding collection. Yay!

Beginnings are the worst

Sometimes I love starting a new book. Sometimes I hate it. Right now, I definitely hate it.

The strange this is that I love my ballet dancer heroine, I love my action-man hero and I love the story premise. Somehow all this potential magic is just not making its way onto the page. Bleugh. I should add that I'm at the end of Act One - a place where I inevitably end up in the doldrums and ask myself why I'm writing this book and where the heck am I going to go next with it. If I'm a long way from my deadline, I may even avoid writing altogether. Procrastination abounds.

Unfortunately, I don't have that luxury this time around, so I decided to blog instead. With a purpose, of course...

Anyway, since I'm desperate, I thought I'd blog about what I do to get myself kick-started when the muse has left the building. What normally works is if I dig a bit deeper into my story, which really means digging deeper into my characters, since they are the ones driving it. I also need to collect my multitudinous thoughts and organise them into something resembling a plan. Cue my ever-helpful plot board:

My plot board has had various incarnations, but the current layout seems to give me maximum space for splattering all my ideas at it. More on that in another post, maybe.

So how am I planning to refocus myself? Firstly, I'm going to sit down with my hero and heroine and ask them Michael Hauge's five questions. This is always a good starting point for me, as it helps me narrow down all the ideas I've been having about these people and focus them in one direction. Some ideas may be chucked; some ideas will magically come togehter with other ones to add depth and extra layers to my characters. Until I do this, I never know which ideas are the duds and which are the really useful ones.

Enough rambling, Fiona. Just post the questions already!

1. What is your character's longing? (I tend to think of this as their 'inner' goal).
2. What is your character's wound? (What event(s) in their past have shaped who they are today?)
3. What is your character's fear? (Basically, the fear stems from the wound. Makes sense, really. If you've ever been hurt badly, either physically or emotionally, you tend to make a priority of not getting hurt the same way again).
4. What is your character's identity? (What is the false front they present to the world? Who have they become to protect themselves from the fear of the wound?)
5. What is your character's essence? (Michael Hauge asks "Who are they underneath? Who are they really?" I also tend to think of it in terms of who this person has the potential to be, if they would just quit hiding behind that false front and face the fear.)
   

And once I've done that, I'm going to think about my story's theme and how that's going to affect my characters emotional arcs. But I've wittered on enough for now. It's probably time to stop blogging and start writing. Maybe I'll even come and post the results of my character probing here too!

Oh, and I've decided I need a new soundtrack to listen to as I write too. Busy, busy day... (This may sound frivolous, but really it isn't. The right songs to get my creative juices flowing, that drag me into the story world of the current book, can make all the difference!)

Characters and Agreements

I'm always looking for ways to delve into my characters and find out what makes them tick, and I love reading books on the craft of writing or listening to mp3 files of writing workshops. Since listening to Michael Hauge's workshop at the RWA conference in 2007, I've found that his five questions he asks of characters really work for me, but I'm constantly looking for ways to peel back another layer of my hero and heroine.

Over the last month or two I've been dipping into a book called Walking With God by John Eldredge Not a book on writing, but a thoughtful, insightful journey of one man's desire to do just that. On a personal level, I've got a lot out of this book. It's made me think about the way I live my life, but this morning one of the short chapters made me not just search myself, but extend that questioning to the fictional people I write about. And why not? My characters might not be real, but I want them to seem that way. I want them to have the same depth and complexity as a real person.

Anyway, on to what I really want to talk about - agreements. Not the kind we make with other people, but the kind we make with ourselves. They're often only half-conscious thoughts, but they can lodge inside us an affect our behaviour. Let me explain…

Sometimes we make agreements with ourselves about minor things. For example, today I'm not feeling very well. I have a headache and I feel all virusy. Even though today is a day when I'd be at home writing, and I had planned to do just that, even if I'd thought I might allow myself some extra down time, what I really said inside myself was: "I'm too tired to write. I'm not thinking straight. Anything I might produce will probably be rubbish."

So, did I go with the schedule this morning and write? Did I heck. I messed around reading emails, put on a load of washing, played a bit of a computer game, basically pottered around. You see, that internal agreement I'd made with myself sabotaged my good intentions. And I think this is often the way we are. How often have you planned to do something, or decided you were no longer going to behave a certain way, only to find yourself doing exactly the opposite? I know I'm not alone in this, and often our silent choices have much deeper impact than a morning's work.

For example, sometimes we get an idea that someone thinks a certain way about us. We might be right or we might be wrong, but if we make one of those silent, internal agreements that "so-and-so hates me", it will affect how we perceive everything they say and do to us. Have you ever seen someone trying to do the right thing to mend a damaged relationship or friendship only to get nowhere? I have. And the reason their well-intentioned overtures failed wasn't because they were doing anything wrong, but because of the silent agreement the other party had made with themselves. "That person looks down on me," they'd told themselves, or "that person only thinks about themselves". So every attempt at reconciliation has been met with (at best) suspicion or (at worst) has been misinterpreted as something negative. Until the hurting friend breaks that internal agreement and opens up to the idea that the other person is genuine, reconciliation is going to be difficult. It's as if the agreement becomes a filter through which everything is processed - like wearing coloured glasses, rose-tinted or otherwise.

This idea got me thinking about fictional characters. One of Michael Hauge's character questions is "what is your character's wound?" and I think the idea of internal agreements fits very nicely with this. What does my character believe about life, about love? How has the painful thing in their past made up their mind about these things?

I asked my current heroine, a driven ballerina, if she had any agreements about these things. "Oh, yes," she said. "I believe I'll never have love, that I'll always be lonely. I'm not like other people, you see. I've always had this talent, have always been different. It has made me an outsider. I can look down upon the rest of the world and see people falling in love and being happy, but I doubt it will ever happen to me."

I think these silent agreements may well be rooted in fear, that they are part of our defence mechanisms. Is my ballerina afraid she will never be loved? Probably. So maybe she has decided it will be that way for her, because that protects her of believing otherwise and then discovering what she feared was true.

I can also see that for my character's arcs to be complete they are going to have to break that agreement with themselves, that they are going to have to challenge those inbuilt assumptions, because without doing that they will never face the fear that is nibbling away at themselves. And without facing that character flaw they are never going to complete their journey. So perhaps I need to add yet another question to my list: "when and how is my character going to break that agreement?"

I have a feeling these moments will lend themselves to either the mid-point of the story or the emotional low-point, the black moment, but it will be interesting to see if my theory pans out as I write this book.

So, what silent agreements have your characters made? And, more importantly, are there any agreements you have made with yourself that are holding you back?

English Lord, Ordninary Lady - Hero & Heroine

I had a very clear picture in my head of what Josie, my pink-haired heroine in English Lord, Ordinary Lady would look like. I’m not someone who has to find a photo of my hero and heroine before I can write. I normally have a vague idea of what they look like – although this often comes in to sharper focus, or even changes, as I write the book.

Josie is 24 and petite – 5ft 2 – and when Will first meets her, he notices her large eyes and her stubborn little chin. She’s not conventionally pretty, but gorgeous in a quirky, Audrey Hepburn kind of way. Certainly, Will can’t seem to take his eyes off of her once he’s got past the bright fuchsia hair. Especially her ankles. And her feet. Isn’t it a relief when men get fascinated by the less obvious parts of a girls’ anatomy?

I was watching Without A Trace one day and suddenly saw an actress that bore a striking resemblance to Josie. Although Christina Hendricks is taller and doesn’t have the pink hair, she had the quirkiness, the twinkle in her eye that made her a dead ringer.

And then there was Will, 35 and old beyond his years. If I had a heroine who wanted to rebel and escape the upper-crust life she’d been born into, then who is the worst possible person she could fall in love with? Yup, that’s right. A man with a title. And just to top it off, I made sure he was traditional and concerned about his heritage, and I gave him a sure-fire reason to want to be the best Lord Radcliffe there had ever been. The last thing he needed was a “pink-haired pixie”, as he calls her, fouling up his plans to restore the family honour.

Will started off looking a bit like the picture of Richard Armitage above. But the gorgeous Mr Armitage was just a bit too wild-looking (and don’t we love him like that, ladies?) to make a good Will. And for that I will be eternally disappointed. As much as I wanted him to look like the original picture, he just didn't. And I couldn't seem to talk my subconscious out of it.

Once again, I was flicking through the TV channels and I spotted someone who looked a little bit more like the Will I had in my head. This is Joe Flannigan, from Stargate Atlantis. If you imagined him British and less spiky-headed and smiley (as he can be in the show), he could be Will’s twin brother. The frown is certainly Will’s!

Will was born to be solid, respectable and in charge. Too bad then that his grandfather ran off with a stripper and was disinherited. But then he learns that the previous Lord had died childless, and Elmhurst Hall belongs to him. Life is finally going his way. Well, at least it is until he turns up at his new home and finds fairies at the bottom of the garden…

Come back soon to see pictures of the real-life setting for English Lord, Ordinary Lady!