Writing Characters I Don't Like

I don't always like my characters.

Is that weird? I don't know how it is for other authors, but I tend to go where the story is, and sometimes this leads me to share headspace with some people who are just irritating or downright offensive. I'd like to think this helps me cultivate empathy, but it's also really, really annoying. It can also be difficult to try to wrap my mind around a viewpoint that's far, far removed from mine. If that's part of the story, though, that's my job, so I do my best and let the chips fall where they may.

The Other Man is a title near and dear to my heart, though I can't say I'm overly fond of Andrew, the main character. He's blue collar working man and I've grown up in a family of those, so you'd think that'd give him some leeway with me. Nope. His desire to conform, his hunger for the typical, apple-pie American dream, his constant excuses for why he's the victim in his situation, his condescension of others - even his own family, and his paranoid worry about people who aren't like him...it was hard to write, to say the least, especially knowing what was coming with the ending and how it could potentially be viewed.

 The idea of a man unnerved by his wife liking a particular rock star actually came from personal experience - I've known a few people who have actually had to end relationships because their significant others didn't agree with their taste in something or other. One in particular actually broke up with their significant other because of a singer they'd never met, never interacted with, but happened to like a lot. It wasn't to the point of being unhealthy of obsessive, but their partner made a constant deal about feeling like they were living with the singer and didn't measure up. I showed my friend the manuscript before I ever considered publishing it, and thankfully they have a sense of humor and loved it, even if the overall situation was far different than theirs. Still, what the ever-lovin' heck have we come to if we have to bully a person over their musical tastes? It's still a surreal thought to me.

 I've had the experience where I felt like I was being changed or encouraged to change so the other person would be more comfortable, to the point where I just didn't feel like myself anymore. It's a horrible feeling, one I never want to revisit. I really wanted to play with this overall idea, but I also didn't want to make it a gag or a gimmick or some punchline at the end. There is a twist, but hopefully the reveal is  a release of tension and a moment of epiphany and not a gimmick. I'd hate for it to be viewed that way, because at the end of the day, I think we all hide parts of ourselves. Andrew just does it in a very vehement, spiteful way.

Maybe he irritates me because I can understand being disillusioned. You know how it is, we're filled with all these notions as kids to the point we think we can conquer the world as teens, and then we have the rug pulled out from under us. Maybe my discomfort is that I have to acknowledge that I get Andrew's general frustration, even if I don't agree with his motives. I think that helps, though, it keeps him entitled but not a complete monster, or at least hopefully helps the reader look at him with disappointment rather than all-out hatred. He's a good talking point for a character: at what point do we have to get over our life frustrations and try to do the best we can, to what point do we have a right to be disenchanted with how our lives have gone?

His family doesn't make it easy on him, mind you. Granted, they're not terrible, but young kids are weird, and I may have based some of their behavior off mine as a kidlet to make things extra weird. You're welcome. His wife is Ivy League but opted to be a stay-at-home mom, a decision he never quite stopped resenting, because his own background is somewhat less in his eyes. It's an interesting dichotomy, he sees her as above him, worries about what secrets she may harbor, but also knows how to press her buttons, even though everything seems to press his. He's interesting, Andrew. He's irritating and I disagree with his fatalistic attitude, his black-and-white clear cut view of the world, his judgment of people. I disagree with him and he angers me at times....but oddly, I'm glad I wrote him, because he's also, hopefully, a character that will leave people thinking and talking.  If he got me thinking about how I could be a better person and how I can better channel my frustrations, hopefully he can do the same for others. Plus, his kids are hilarious and amazing, so there's got to be some potential in him somewhere.

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Life's a muddled tale...

Life is a story in progress.

Character development is key, I guess.  Probably never as free-form as you'd like it to be.  Life, like writing has its rules.  Set the stage.  Set your goals.  The character is tested and grows (hopefully) as the story unfolds.  And, the story continues stage by stage to its inevitable conclusion.  But, the ending can be a surprise, good or bad.  It can be comedy, romance or horror.  Or, maybe something that nobody is ever going to understand or buy.

So, you're left with the question of whether to write the story that comes out of you, or the story you think others will want to buy.  Sometimes, the self-defining challenge may lie in the second option, if you can pull it off.

I used to just sit down and write, for my own sake.  An idea would germinate and grow, and I'd just let it out.  Lately, I find myself pulled in so many other directions.  In seeking to promote existing stories of mine, I seem to spend more time reading, reviewing and promoting other people's books than working on new projects.  But, I also find myself hopping on every bandwagon that passes, dashing off short stories for contests or special projects I hear about through writer's loops or other contests.  That part I like, because it sharpens my skill as a writer by making me answer the challenges others set.  (I just signed a contract for a short story in a sci-fi anthology; always a good feeling.)

Writing, like life, is about survival.  Nobody buys, you don't survive.  'Gotta' sell yourself.  If you don't know how, you gotta' learn.  If you're lucky, others will help, but it's on you.  The hardest part is finding the right audience, the right reviewer, the right showcase.  You often find yourself in company with writers that are going in decidedly different directions.  You try to learn from them, but you wonder if the audiences they sell to are ever going to get your stuff.

And, like life, it's a journey, for better or worse.  At its end, you find only yourself.  I'll always write first and last for myself.  Whether I succeed or fail, it just feels like that's what I have to do.  It's just getting back to the basics.  I've got some ideas I've let gather a bit too much dust.  Time to do a little cleaning and salvaging in the attic.  Wish me luck.

Persevere!

Today, I am going to show you something that might seem a bit off topic. And, frankly disgusting...I admit that. But in the end, you will see how it relates to writing, and never giving up on the dream!

Okay, so our bathroom shower has a textured floor. I could NOT keep it clean. Finally, I gave up. After straight bleach didn't work, I despaired of ever getting it clean again. At the worst, it looked like this:

I warned you...disgusting! (I know, you want nothing to do with me ever again, now...)

But I kept trying. I tried EVERYTHING I could think of. And I finally hit on the trick. Dow Scrubbing Bubbles, left on for hours before rinsing. (They say a few minutes, but hours work better. I have been spraying them on in the morning after our showers and leaving them till bedtime.)

Little by little, it began to get better. Last night, when I rinsed the floor, it looked like this:

As you can see, there is still work to be done, but the difference is AMAZING!

But what does this have to do with writing, you ask? It's a metaphor, son...

A lot of times, our first drafts are like the Before picture. Nasty, ugly, wretched things that you feel a bit embarrassed to show your best friend, much less the world. You feel like giving up. It's too much work to figure out a way to fix it. You try everything, and nothing makes it better.

But somewhere, underneath all that crud is something clean and lovely. "Never give up, never surrender!" as the Galaxy Quest cast would say.

Keep trying things. 

Maybe you need a new point-of-view. Try rewriting it in first person instead of third.

Maybe you are telling the story from the wrong character's perspective. Try rewriting it in another character's voice.

Polish and elbow grease are the best tools for success. Tweak one aspect of the story and send it to a pair of fresh eyes. What does your new beta reader say?

Don't forget the rich tradition of rejection after rejection until an author hits the right editor at the right moment and becomes a Household Word. :)

And don't forget that crucial step of letting a project rest for awhile before doing more clean-up. It can save you a draft or two. ;)

Above all, persevere! 

Of fireworks and killer cyborgs...

Hello, everyone...'Hope you had a glorious fourth.  I always love watching the fireworks display over the Charles on the Cambridge Esplanade.

This fourth, leading up to the real fireworks over the Boston skyline, I spent the early afternoon watching some Hollywood action movie fireworks:  the latest "re-boot" of the sci-fi classic "Terminator."  The aging ex-California governor is back in his signature role as an aging terminator who travels back in time to battle his younger self.  (Time travel fiction's great, isn't it?  Every writer's dream:  You can re-write your own backstory and have a ball doing it.  Agatha Christie would have had a field day with that sort of thing, I bet.)

This version re-runs classic moments from the first two Terminator films, so we see a young Schwartzengger striding naked from the site of his lightning-wracked arrival from the future, and we see the shape-shifting liquid silver machine assassin.  This one's either a load of fun or a pain in the neck to fans of the franchise.  I guess some would complain that it's a slap-dash cut and paste, like cutting and scotch-taping Michellangelo and DaVinci.  Others might call it a creative collage that pays homage to a classic.

There are new elements, too.  Time loops within time loops have created an alternative version of history (necessary, of course, since the franchise began in the cold war, circa 1984,and their dark vision of the future didn't come true.)  In this version, a tougher, gutsier Sarah Connor teams up with craggy Arnold and newly arrived Kyle Reese.  In the original, we had a sci-fi retake on the classic theme of hero-saves-girl.  Kyle Reese, the tough, battle-hardened time-traveling warrior from the future rescues Sarah Connor, the wide-eyed ditsy waitress who couldn't believe she's destined to be the mom of the savior of humanity.  They fall in love, he dies saving her life, and in the end, the temporal twist is that Reese turns out to be the father of her unborn son, John Connor, savior of the world.  In this alternative timeline, Sarah's the street-wise savior who gets to utter the now-immortal line:  "Come with me if you want to live," and Kyle is the one who doesn't know the score and needs saving.  It seems the human survivors in the still farther future have responded to subsequent attempts by the evil computer Skynet to kill Sarah Connor when she was a child by sending the reprogrammed Terminator to that time period to protect her.  So, Arnold the terminator raises young Sarah, so she's ready for war by the time Kyle arrives, and old Arnold helps Sarah make scrap metal out of new Arnold when he arrives.  Then, they take on the shape-shifter, then they build their own time machine and jump a generation into the future...got a headache yet?

There's also a nifty new villain.  I won't reveal his identity, but the irony's a nice touch, and the twists and turns do help make the story engaging.  There are also of course, the trademark car chases, explosions and large vehicles doing flip-flops on the  highway.  There's a free-fall scene over the Golden Gate Bridge that's breath-taking.  The action movie is a visual art form of sorts, and the producers do go the extra mile to use the "canvass" of the film creatively and beautifully.

There are other aspects of the film that seem satirical and corn-ball, and there are times when the plot seems to drag out too long.  In the final analysis, it never really goes beyond the PG-13 level; no deep existential thoughts of how machine intelligence achieves sentience or why it wants to destroy humanity.  The machine intelligence is evil, period.  Yet, strangely (and, conveniently) the protective, reprogrammed terminator has developed human-like feelings of paternal affection for Sarah, looming over Kyle like the disapproving father-in-law.  The love affair between Kyle and Sarah never happens, so the franchise seems to be moving back a grade level or two, and angling for a happy ending.  Sarah has to decide whether or not to tell Kyle that he's destined to be John Connor's dad, and more to the point, whether to let Kyle...well, you know.  (Looked to me as though he'd be lucky to get to first base with her.)

Fun as it was at times, you have to ask if a film like this is worth doing.  Homage or desecration?  Kind of like repainting the Mona Lisa with a cell phone in her hand.  Or, working Mona into a collage that juxtaposes past with present to provide artistic perspective?  It's a new take on a classic idea.  The looping of time is used artistically, though the human drama is left lacking.  It's a fun outing for the family, as it straddles the decades, sometimes with a straight face, sometimes without.

It had its good points to be sure, but like the latest "Jurassic World" film, enjoyable though it was, it raises the inevitable question:  At what point do we let the blockbuster franchises at last rest in peace and move forward with original ideas?   Ah, well.

I'll be back.

July Snuck Up on Me!

Did I get my June ambition met? Nope. How about you?

I got a bit of writing done, but no cleaning. That seems to be my lot in life.

Maybe this month I will do better, but don't hold your breath. Too many exciting writing things to do! Will have at least one, if not two, books debuting at ArmadilloCon at the end of the month.

Have hit and passed the two hundredth submission for the year.

But I can still be brought up short by the power of someone else's work and say "Why can't I write like that?" We can all keep learning, striving, and improving. No matter how many books we have written or submissions we have made.

I finished The Grave Tender this morning. If you haven't read it, do so at once. It is a wonderful example of craft. I had to immediately write the author an email and tell her how humble it made me feel. I want to write like that.

I know an email like that would make my day. I hope it made hers.

Then I started a book on How To Write Horror and Dark Fantasy. Not because I never have--I just finished a dark short and sent it in--but because I know I can always do it better.

If you are a writer, you can never stop learning your craft. I don't care how many publications you have under your belt, you can always do better. If you forget that, you are doing yourself an extreme disservice.

Keep writing. Keep learning. Keep growing. It keeps you young--and humble. ;)