Characters not from Real People

A few weeks ago a friend taking a writing workshop was given the assignment to write a piece that included a description of someone she knew. She gave me part of the essay to read, and asked if her description of me seemed accurate. I was sure that it was, but I read it anyway.

 

Friends of writers have different reactions to hearing that we're working on a story and developing certain characters. Some are worried that they'll pick up a copy of the finished book and find themselves in it, and not appearing in a flattering light. Others pick up a copy of the same book and are blind to their appearance. I know one writer who regularly includes a sibling she's dislikes who never recognizes herself in her sister's work. And then there's the acquaintance who barely suppresses the hope that she is in the book, perhaps as the heroine or as a brilliant walk-on. 

 

Maybe it's the nature of the traditional mystery to attract this kind of fevered attention, emotions seesawing between avid desire for a moment of fame—or infamy—and a chilling, nearly paralyzing fear of being exposed, put on display for the babbling reviewers on social media. I haven't encountered the same concern highlighted to the same extent from thriller or romance writers, but perhaps that will change.

 

Fortunately, I've steered clear of including anyone I know in my fiction, but that hasn't stopped numerous people from quietly turning to me at a party or a meeting, when they think no one is listening, and asking, "Is that so-and-so?" Sometimes I'm shocked at the question because it tells me more about how the questioner see so-and-so than the idea that I might include him or her in a story. Usually I can't see the connection, and it's easy to say, "No, the character you're asking about came strictly from my imagination, except for the shoes. I saw a man wearing those on the T one day and never forgot them." And that is the truth.

 

During a reading at a book group populated mostly by older women, one guest asked after I finished reading a particular passage, "Is that your mother?" The question surprised me because I had never seen my mother act at all like the woman in the story, and said so. But thirty years later, as she coped with aging, my mother did indeed act exactly like the woman in the story. Either the guest was prescient, or I had given something away without realizing it.

 

Fiction is about creating a world in which characters the writer has invented behave in a way that is so true to life and their character, their personality and beliefs and expressed principles, that readers accept and follow them as though they were as real as the local mayor or postman or neighbor out mowing his lawn late on Thursday night. Fiction is a lie we believe because we can see that it is true to life as we have lived it. We take from people we know the off-hand remark that reveals a deeper sense of the person and give it to our protagonist at a crucial point in the story. We borrow a hair color, strawberry blond, to make a woman more distinctive. But the person we create will be nothing like the person borrowed from. She doesn't have to be; she only has to be true to her fictional self.

 

In her essay, my friend composed a revealing portrait of me, so much so that I winced, surprised that she had been so perceptive and able to express what she saw and felt so clearly. But if this had been fiction, the rest of me would have disappeared behind a new personality designed to carry an action and trajectory that I would not have taken. No matter how close some people think we might be getting to a real person, the writer borrows only details and remakes their significance to support a larger understanding in her fiction.

Naming My Characters

Most of my fiction begins with an image of a man or woman engaged in some act, caught in a freeze-frame of intent and purpose. I can see him or her, usually her, moving forward, the goal just out of view but I know it's there. This person's identity is only partly unknown. I don't have a name or full view of family and friends but I can see how she or he behaves. 

I spend time thinking about the names for my characters. Only once, after writing most of my first novel, in college, I had the bizarre idea that the main character's name was wrong for him, and decided to change it. The student who was typing my handwritten drafts was surprisingly upset. She said the story just didn't feel the same. And she was right. I took the lesson to heart. 

 

The name for any character may come as a sudden inspiration or after several minutes—or days—thinking about it. The name for my first series character, Chief of Police Joe Silva of the Mellingham series, reflects the Portuguese heritage of the area, as well as his approachability. Silva is a common Portuguese name in the towns and cities around Boston, and Joe, from Jose, underscores his basic amiability and implies all that he brings, from the Hebrew meaning "God will add." It also sounded very familiar, as typical of the Portuguese I encountered growing up.

 

In the second series, featuring Indian-American photographer Anita Ray, I wanted a name that could be both Indian and American, as well as having the lightness and cleanness of sound that most Indian names have. (This is just my bias.) I wanted the last name to also sound both Indian and American Irish, and gave considerable thought to both. When a friend casually remarked that another writer had once said her name was perfect for a character, I knew I was on the right track, and Anita Ray was born. Auntie Meena, who in India would be addressed as Meena Auntie, came easily after hearing a child call out.

 

The main character in Below the Tree Line, the beginning of a new series, had to express her Irish heritage but also her particular heritage of the female line, as a healer. The women in her family tree carried names that are mostly forgotten today—Justice, Charity, Faith—but I wanted one that expressed her character. Felicity O'Brien inherited the family farm, and practices her healing gift among friends. 

 

In a short story that first appeared in AHMM ("How Do You Know What You Want"), a social worker in child welfare delivers a teenager to a new foster family. It's a walk-on part but I knew who she was and her name just popped into my head. I didn't expect to deal with her again, but she has shown up in two more stories and is now the protagonist in a novel I'm working on. Ginny Means is forty, unmarried, and devoted to her work, but she has a secret that she carries uneasily, but someone else wants it exposed. In an online discussion I mentioned her and another participant said, "That's a good name for a social worker." 

 

When I struggle with naming a character, I think of Dickens, who was brilliant at this along with just about everything else in composing stories. Capturing the right name, one that doesn't feel "wrong" or "ill-suited" two months or two years later, takes time and effort. It doesn't have to be unusual or startling, like Sarah Strohmeyer's Bubbles Yablonsky or Atticus Finch in Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird. But it should be like the name Nurse Ratched in One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest, able to tell you about the character on some level. The right name lifts the story and carries the personality.

 

That's where my thoughts are now as I ponder naming the minor characters in my current WIP, beginning with the various villains (and there are several) and the townspeople who encounter them.

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Getting It Right on Page One

A couple of weeks ago I began a working on a new mystery featuring a series character who has shown up in a number of short stories. The opening scene told the reader everything she needed to know and moved the story forward, but I wasn't happy with it. I kept writing scene after scene, exploring the characters and pleased with the ideas that came to me as I was writing farther into the story. I kept notes, deepened the characters and complicated the plot. But still, though I could feel the story was developing the way I wanted it to, I wasn't happy. I made more notes.

When a story idea feels like a good one to me, little pieces of the plot, snippets of dialogue, visuals show up waiting to be put in place. I don't try to force the ideas to come, sitting down and deciding this is the motive or that is the backstory. I let the ideas unfold. It's a slow process in the beginning but I pick up speed once I have the basic idea. The problem I was having was with the beginning--the scene that tells you what's going to come sooner or later, the promise and the expectations. I trust my process and I trust my ideas.

We've had wonderfully warm days lately, so my midday walk with the dog is especially enjoyable. A few days ago as we strolled down a quiet side street a helicopter flew overhead. This isn't terribly unusual here. Occasionally a news copter shows up and we all wonder what's been going on. I looked up and watched it hover and move on, not in any great hurry, as though the pilot were looking or perhaps teaching someone how to fly. Watching the copter from below as it flew nearly directly overhead I thought it looked like a tadpole. And just at that moment I had the opening of my new mystery--a young woman racing to get home before curfew who sees a copter flying overhead and stops to wonder why.

I won't tell the rest of the opening, but I knew I had it right by the the scene that took shape in that minute and the eagerness I felt to get to my computer and get to work. Because I had things I had to do at the end of the dog walk, I couldn't go back to work, but the idea stayed warm and grew warmer, with little details coming along to vivify the moment when the main character looks up and sees the copter overhead.

Because of the actions of the main character in the new opening scene, some of what I've already written needs to be recast. This is not unexpected, and I already know how I'll change a few things, adding and deleting. But the relief and excitement at having found the perfect opening for this tale is buoying. It feels like a different mystery now, and it is.

I need this kind of energy to keep the story flowing so the writing, the construction of the story, doesn't start to feel mechanical. The total narrative now has a somewhat different arc from my original intent, but the new one is much better. My desk is now littered with notes, a map of my fictional town, and research tidbits to work into the story. The month of November promises to be productive.

My New Series Character

Over the summer I came up with the idea for a new mystery, a stand-alone I thought, but as the story line itself evolved, the woman at the center of the investigation or conflict grew hazier and hazier. I couldn't seem to get a handle on her. I let the idea sit and germinate, and one day, while I was straightening out my husband's studio, onto the stage of my stalled novel walked a character I knew, a woman who had already appeared in two short stories with a third on the way to publication. 

 

Social worker Ginny Means first appeared in "How Do You Know What You Want" (Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, March/April 32017) as a walk-on. Her job was to deliver a teenage girl to a new foster home, and not much else. I didn't think about her again for a while until I got another idea for a story, and there she was, ready to introduce the setting and problem in "Just Another Runaway" (AHMM November/December 2019), and now scheduled to appear again in AHMM in "The Deacon's Mistake." 

 

Ginny Means has evolved in each story. The details of her life appeared as needed, but I kept track of them, and now as I look over my notecards I can see she's ready for her own novel. She's the middle of three girls, unmarried and childless, and prone to casual attire. Her mother and sisters are yard salers, scouring the countryside on weekends for their "finds." Her case work focuses primarily on teenage girls in foster care. 

 

When my imagination plucked Ginny Means from the list of possible main characters I was reluctant to consider her because, after all, who really wants to read about teenage girls getting in and out of trouble all the time. Aside from being depressing, it could also be monotonous. Ginny needed more in her life, and that turned out to be easier to solve than I at first expected.

 

In Massachusetts at least whenever there is a severe budget crunch, the state lays off vast numbers of social workers. Many never return to the field, and others limp along on part-time work. Ginny became one of those, supplementing her reduced hours with a small counseling business on the side. With a MSW in social work from a major university and several courses toward her PhD, she earned for a license as a counselor. Now a LICSW, she comes into contact with a much more varied population of troubled and troubling individuals, mostly adults. And that's where my novel stuck in a ditch climbed out and began to move forward.

 

But not all my problems are solved. A character who works in a short story may not expand well into a novel. I have yet to spend enough time with Ginny Means and her family to know her well and anticipate what she'll do, how she'll face other problems and challenges. Her thoughts and inner life are still mostly unknown. An additional consideration is that I located her and her work in the Pioneer Valley, where my short-lived third series featuring Felicity O'Brien is set. I'm not inclined yet to move her (a decision that can be made at almost any time), since I like what I've seen (created?) so far. The most important element, however, is my new-found enthusiasm for Ginny as a lead character. I like the way she thinks and confronts people and problems, and I like spending time with her. It's time to let her take over the story and see where it goes.

Definitions of the Cozy Mystery

A spirited discussion on the Short Mystery Fiction Society list led to several short or longer definitions of the beloved cozy mystery. I collected most of them, and list them here. Some are tongue-in-cheek, some are serious, but all give insight into the genre. I've omitted the writers whose definitions are quoted and edited lightly.

 

A cozy mystery is one in which the blood is dry before it hits the page.

They are a place for the reader to escape, a place the reader will like being. The language used is soft, not harsh, the people are those the reader would like as neighbors, and the killer has a very good reason--at least in their own head--for doing the deed. That pleasant place where order will be restored.

 

A cozy is a mystery in which someone gets killed but no one gets hurt.

 

I think of the word cozies as mysteries to which the word "cozy" applies in two ways.

First, cozy in the sense of comfortable. They're not disturbing to read. Violence happens offstage, sex is only suggested, the language is mild.

Second, cozy in the sense of close and contained. The story takes place in a community of limited size, such as a small town and there is only a handful of suspects.

Life as it should be with a little excitement added in (murder).

 

There’s a lot of hairsplitting over the definition of a cozy and the difference between cozies and traditional mysteries.  The lines are definitely blurred. Basically a cozy has no on-page sex or violence, with little or no profanity (preferably none). They often take place in a small town. I never heard the bit about no one getting hurt. Traditional mysteries are grittier and perhaps more realistic. I would put Agatha Christie’s Jane Marple in the cozy category. Sayers more traditional.

 

I would also note that cozies have a strong element of female empowerment. The protagonists are busy making a life for themselves, often a new life after a tragedy, and often against the odds. They run businesses and libraries and community theaters, and sometimes families. Their world is disrupted, and they do everything it takes to put it back together. They get sugar done. 

 

"Cozy" is essentially synonymous with "traditional mystery."

 

I do want to say that although the cozy genre is very heavily weighted towards female protagonists, there are some authors who have done a great job making male protagonists work in a cozy as well. I’m thinking about M.K. Wren’s Conan Flagg series, Jack Ewing’s Primed for Murder, Stephen Humphrey Bogart’s R.J. Brooks mysteries, Matt Witten’s Jacob Burns mysteries and many more.

 

Cozies have nothing in them that will upset *anybody,* even the most strict reader.

For traditional mysteries, the most important thing is the puzzle. 
The level of action and danger varies, and we don't always like the protagonist that much, but the puzzle needs to hang together. The reader gets intellectual satisfaction from the solution of the puzzle.

For cozies, the most important thing is that the reader feels that the protagonist is a friend, and they feel comfortable in their company. 

Cozies can have some mild action, and some danger, and they have a puzzle, but all of that is subordinated to creating an emotional bond between the protagonist and the reader.
The reader gets emotional satisfaction from having spent an enjoyable few hours in the company of their friend.

 

A cozy is a book you can read before going to sleep at night, and still be able to go to sleep at night.

Both cozies and traditionals: no excessive, graphic, gratuitous sex or violence on the page, plus very little or, preferably, no “expletive deleted” words. Usually a small-town setting. Emphasis on backstory, character development, whydunit as well as whodunit.

Difference between cozies and traditionals: in a cozy, the sleuth is always an amateur, generally female. In a traditional, it is a professional, sometimes a police officer, but more often a private investigator, and more often male. 

Christie’s Poirot books are traditional; Miss Marple books are cozies. 

 

Someone dies, no one gets hurt.

There’s a lot of hairsplitting over the definition of a cozy and the
difference between cozies and traditional mysteries.  The lines are
definitely blurred. Basically a cozy has no on-page sex or violence, with
little or no profanity (preferably none). They often take place in a small
town. I never heard the bit about no one getting hurt. Traditional
mysteries are grittier and perhaps more realistic. I would put Agatha
Christie’s Jane Marple in the cozy category. Sayers more traditional.

Sunburn by Laura Lippman

Laura Lippman is one of my favorite writers, so much so that I have to remind myself not to give away too much, so no spoilers here. 

Sunburn by Laura Lippman William Morrow, 2018 

In Belleville, Delaware, in 1995, a man and a woman meet in a bar. Both are just passing through, but each one for different reasons decides to stay. Polly gets a part-time job in the Heigh Ho bar, and Adam signs on as a chef who turns out to be creative enough to draw customers from beyond the small town. They are soon enmeshed in each other's life. 

But both are lying about who they are and why they are in that small town in the first place. Gradually their histories--or parts of them--are revealed, and at each stage one or the other faces the challenge of accepting this unexpected truth about the other. As the passions deepen, the seesaw increases. 

Told from multiple points of view, the story moves through Polly, Adam, Adam's secret employer, and Polly's abandoned husband. Each character is focused on one goal, and through that focused determination Lippman explores their character, the twists in a life that have brought them to this point. Polly, who at first seems the worst of the lot for abandoning her husband and three-year-old child, grows on every page into a complicated woman whose goal isn't fully realized until the final chapters. Her husband, Greg, also turns into someone he probably didn't expect to become. 

The writing is graceful, the pace steadily increasing, and the twists and revelations very satisfying. Highly recommended.

Here's the Thing about Stuff

Back in the late 1980s, when Reagan left the White House and it was evident he was in decline, a journalist reported that others had noted the mental failing much earlier because the president began using the word stuff, dropping it in more often rather than developing the rest of the sentence. Instead of being precise and clear, he used the word as a shortcut, making his sentences sound informal rather than incomplete. This, apparently, is a sign of declining mental skills, and an early sign of dementia.

Well, that got my attention. With a grandmother who died with Alzheimer's, and later a mother in the early stages before she died, I took note of the signs I could look for in my own speech. When the use of the word stuff and others like it turned out to be one of them, I hopped on that bandwagon and have been riding it ever since. I have long been uncomfortable with the sloppy use of the word thing, and avoid it whenever possible, so now I had two words that made me cringe when I heard them skidding into place in a sentence.

Changes in contemporary American vocabulary are obvious to anyone who reads an old newspaper from the 1950s or earlier. I'm not convinced this is a sign of the shrinking of our language skills, but it is certainly an indication of their changing. Our writing and speech are much simpler, more casual, blunter in many cases, more often laced with slang. Linguists may argue about the size of the English vocabulary--half a million words or fewer than two hundred thousand if most of the inflections are skimmed off--but in daily transactions our chosen words are few. The ever-present stuff and thing may be a sign of change and nothing more.

A professor in graduate school, in the 1970s, remarked a few times on the tiny vocabulary of a particular Slavic language. I haven't been able to track it down, but I did come across a language thought to have the fewest vocabulary items. Toki Pona is a language created by Sonja Lang, and has 123 words. It takes usually about thirty hours to learn and the speaker must rely heavily on creating metaphors to get his or her point across. I can't say it appeals to me. Even though language grows through metaphor and borrowing  from other languages (one of the reasons English vocab is so large and rich), I think I'd be frustrated at not having more words to play with, especially technical terms. This particular language strikes me as replete with versions of stuff and thing.

A writer who captures a character's linguistic oddities--speech patterns and rhythms, vocabulary and inflection--wins my eternal admiration. This doesn't mean the author demonstrates a vast vocabulary; only that she captures the peculiarities of an individual in words. The first time I read George Higgins I felt like I was in the room with his characters and at any moment they'd be menacing me as though I were in the story.

The news about Reagan may have startled me out of a complacency I didn't know I had. But in the end it made me a more conscientious writer, alert to moments of laziness in thinking and writing that can be corrected and thus perhaps improve the work in ways not imagined. Whatever challenges me to be more alert is good, regardless of the original motivation.