Turning Point

I am in the midst of finding a family lawyer who will draw up guardianship papers for me. If anything happens to my housekeeper and her husband (i.e., deportation), I will become the legal guardian of their four children. Bringing me to a total of eight kids. Do I have room in my house for 8 kids? No. Add to this that the likelihood of invoking guardianship is somewhat high (most times, it's invoked by death . . . in this case, it would be invoked by that--unlikely--or deportation--much more likely). And so . . . I have passed a turning point.

What do I mean? My housekeeper says she doesn't care if she is shipped back to the slums of Mexico as long as she knows her children are with their other mom. I meet women all the time, in the ESL circles I travel, whose children live with grandparents in a home country and these women work back-breaking jobs to send enough money home that their babies are fed, clothed, and don't need to live in the slums or, in one case, one of the garbage cities. I went from knowing one woman like this . . . to several . . . each one breaking my heart a little. And pulling me into another world just a bit.

And I realized this morning (I have a long day ahead of me interpreting for a situation) . . . that many, many books and characters arc like that. The hero doesn't start OUT hunting for the bad guy who has murdered a hundred people . . . the hero is pulled into the abyss, into this other world, little by little, or suddenly--WHAM!--by some catastrophic event that leaves the hero no choice. Usually, there is a turning point. Some moment when the hero shrugs and thinks, there's no going back. I'm in it.

I am thinking of my wip. My critique group knows I am at a point in which my characters are about to get swept into another world. Little by little, I have planted this story. Little by little, Aleks has been pulled into searching for a cure for the virus. And WHAM! A turning point is about to occur that changes the landscape of the entire book--both figuratively and literally.

I thought Child-44 did a brilliant job of pulling the detective/hero into the morass of the hunt for a killer. It was gradual . . . until the turning point, and then all hell seemed to break loose. I thought The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo also pulled Blomkvist in little by little, like reeling in a fish, until a turning point where he was going to find out the truth no matter the consequences.

Thoughts? Does your plot have a turning point?

I Don't Know

Yes, I got "parfaits" and used all my letters for 71 points.

Moving on . . . I have an Angel of Death in my wip. He is particularly fixated on Aleks, the doctor who survived Chernobyl. I met with my beta on Friday. It's funny, but since he is a religious man (a minister), he himself is very interested in my Angel of Death. What are his special powers? Can he influence the characters? Can he change anything about the real world? How does he feel about the fact that he has lost his own humanity? Does he know God?

My answer? I don't know.

It's funny, but I know my beginning, middle, and end. I know the back story and details of my novel. I know what's going to happen next. I know some of the answers to some of those questions. Which is not to say the answer can't CHANGE. But some aspects of writing a novel I don't know. I wait for characters to tell me, or I see if something works or doesn't. In short, it's a bit like real life where you think you know what is going to happen next, but then you might get a curveball.

I think that's okay. I know it can feel unsettling for a writer to not know. But then maybe take a cue from my "brother," Alan, and just "plow through." (His advice in writing novels, btw, if you missed his interview.)

How about you? How unsettled do you feel by not knowing?

Game-Changers

Last week, someone did something so astoundingly vicious to me, that it was a game-changer. The meanness of how this person spoke to me is now is the new standard of what viciousness means to me. So much so that now I almost chuckle at what I USED to think were unkind remarks. In THAT sense, it was a gift. Now, I know that sounds impossibly Pollyanna-ish, but that is truly where I am now, a few days after this incident. Unkind words are a LOT more likely to roll off my back now.

Which got me THINKING about characters. Think of things that would make your stomach turn, things that would wrack you with nightmares for weeks. Now think of an FBI agent or a detective and what they might see in any given day or week. Their standards of what disturbs them are different. Sometimes when I read the news, I pause when I see a quote from, say, a 20-year police veteran who says something like, "It was the worst crime scene I've ever walked into." IMAGINE, given his standards of crime scenes, what that means.

It seems to me that much of literature is about about game-changers. Detective fiction is about THE case that almost puts a detective over the edge. In some fantasies set in contemporary worlds, it's about the game-changing moment when the person discovers an alternate universe, say. I've even played around with that with my two vampire books, because I chose to set them in such a way that for the hero/heroine in each, the book became about when they discovered vampires existed (versus a world/fantasy that opens with everyone in the book aware of their existence, such as the Sookie books). Great love affairs are about THE love. The game-changer.

So I wonder . . . your work-in-progress . . . is it about a game-changer?

P.S. I added the latest board when Parrish sent it to me today. Do you think he is calling me a brat?

Perfect Storms

So in real life, Oldest Son wants to program nanobots for biomedical engineering. Or 'bots that can perform surgery. Or . . . his brilliant idea for a specific kind of companion 'bot for people with Alzheimer's (it's very specific and has to do with language). Let's go with the latter. Let's say that I can get him in touch with a robtics company that listens to a 14-year-old kid with a dream . . . and help him make it a reality. What perfect storm created this?

On his father's size, every person, just about, has had Alzheimer's. His beloved grandfather on that side has it and Oldest Son just spent time up close and personal with him in November, knowing . . . likely . . . that will be the last time since Grandpa lives on the border with Mexico (i.e., far away). Yet he saw his grandfather, though confused, has these brilliant recollections of being an engineer. But he saw him struggle with LANGUAGE. In addition, Oldest's father is in terrible (!!) physical condition and is Hispanic. Amongst Hispanics/Latinos, the CDC considers Alzheimer's a looming crisis for cultural and common health reasons (rates of Type II diabetes and high blood pressure--both of which his father has). So the kid has a legit personal reason for wanting to help people with this condition.

Add in that his mother is obsessed with language. Add in he has a high IQ and that he thinks in math, and thus got into a special academy for engineering. Add in that he was curious enough to go to a Robotics meeting and decided to join. Add in that the national competition started and he eats, sleeps, and dreams robots (he was so tired from robotics that he was in the shower and tried to eat the soap because he was sleeping in the shower, and, I guess, dreaming of breakfast--that's the hours the kid is putting in, LOL!). Add in he spoke to the teacher in charge of his team and asked to be put in with the programmers, and they did, even though freshman generally don't program. Add in that he has a mother who will listen ad nauseum to programming and robot things I don't understand and somehow make it look like my eyes aren't glazing over after TWO hours. And MAYBE . . . . just maybe . . . just maybe . . . you have the perfect storm of the future man who will invent a companion 'bot with special language capabilities and someday we will all have one.

Maybe not.

I mean, maybe he will pierce his nose and join a punk band. Could happen. And that would be okay too as long as he stays off drugs and remembers to call home from the road every Sunday.

But really . . . maybe it's a perfect storm.

All of this digression to say EVERY character should be a perfect storm. But in particular, your main characters should be.

So in my book . . . Aleks saves the world.

As a very little and lonely boy, he lost his mother to alcoholism and pnemonia. He survived Chernobyl. His father didn't. His father dictated a letter to him before he died of radiation poisoning, the contents of which charted his childhood. An orphan, he was sent to an uncle in Moscow. His uncle was powerful. Because of Chernobyl, Aleks had childhood cancer. He was cured by a brilliant doctor. He emigrated to the U.S. after Glasnost. He kept to himself as a stranger in a new land, so he focused on his studies. He, in turn, became a doctor. He became a researcher. He fell in love with an extraordinary woman. Then the world experiences as strange pandemic. People around him die. The woman he loves falls ill. . . . . you have a perfect storm for one man saving the world.

Ever have moments of your life when you think, "Everything that has happened has brought me to this precise moment"?

I think your book should be filled with those moments. Every character should be a perfect storm.

Thoughts?

World Series--Third Base

Off to Philly we go. Which leads me to . . . .

By the time you round third in your book, the character arc should be apparent. So what sort of character change is your protagonist undergoing?

I think, in my potential work-in-progress, is about choosing love above all things. Even if it means turning your back on the entire world. But I'm still playing.

It's no secret that I love character development more than anything. I love characters . . . when I think of my books, none of them ever started with "what if there was a ticking bomb and the world needed to be saved." All of them started with . . . "What is there was a protagonist who [insert back story here] and now they had to [insert novel's plot here]."

Rounding third . . .

How is your character going to change--profoundly.

GO YANKEES!

And a tantalizing P.S. I have a special guest Monday. No, it's not a Yankee, but it is someone interesting.

Narrative Threads

The photo to the right is one of my narrative threads. If I choose to pluck a particular thread in the fabric of my life and unravel, there you will find this slightly odd thread. The woman in the photo in my late grandmother, in her favorite Mets shirt. The candle is St. Jude. Yes, he the patron Saint of hopeless causes.

I was raised by an atheist and a lapsed Catholic. We weren't even Easter-Christmas hypocritical Catholics. We never, ever, ever, EVER went to church. Though for some reason, I DID go to C.C.D. classes and make my first communion and even confirmation. And for some even MORE bizarre reason, my father likes all grandchildren to be baptized just to cover all bases . . . you know, "just in case."

But all my life, it was my grandmother and grandfather who dragged me to church. I loathed it. In summer, when I would rather be doing ANYTHING else, we went to church. I usually had to wear a dress. It usually had crinoline, which itched. (I loathed dresses almost as much as church). In summer, church was too hot. (Old churches had no air conditioning.) In winter, it was either heated until you couldn't breathe or so drafty you shivered.

I remember my grandmother saying to me, when I was 20, "After all God has given me, it doesn't seem like much to ask to go to church to thank him each Sunday." So I would drive her. Even after her open heart surgery, when the 20 or so marble steps up to the church doors were too much for her and she had to rest halfway up, I took her. Perhaps that was where I REALLY learned to pray. ("Dear God, she is so fragile, PLEASE don't have her fall down these ridiculous marble steps and break a hip.")

I didn't become a Catholic. I have an aunt who likes to think I'm going to hell. But I have this strange habit of visiting Catholic churches. I just go and sit. If it's Saint Patrick's Cathedral, I light candles for my grandparents. And I sit and chat with them in my head. When things are beyond stressful in my life, I talk to the Mets picture and light a candle all day and chat with my grandmother, asking her to watch out for my kids or my family or if things are really bad . . . me. And I have her crucifix on the wall of my bedroom, this agonized Christ on it. Sometimes I feel like perhaps it should have gone to one of my Catholic cousins (you know, the ones who AREN'T going to hell), but lately, I think it's right that it's on my wall since it seems to fit with the thread. A theme, if you will, there running through so many memories, and yet having nothing to do with my life . . . and yet everything. I would never attend a mass, but I will light the candles, which I buy in the Hispanic section of my supermarket. It's ritual, I guess. It's solace.

So I woke up at four a.m., and I realized the new character in my proposal needs to have had a short stint in prison to complete his narrative thread. That if he is going to break the law (which he is), that has to be a thread I can see woven from childhood.

And I suppose that is why some characters feel authentic. And some do not. A narrative thread, to me, can have tiny stitches woven in bit and pieces. It can be subtle. But characters don't arrive in any book without a narrative thread to their back story. And I believe the best threads have their roots in a theme that can be followed over the course of their entire lives.

It's like the theme of redemption. Yes, I suppose there are people looking for redemption from one lone act of stupidity or lapse in judgment. But most people need redemption for a life. Threads of selfishness and greed or cruelty were probably first woven many years before. When Julian searches for redemption in Freudian Slip, it's for a life lived without a thought for others.

A narrative thread is different from plot. A plot is what occurs in the book. It's your storyline. But each character, each main character, has a narrative thread to their life that is a big picture examination of their journey into your novel and how they will blend their threads with the other characters and come out the other side.

A narrative thread isn't a trait, either. It's like a chef who can trace his love of cooking to a single pudding he made with his great-grandmother in childhood, who can then trace his life through recipes . . . through the people who praised his cooking, until with great clarity, he sees it as his destiny in some way.

My new character breaks the law. It's what he does because he doens't respect rules. And now there is a more complete narrative thread for him, one that I see with clarity.

So what is the narrative thread for your main character?

Character (the Other Kind)

So like all my mothers, I hate when my kids are sad. My heart sort of breaks a little. And I sometimes have problems hurting my characters in my novels, because I feel so badly for them. Same thing with conflict. And last night, I read a bit of Lurker Monkey's novel, and my heart just ached for his main character. Ached in a motherly way (his character is a kid.)

But this isn't about my characters (well, it sort of is). It's about character. According to the dictionary, character can mean:

qualities of honesty, courage, or the like; integrity: It takes character to face up to a bully.

And when I look back on my life, if I had to choose, say, 10 moments that made me who I am . . . four would be wonderful (the births of each of my children). And the rest would be horrid.

True story . . . I was a recipient of a Jefferson Award for Public Service. When I was honored at a dinner and so on, and took a shiny medal home, it was a really amazing day, but that wouldn't be on my 10 moments that shaped me. It would be one of the happiest or proudest days of my life, perhaps. But what shaped my character was all the gritty, inner-city volunteerism. All the times I got my heart broken by what I saw--broken and then toughened a bit. The day one of the kids I mentored called me and said her father stole her school laptop and sold it for crack. I had to not cry . . . so SHE could cry. That shaped me. Not the medal.

My character has been shaped by nearly dying, but years and years of mind-numbing pain. By frightening moments and dark nights when I really wondered if I could go on. Coming through the other side . . . it shaped my character. I suppose some people might come through and be bitter. I can't even count the many, MANY people I have met who allowed their misfortunes to shape their character in a different way.

Which brings me, actually, to my characters. So I guess this post was about them anyway. It usually is. In thinking about Freudian Slip, the characters spend the last third of the book . . . well, sad. The old me, the writer just starting out, would have rushed things. "Misery for no more than a chapter or two and hurry along to happiness." But now I realize how much my characters are shaped by the bad things, the things that they must brave in order to come out the other side wiser, or more courageous.

In Magickeepers II, right from the beginning of the new book, the character of Kolya knows that no matter how much fun he has, there is a shadow over his life. He can't run from it (he tried that in Book I). He can't even hide. He can enjoy life, but it's there . . . waiting. It casts a shadow over every single event in the book. It frames all the events. And more so, it has shaped his character. I like him. His moments of petulence are far fewer. He's braver. He doesn't want to shirk his responsibilities. He is a young man of great character.

Thoughts?

Oh, and hope over to Lori's. She has interviewed me today (and she is a great writer!).

http://loriamay.blogspot.com/

Adaptation

Last night was a big TV viewing evening in Chez Orloff. Most of you who read this blog know with the exception of Anthony Bourdain on Travel Channel, re-runs of House with Oldest Daughter when she is home, and anything on physics or astronomy on PBS, I don't watch TV--except for re-runs of Law & Order. Re-runs. Since I don't like being beholden to following anything in order or a straight chronology, even though there ARE first-run Law & Orders, I don't watch them. I know. Kind of weird. But I made an exception, because last night Law & Order: Criminal Intent introduced Jeff Goldblum's new character.

Now, I have to tell you that somewhere along the line over his long career, I became aware that Jeff Goldblum was both brilliant and very eccentric, and I like that. In fact, he's on my short list for potential husbands. But it was more than my lingering fascination with the tall actor--it was how the cast would adapt to an entirely new personality thrown into their midst.

Adaptation.

I think of what happens when I fully develop ONE character as my main character for a novel. I stick him or her into a plot, and they adapt. But it is somewhat like examining a specimen under a microscope. Then I give them other characters--a nemesis or several of them, a sidekick, a family, maybe, a moral dilemma involving any of the above. And I see how they adapt.

In fact, since so much of fiction is about conflict and change, it can seem as if the entire process is designed to keep my characters on their toes, uncomfortable, constantly adapting. I am in the midst of Magickeepers II. And already, I am forcing my young hero to adapt--right on page 1. You see, in Magickeepers I (out on Friday--I'm kind of giddy), Kolya had to learn a magic act to perform in front of thousands every night in Las Vegas. But no sooner does he get comfortable with the act, that his cousin, in Book II designs an entirely NEW show (it would be like Cirque du Soleil launching a new show with the same cast every three or four months--almost impossible!). He never gets to really relax, to increase his comfort level. His demanding older cousin is so intent on his quest for greatness that he drives everyone around him to exhaustion. And so Kolya, to survive, must adapt.

Thoughts? Do you see your fiction as studying adaptation? Any thoughts on Goldblum's addition to the cast? On tall men, in general? On staccato delivery of lines (Goldblum's hallmark . . . I kind of dig it)?

Mushroom Cloud

I am a huge Law & Order fan. It's my one guilty pleasure. Well, no there's another one. I watch QVC but never buy anything--just marvel at how their spokespeople can get SO excited over fifteen different ways to wear a scarf. It's my Comedy Central. But aside from that, Law & Order is my one TV pleasure. I don't ever watch it first-run. I watch it in reruns when I am too tired to read or knit and just want to veg for an hour. Since I have seen most of the re-runs, I always know who the bad guy is. I watch it, as a writer, more for the cops . . . and the DAs . . . and the various relationships and how they are depicted. My favorite cops are Munch . . . and Goren (two different shows). And in thinking about Goren, I thought the show gives a classic example of how to create a book you can't put down. Because recently, poor Bobby had a mushroom cloud explode in his life.

[STOP READING NOW IF YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT THAT IS.]


Goren found out his real biological father was a serial killer.

Holy CRAP!


[OKAY YOU CAN READ AGAIN.]


I find often the most dramatic books that keep you turning pages have mushroom clouds like that. Some Gound Zero event so devastating that the cloud can be seen and felt for miles.

It doesn't have to be an act of violence--though it can be. It can be something as simple as discovering a previously unknown secret about someone--the husband having an affair, the parent who lied to you for years. It can send a person searching through ash wondering how they missed the clues or desperate to get out of the fallout.

Add to that the real issue at hand.

Because the mushroom cloud is rarely what drives the plot. All it gives you is the ash and fallout against which to write the story. In the case of Goren, the question of his father's been answered--now how does he live his life with that knowledge?

In my Billie Quinn books, Billie's mother was murdered years before. It was the mushroom cloud that devastated her father and cast a shadow over her and her brother's lives. Like all mushroom clouds, there was a life before the explosion and fallout, and there's a life after, but the two bear absolutely no resemblance to each other. That's how powerful the mushroom cloud is.

Lately, in my fiction and works-in-progress, I seem to be gravitating toward this theme. The dramatic possibilities. I suppose it's because I believe that people who come through the mushroom cloud events of their own lives and endure . . . are people who found something inside themselves that didn't let them give up. Those kinds of people interest me.

Thoughts?

You Don't Move Me Anymore

Way back when, while I had friends who mooned over Mick Jagger, I had a thing for the cadaver next to him. When Keith Richards released a solo album, I was first in line to buy it. As expected, there's some great guitar on it. And as expected, his voice sounds like someone who has boozed, drugged, and smoked his way through all his years on earth. I'm sure I'm not the only person who mentally pictures Keith Richards at age 2 with a Marlboro hanging from his lips. His is not a a polished voice, but a blues voice--and he's no great lyricist, but I like his music.

In particularly, he has a song called You Don't Move Me. And of course, it makes me think of writing. Because I recently read a manuscript that . . . well, didn't move me.

I tried to think of why. Each sentence was perfectly crafted. No extra words. Spare. Lean. Writing that I admire.

There were no errors of grammar. Nothing to stop this editor in her tracks.

The voice . . . solid.

The problem at hand? Yes, the hero faced a pretty Herculean crisis.

But I was not moved.

And it was only later that I realized this newer writer had grasped the mechanics of writing, but not the emotion. And later still that I realized PLOT DOESN'T EQUAL CHANGE.

That was it. Because really, when I arrive at a "meh," that is sometimes the problem. Plot advances story. It has a beginning, a middle, an end. But how does the main character CHANGE? Is there an emotional core to the book? It doesn't have to be this massive "message" book. But really . . . there's a story arc, and there's a character arc. If I am, say, going along with a cop on a case, and he solves the case, but isn't forever changed by the case, then it's just a procedural.

That Keith Richards was right. You need to MOVE me.

So how are you going to move your readers?

The Arc

Years ago I was friends with a woman who was overwhelmingly negative. There were plentiful reasons--difficult childhood, bad relationship, finances, job, etc. She made exceedingly poor decisions. The kinds of decisions that everyone around her--heck, total strangers--could see were decisions certain to doom any chance she had for happiness. Was she sabotaging her life? Could she not see it? Years went by. YEARS. And yet, essentially, nothing changed. Oh, the relationship, job, finances, calamities were different--slightly. But she held onto her negativity. I saw not even an incremental bit of change in her.

I guess what she lacked was growth. Spiritual growth is hard-won. I find people don't generally grow until the Inquisition Team of Life ties them to a rack and turns the wheel--hard. My growth has been "earned" through illness, divorce, pain and suffering, joy, parenting, the day to day difficulties of life--tempered, at all times by an unceasing desire to learn, to find the silver lining. I welcome change in myself.

So relating this to writing, I started thinking about character arcs. Seems lately on more than a few blogs, I have seen bloggers rail against certain authors. They don't call them out by name most of the time. It's more "best-selling author, all of whose books I've read until now . . . . has disappointed me with this latest effort." Very often, it's a series that has now so bitterly disappointed. And I think . . . it sometimes boils down to growth.

When I write, even though I don't outline, I have a very clear character arc in mind. I like the astronomy definition of an arc: The apparent path of a celestial body as it rises above and falls below the horizon. In most books, characters have their eye on the horizon. In some way, shape, or form, they have a goal, something they are striving for. The character arches toward it, reaching, struggling even. They are on some path. The result should be . . . change and growth.

In my darker books, I think I find the character at the end of the book is wiser. They have gone through some trauma, or they have faced a difficult set of circumstances, and they can no longer go back--for better or worse they are changed by their circumstances. By their arc. By what they have learned. Ever in real life meet someone who was cheated on and the old adage is the wife was the last to know? Maybe it's because the spouse is sneaky. But maybe it's because once the conscious crosses that threshold and admits it, life changes. There is the moment before betrayal and the moment after. I think we intuitively pause, sometimes. Maybe the arc wobbles for that moment. Once we change, we can't go back. I could never go back to the person I was at 20.

In my comedies, the arc may be different. More often the obstacle has something to do with love--so it may be reaching a point of self-acceptance, or learning to trust. The arc means the character is changed--but often for the better. The wisdom is the kind we WANT. We're wise enough to know that being a size 2 doesn't guarantee happiness, that people in glass houses shouldn't throw stones, that trusting and getting your heart broken isn't so bad as we first thought, that love is a GOOD thing usually. The change is wiser, but in a way we all hope to be changed.

Finally, I have the arcs in my YAs. Those arcs are the necessary changes of growing up. Much as we wish we could protect our kids from every rejection, every mistake we made, every tear . . . we can't. I visited a blog the other day (can't recall whose). It was a mom's blog and she said she wished her kids would never cry, that they would only laugh. I thought about it, and REALLY? I wouldn't wish that. Pain brings growth. Watching your child in pain is the worst agony about being a parent. But it's also unavoidable in the Buddhist principle of Life contains suffering. Unavoidable suffering. So though I give my YAs friends and laughter . . . growing up means . . . GROWTH.

When characters don't change? Those are the books that, I think, readers are dissatisfied with. They seem too light, too fluffy. Like you read confection for two hours, but it's utterly forgettable. Or it's the series where . . . the characters were moved like chess pieces on the board, but did anything REALLY happen?

Change is good. It's inevitable. Thoughts?

Invincible

The following is my favorite quote . . . I wear it engraved on a silver dogtag:

In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within

me there lay an invincible summer.

--Albert Camus

In my life, I learned, in a hospital bed, what I was really made of. For every hard knock life has handed me, I have learned my human spirit is invincible. I may have a dark night of the soul, but in the morning, I always have faith in God's grace.

And to me as fiction writer, this Camus quote has great meaning to character development.

I think the most compelling character is one whose GREATEST WEAKNESS must be overcome in order for them to triumph and discover their invincible summer.

It is one thing to discover inner strength. It is another thing entirely to overcome your greatest weakness in order to save the day.

Think about it. In every action movie, when the hero exposes a weakness early on, you KNOW that is what he is going to have to deal with in order to win--like Indiana Jones and the snakes in the first movie. ANYTHING but snakes was his motto. Of course, he ended up with thousands of those things slithering around his ankles.

Very often, in my books, my heroine's weakness is an inability to be vulnerable. An inability to let anyone in. And it is only by learning to trust and rely on someone else--usually her motley created family of misfits--that she can catch the bad guy, achieve happiness, overcome her childhood traumas.

Why is Batman the most compelling, to a huge number of comic fans, of the superheroes? Because he is the most wounded. The one with the darkest internal struggle.

In my next Nocturne, the hero is a Vicodin addict. Only by overcoming his own internal pain can he win.

As readers, we root for the horse with the longest odds.

Thoughts? What is your character's GREATEST weakness . . . and does he or she need to overcome it in order to succeed? I seriously think, in order to write the most compelling book, that it's not enough to triumph over circumstance . . . but that weakness.