First post on the new Community Storyboard blog run by Ionia Martin and friends. Visit, read, like, submit, and repeat :)
Tag: writers
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This is a wonderful post for all of you currently writing fiction and needing advice/suggestions about character arcs. As I was reading Debbie’s post, I realized that I provided different arcs for different characters in my last two NaNoWriMo novels. That’s a good thing, but I hadn’t put much thought into why I was doing that. Debbie’s post actually gives me an understanding of what I’ve done and (hopefully) how to make sure the arcs worked for the characters.
1. Character arcs are not 100% necessary. I’m going to get this out of the way first thing.This argument is made all the time, and there’s some truth to it. There are some very successful characters that never have a character arc. James Bond is the one most mentioned. While he was retooled somewhat when Daniel Craig took over the role in the movies, the character has never undergone a significant arc. Miss Marple never has an arc, or Hercule Poirot, or Stephanie Plum.
See a pattern here? They’re all characters in a long-running series of stand-alone books. While there are series characters that have arcs (I would argue Indiana Jones is an example) most don’t have them. Mainly because having the characters change would disrupt the series too much.
2. However, not giving your character one can simply be laziness on your part. Just because there are…
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In exchange for an honest review, Ms. Reyner provided me with a copy of her debut novel, Twelve Days–The Beginning. My intent in reviewing her book was mainly to provide feedback regarding a particular chapter that she had softened out of concern that detailed content might be too brutal. So I read her novel in the space of two days (including the wee hours of one morning) and provided her with the following review. Ms. Reyner gave a kind review of my review so I’ve since posted it on Goodreads and Amazon, and now here:
Twelve Days – The Beginning is an emotional whirlwind of a novel. At first, Elise Grayson seems to have it all: great marriage, great job, great friends, great looks. But author Jade Reyner doesn’t take long to start peeling back the layers of deception in Elise’s life, as she tries and fails to keep her secrets. First, her best friend and favorite “eye candy,” Cole Andrews, sees through all her lies; ironically, he is the one she confides in, not her best girlfriends who are left in the dark until the truth refuses to be hidden. Then Elise meets Vaughn Granger, a tall, dark, and handsome, and highly sexed man who serves as Elise’s boss. Initially she fights her attraction to him, and initially I wanted her to because I was afraid he would be no better than her husband, that he would be just another man to dominate and control Elise.
But Granger is different and he shows Elise what it means and how it feels to be truly loved and worshiped. Although married for ten years, Elise has had limited sexual experience. Granger not only opens a new sensual and sexual world for her, but Elise also experiences a sexual awakening, the kind of awakening that, at least in our dreams, can only happen with someone who truly, truly loves us. The sex scenes are explicit but not gratuitous: there’s a context for every touch, every kiss, every caress. The same is true of the physical and sexual violence that occurs: the detail provides a searing look at Elise’s reality and an unforgiving portrayal of the monster that is her husband.
I did find myself frequently arguing with the characters–usually Elise–as I read along, a good sign that I was hooked, that I was invested in their exploits and decisions. Admittedly, Elise and her sermons on the sanctity of marriage and her stubbornness often drove me up the wall. She makes some, what I can only call, stupid decisions, but she makes them because she really thinks she is doing the right thing. I’ve worked with survivors of domestic violence, and it never ceased to amaze me how desperately some of the women I worked with wanted to believe that only if they acted rationally, then all would be OK. They needed to believe that their lives were not the nightmare that everyone else told them it was. I see Elise going through this, wanting to believe that there still some rational part of her husband that she could reason with. So, while I was sometimes angry with her, I also understood her need, her desire that everything turn out OK.
Of course, in real life, things don’t turn out quite OK and the novel has a hell of a cliffhanger. Fortunately, Ms. Reyner provides her readers with a taste of the sequel, Twelve Days – The Future, and we can at least be assured that there is indeed a future for Elise and a future for us as Ms. Reyner’s readers.
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I am so happy to say that I’ve written over 20,000 words as of this posting. I’m still behind, but the goal of making 50,000 by end of this April seems a bit more feasible. I’m looking forward to returning to writing, that is, really writing, for my blog when Camp is over. This time around I seem to be struggling more with the idea of myself as a novelist. I’m not really plot-driven in my own writing, although I do love to read plot-driven novels. It’s the characters I fall for when I’m writing. I just want them to take over and they don’t even have to do anything. They can just sit at a kitchen table with a cup of tea and think out loud, and I’m happy with that. I just don’t know that readers would be happy with that. This would be only the third novel I’ve written in my life (and I’ve had a fairly long life now), and the first two still beg to be reread and revised.
If anyone wants to (has time to) share their own novel writing experience, I’d be very interested to know, at least, how you sustain your own interest in what you are writing. The beauty of a short story is that you can finish it before you start getting bored with the story line. With a novel, I have to at least keep myself interested in the story. At this point, I’m not even worried about readers. Sigh. That will probably be painfully obvious once I’ve met my goal :)
Namaste.
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“Depression, truth be told, is both boring and threatening as a subject of conversation.” So writes Daphne Merkin in her essay on depression in this Sunday’s New York Times Magazine. As someone who has struggled with depression and anxiety off and on (and, lately, fortunately, it’s been mostly off), Merkin’s essay resonated with me in a far deeper way than any essay I had read before. Perhaps it’s the cold truth of her insights: “Surely this is the worst part of being at the mercy of your own mind, . . .: the fact that there is no way out of the reality of being you, . . ..”
For most of my life, I found the reality of “being me” often hard to bear. Like Merkin, “I was fascinated by people who had the temerity to bring down the curtain on their own suffering,” people like Virginia Woolf, Anne Sexton, and Sylvia Plath, who also just happened to be writers.
Merkin takes us on a journey from her most recent bout of deep depression, through her attempts at recovery in a clinic, and, finally, to a seemingly spontaneous resolution. Granted, this is her own personal story, and others who suffer from chronic depression might have very different experiences. As with so many other ailments, both physical and psychological, one size does not fit all. But I finished Merkin’s article feeling heartened, at the least because the fog lifts just enough for her to imagine a life without it.
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Morgan O’Donnell, guest blogger at the Writer’s Resource Center, offers some great ideas for making your writing environment sustainable. She uses the classic science fiction novel–Dune–to support her insightful ideas. My favorite: “All good writers recycle.” To see what I mean, read her full post by clicking here.
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Guest blogger at the Writer’s Resource Center, Cesar Torres, argues that writers can (and should) have lives. He presents five ways to “get your life back.” They involve the usual (but critical) “using time effectively” to intriguing suggestions of being “present with people.” To learn more, click here to read the full post.
Marie at 1 Write Way 