Installment #3: Character Work.

Writing ByTrying My Hand At Writing A Novel

Jan 24

It’s only been a week and I have journeyed through all kinds of emotions surrounding this book. Do I have enough of a concept? Is my hero the perfect hero for this idea? And… 100k words? That’s a lot of freakin’ words. WHY DID I EVER THINK I COULD DO THIS?

I know all of that back and forth in my head is just my inner critic trying to keep me from moving forward. I’m calling that imaginary troublemaker Ramona because it seems like a great name for someone who tries to derail well-laid plans. I’ve had to mentally lock Ramona away in the attic in my mind to stop her from generating so much doubt that I give up before I’ve even begun.

Now that Ramona has been temporarily silenced, here is what I did this week:

Character work — I’m still working my way through this, but I did do quite a bit of character work on my hero to get started. I needed to hear her voice and understand what she wanted to make sure I was telling the story she wanted to tell. Part of the challenge is really digging deep inside her psyche and not just laying down plot points that I need to hit. I find with every project that I write, sometimes the story I start out to tell winds up going down a new path when I really listen to the character.

At this moment, my main character is pragmatic, sensible, and not easily rattled. I need her to be somewhat rigid so that when she eventually comes up against things she can’t explain, not only is she forced to overcome her skepticism in order to catch the bad guy, but she might even have to descend into a bit of madness herself to do it. I wrote a few pages of dialogue for her to hear how she sounds and discovered she’s incredibly observant, and surprisingly insecure which is why she resorts to leaning on facts and the things she can see in front of her. As a woman and a person of color, she can’t afford to be wrong so she makes sure she has data to make her case. Going on hunches and feelings alone scares her (which is exactly what she’s going to have to do in the end if she’s going to come out of this alive.) I still have work to do on her, but it’s a start.

I’m surrounding my hero with a group of other characters that will challenge her in various ways. Her partner is everything she is not — white, male, confident, married, and wired into the town. He’s also got a big-ass flaw that will lead him to make a huge mistake that will threaten everything. There is also a character who will serve as the catalyst for most of the story, the villain, and a love interest who I have pretty well sketched out but need a lot more complexity before I really get going.

I’m tempted to jump right in and start writing, but since there is a mystery at the center of this novel, I’m not sure that pantsing any of this will work. If I can keep Ramona chained in the attic this week, my goal for next week is to flesh out at least two of the other key characters and start working on a thorough outline.

Until then…