She's a Real Character

She's a real character; that's what we used to say about a girl in high school who was different from us; someone who didn't wear clothes like ours, or liked a different flavor or color; generally one who was an individual .  Those are the people we write about, the ones who grab our attention.  While some people are turned on by a story; for me it's the character every time.

As I began writing My More than Sister, or rather decided it was time to write another book, the following words intruded themselves between me and my breakfast:

"I'm Glinda Parfit, and my earliest memory is being talked down from the old Guerneville bridge.  That was three years ago.  I don't worry about that as much as I used to."

I quickly became aware that the woman whose voice I had just heard had a sense of humor and was extremely vulnerable.  That's when I became interested in the character, really truly interested.  At some point within those first three sentences, all of Glinda's personality and predicament is implied; the story - the plot - grew out of my curiosity about the person who would say them.  This woman would pretend not to take herself seriously.  She had problems that she made light of.  And she was hiding something besides her fear.  Most of my stories begin that way; a phrase or a sentence enters my head from the Great Beyond, and my conscious mind responds with a shudder because the sentence contains the emotional description of the main character. 

Don't misunderstand me; I don't claim to take dictation from a disembodied spirit or to receive the inspiration from "on high."  I have spent my life watching people, that's all; it's so much a part of me that it isn't even a hobby, it's a vocation.  I make up backgrounds for anyone in a cafe, telling myself the waitress has two children with Down's Syndrome, the fry cook has an Aston Martin in his garage, that the matron in the adjacent booth has four grandchildren and has provided for all of them in her will but not for her son, their father.  I do the same thing in the supermarket, at the gas station, wherever there are people.  I have a very rich fantasy life.

Even when I try to begin with a plot, nothing special happens until a couple of the characters possess me.  In No Reservation, my intrepid heroine on page one was merely an object in a room until I heard the man she was interviewing begin to stutter and make outrageous claims for himself.  At that point my I H got ticked off and decided to bring him down in the press.  From then on, writing that novel was easy, and if you want to see what movie producers are after, take a look at the monsters I create and how I build them until they bring about a miniature Armageddon; for a time, two movie studios were dickering for that story -  and it didn't have a single thing to recommend it until that hapless lady, the I H, got mad at an arrogant man.

In both No Reservation and My More than Sister the protagonists are women who stand out from the crowd; they're different from you and me.  They engage my interest so much that I can live with them for a year and never be bored.  For me, at least, the beginning is in the character every time.