Fear as an Inhibiting Force

Since I got such interesting responses from my post, Hope as a Driving Force, I thought it might be helpful to look at it from the opposite angle:

Fear as an Inhibiting Force

As much as a character's hope drives her forward, her fear keeps her from budging from the safe zone. This is where the trope of the reluctant hero comes up again and again in popular literature. Bilbo Baggins is practically dragged from the Shire by seven dwarves (er, I may be confusing him with Snow White). Anyway, the fear of the unknown is a classic one--universal within all of us. But people also have very specific fears that hold them back, keep them from facing their adversary or their potential or their own flaws.

On Monday I talked about hope in the context of my character Tapti Singh in a YA time travel/coming of age novel. Today I'm going to switch WIP's and talk about fear in the context of Graylyn Stephens. 

26-year-old Graylyn Stephens, a quality assurance customer service rep, knows all 112 ways a toaster can malfunction, and that 11 of them involve electrocution. She's also the unluckiest girl on the planet. Tired of landing in pot holes and hospital beds, she takes up extreme sports in an effort to chase the bad luck away.

Graylyn is pretty much afraid of everything. She isn't cursed with agoraphobia, per se, but she goes into every situation in her life fearing the 'three things that will go wrong before breakfast.' Self-fulfilling prophesy dictates that three horrible things do happen to her... every day of her life. These bad things range from the annoying (dropping her towel in front of her high school crush) to the tragic (her parents dying in a car accident during her first year of college, leaving her to take guardianship of her teenage sister). And everything in between.

Graylyn's fears keep her from doing anything she really wants to do, because--well, if you can't even walk out the door without tripping, why would you want to risk failing at your lifelong dream?

You may be wondering, if her parents' untimely deaths didn't pry her fingers from the safe zone, then what possible inciting incident would?

It's not too much of a spoiler to tell you it's her own car accident/near death experience.

Being unable to move a single muscle without incredible pain does something to you. Having the very real force of instant pain holding you back requires you to face those intangible things that have been holding you back in life. This I can tell you from personal experience. Some parts of Graylyn's story are embarrassingly autobiographical.

When Graylyn makes the switcheroo from unlucky to in charge, the story gets massively more interesting. She still has fears, but she's keeping them at bay. Of course, it isn't until she faces those fears thoughtfully--taking responsibility for them--that her character arc is complete.

Here are a few of the fears she lives with every day:

• She's afraid she'll never find love, thanks to the competition of her little sister, the chastity vow she took at her father's request in high school before he died, and the behavior of a couple first class jerks.
• She's afraid she'll never have meaningful employment, thanks to having to drop out of school to take care of her sister, and the fact that she's been at the same company ever since.
• She's afraid her best friend might be in love with her, and she's afraid she might love him back, threatening the solidity of her one consistently good thing: his friendship.    
• She's afraid to speak up for herself in mixed company, sure everybody is judging her before she even opens her mouth.

As you can see, many of these fears are strapped to blame. 

Most people go from fear to blame pretty easily in an effort to avoid responsibility for their own choices. 

Think about your own fears and how you may be blaming something/someone else for what's holding you back. Heck, I even do it with my writing. "I can't finish this story because I a) have no time with three kids, b) don't have the knack for structure other writers seem to have."

Your characters will probably do that, too. 

What do your characters fear, and who/what are they blaming for their failures? Once you know that, you'll know exactly what they need to grow as characters.

Happy writing!

Call me Ishmael, or Ishy for short. Whatever.

The fabulous BLOG CHAIN is starting up again and I'm blessed to be a part of it along with a gaggle of writers I both adore and admire. Good people. Find them in my sidebar.

The format is a little more predictable this time, so I can tell you I'll be posting Blog Chain topics every 1st and 3rd Thursday of the month. Yay for schedules and predictability!

Read it backwards. The Mirror of Erised has a special name.

Kate Karyus Quinn has picked our first intriguing topic:

What's in a name? What if Harry Potter had been Larry Snotter? What if Edward was Jacob and Jacob was Edward? What favorite books had character names that you loved or hated? And how do you come up with your own character names?
 This topic makes me smile because of the memories it revives. My junior high school English teacher taught me about literary names, using the old classic Oliver Twist. The teacher pointed out that Mr. Bumble was an appropriate name for a bumbling fool, and Bill Sikes had kind of a menacing note to it, while Oliver TWIST made you think of something crooked or perhaps ill-fated. Then there was the atrocious Fagin, the self-sacrificing Nancy, and the most literal: The Artful Dodger.

It tickled my literary-loving brain to explore the implications and emotions each name conjured.

Years passed and I didn't worry about that element of literature too much again... not until my baby sister, then about 13, told me there were these awesome books about magic that I really should read. Can you guess?

Harry Potter!

I relished anew the fun of deciphering a character by his or her name. Some were just weird: Hermione? Really? How do you even say that? Pshaw.

Then there was the harry Hagrid, the awkward Neville, and the fancy Draco with all his perplexing opinions about Hogwarts houses. Those names, too, were packed with meaning. In fact, there's not a single name in Harry Potter that isn't. It's incredible. JK Rowling must be absolutely exhausted. My favorite is Sirius, the dog star. So many layers can be hidden in a name.

When I name my characters, I usually look for one that matches a type: 

For instance, I created a science fiction writer who wrote his first book as a teenager and still collects comic books. His name was Eric.

I have a neuro-scientist with a tragic past who spends all his time imagining this other, better world created in our minds. His name is Professor William Astor.

I created a pair of twins, one good and one evil, named Rob and Rupert. If I'm honest, Rob was initially kind of a Harry wannabe. Rupert was the interesting one. (Those characters are still evolving, and their names might, too.)

I had fun naming a miracle child Mirielle, and an ex-spy Angus Chase.

A beautiful blonde alien named Azalea beams all over the pages of my one and only alien book.

And when I want to write a story set in a high school, there is invariably a side character named Jessica. Not sure why...

Naming characters is fun. Almost as much fun as naming my own kids, but without the guilt of possibly giving them one that doesn't work well atop a resume.

For me, the meaning is important. But even more relevant than the official meaning is the feeling it evokes, or the word associations (things it sounds like or ideas it inspires).

I like to give characters a stereotypical name so readers think right off they've got them figured out. People like to have easy first impressions, like Elizabeth Bennett in Pride and Prejudice. And it makes it all the more fun to stand those stereotypes on their heads, to show the audience that you can't judge a book by its cover... or its title.

After all, a name is just a name.

Don't miss yesterday's blog chain post by the lovely and talented Christine Fonseca, and tomorrow head over to Lisa Amowitz's blog. These two lady authors have a lot going on right now, so be sure to check them out on goodreads, too.

The Delicacy of World Building

Just finished musing about How my own book reviews can make me a better writer over at Operation Awesome.

And now I'm thinking specifically about world building and how jealous I am of other writers for doing it so well. ;) It really does seem to be an art, weaving details into a narrative in a way that doesn't front-load or overload. The more I read, the more I get a sense for how it's done, but I still haven't mastered it.

I feel like a butterfly trying to weave a spiderweb, but my gigantic wings keep getting in the way. That's about how subtle my world building is.

I think my problem is that I geek out over science fiction, fantasy, or clever contemporary concepts. I make concept king, and everything else suffers. What should be king? CHARACTER. 


The setting and the world building have to be a backdrop against which the character can work - like an actor on a set or... a spider in a web. Let the web get too prominent, and it just might strangle the spider it was built for.

Let me show you what I mean:

Azalea wants to find love, purpose, and a place on Earth to belong, since she's always felt out of place in her own world (which is literally another celestial orb in the sky). She happens to be an alien with the ability to manipulate humans emotionally. Because of that, she never knows when someone's feelings for her are genuine, and pretty much always assumes it's just the result of her beyond-her-control sway over mankind. She's lonely.

She finally meets someone who's impervious to her power, but he's fresh from a bad breakup and doesn't trust girls as far as he can throw them. (He doesn't throw them; he's a nice guy, really.) His lack of trust is only exacerbated by the secrecy Azalea's identity requires. The character conflict is there, right? But it's overshadowed in my current manuscript by details about the world Azalea comes from, the people on Earth who don't want her there, and the people back home who want to control her fate. I haven't succeeded at all in weaving a web. I've got a mass of silk instead. It's still a precious material, but it's impossible to appreciate in its current form.

I think reading my reviews of books I've loved by authors who've mastered world building is a good first step in learning what works.


But what other ways do you make sure you're weaving a web instead of sitting on a spool of silk? How do you keep from front-loading or overloading your story with detail?

Know Thyself (and, um, your character)

I just started reading Noah Lukeman's THE PLOT THICKENS: 8 Ways to Bring Fiction to Life, and was much encouraged when multi-published regency romance author Sarah M. Eden mentioned she owns, loves, and more importantly, uses the book!

So I'm reading it, and the very beginning is rough because it has all these characterization questions to ask yourself, and that just makes me want to put the book down and write. I think maybe I should be taking copious notes while I read it.

Lukeman, a literary agent, suggests looking at your character through a series of lenses:

- like an eye witness describing the character to a police sketch artist
- like a doctor asking his patient for personal history
- like a banker considering the applicant for a loan

There's much more than just that, but it basically ends with you knowing more about your character than you know about your own mother. Which is cool. And I can see this type of method really helping me out with my problem.

My problem: If I don't outline, I get lost. If I do outline, my characters surprise me with revelations, making me feel like I just married someone I don't even know (and basically ruining my next plot point).

I can imagine, however, that if I filled out this sort of questionaire about my main characters - made it so detailed that it inspired the plot, which is kind of the point of a character-driven tale - then I wouldn't have to deal with surprises that derail me into that dreaded black forest of crap-manuscript.

I'm excited to read more of this book. I think I'll be learning a lot as Noah Lukeman guides me through characterization to plot points to the all-important hero's journey. Plot has been my downfall for far too long. It feels good to be studying it at last.

Now you know my weaknesses in writing. What have you learned in your writing journey this week?


(p.s. I'm over at Operation Awesome today talking about bite-sized goals.)

Most Embarrassing Moments: Use them in your writing

We're all creative types here. Has this ever happened to you?

Something's just triggered an idea in your mind for a conversation between two sisters. Sister A is telling Sister B that the life Sister B has chosen as laundromat operator is meaningless and debasing to their family name, and she ought to suck it up and go back to college to get a real job. Sister B retaliates by saying that Sister A is a corporate bimbo who got where she is by stepping on everyone, and that she, Sister B, is happy at the laundromat where hours are flexible and she can actually make it to a 12:30 lunch on time and stay to wait for her manager sister who didn't show up until 1:45.

Well, by this time, Sister A is wearing one of those perfect, nobody-speaks-to-me-that-way-and-lives scowls. You want to be sure to get it just right: the way her eyebrows furrow, and that little crease above her nose, and the downturned lines of her mouth that even botox couldn't cure.

So that's what your face looks like when a timid voice behind you says, "Excuse me, could you hand me a package of pepperoni," and you remember that you're in a public place: the meat and cheese aisle at Fresh & Easy.

Do you smile, play it off like you weren't just making the ugliest face imaginable? Or do you hand her the meat and power-walk away? What would your characters do?

How about this? (men, you have my permission to skip this one)

You're in the gym doing Kegels on the treadmill, ya know, to kill two birds with one stone, and a man comes up behind you while you're totally focused on your nether-regions. "Hey, do you want me to leave the TV remote here?" You jump three feet in the air and almost fall off the tread.

Even though there's no way he knows what you were doing, you still turn red (or maybe that's just face-flush from the workout) and mutter something negatory so he'll walk away (okay, how is it possible that negatory is not a real word--did anybody else know this?).

Embarrassing moments. They happen to everyone. That little teen-sitcom-narrator voice in your head says, Awk-ward, and you try to move on and forget that it happened.

But I suggest holding on to them a little longer, before you suppress that memory forever. Use it.

To be human is to be awkward. That means that if you want to bring more humanity to your characters--even if they're green-skinned, multi-eye-balled aliens on Planet H--you can do it just by adding boogers. After all, we may all handle embarrassing situations differently, but boogers are universal.

What embarrassing situation did you inflict on your characters today?

p.s. Kristal has a very good post about chaos interfering with your writing life over on Operation Awesome, with a mention of the Mystery Agent contest which opens TOMORROW!! Is your one-line pitch ready?

Ha! I'm Robert Pattinson!

Which Harry Potter Character are you?

CEDRIC DIGGORY

Popular, intelligent, loyal, good looking. Some of the many things that describe you. You know what you want in life and how to achieve your goals. You put on a brave facade, but underneath are scared of the same things many others are. You strive to achieve your best and wont accept anything lower. You are extremely loyal to your friends and wouldn't do anything to hurt another person. Because you are seemingly good at everything, people will dislike you for being so 'perfect'.

Find yours here.

And don't miss all the fun going on at Operation Awesome. Kristal breaks down deadlines for:

1) NAMING THE ORANGE OWL (Perceval and Oliver Awesome are currently tied)

2) WINNING THE WHITE TWILIGHT SAGA LIMITED EDITION

3) GETTING YOUR PITCH READY FOR OUR NOVEMBER 1st MYSTERY AGENT CONTEST

Hurry over to the Operation Awesome blog for deets. And Happy Halloween Weekend, my friends!

Look up your ancestors, give the gift of sugary goodness, and pretend to be something out of a novel (or children's cartoon)! That's what I plan on doing! ;)

My New Writing-Related Addiction: Polyvore

It's all Christina's fault, or Amparo's, if you want to trace it back to the source. :)

You see, Amparo linked to Christina's post about changing her main character's personality, and Christina had this cool clothing collage she'd put together to help define her character.

I clicked on the link and discovered I could do the same thing on Polyvore.com. Cool.

Check out my MC, Azalea:

Azalea set1 by katrinangel featuring high heel shoes
My initial concept of Azalea's wardrobe.

Of course, money is no object for Azalea, and she never has to walk further than one hundred feet, so it doesn't matter what her feet sport. I'm sure if I did this again, I'd come up with slightly different choices. Azalea's wardrobe is MUCH more complex than this sampling, but man, was it fun!

Okay, your turn. Go to polyvore.com and try your character's wardrobe on for size. Post me links in the comments. I'd love to meet your characters the high-school way: through their clothing choices. ;)

Update: Okay, I'm seriously addicted. I did my middle grade MC, too. Here's Robert:

Robert Gilbrinkle by katrinangel featuring stone jewelry

I couldn't seem to get Whitebolt (Robert's weapon) right. It's a spectrum white opal stone and looks like there's a spirit captive within it. Okay, that's enough polyvore for today. *shuffles off to, like, take care of kids and stuff*

THE DUFF: Amparo's Interview with her Favorite Character

Who are you? The Casanova or the Wing Man? The Beauty or the Designated Ugly Fat Friend?

If you're the latter--or even if you're not, but just think you might have been at one point--you should read... THE DUFF.
















But before you do, you can get to know Bianca, the girl who made DUFF cool, over at Amparo's blog. Author Kody Keplinger answered six of our questions as her awesome character, and some of it gets pretty deep/profound/life-changing. Suffice it to say, you don't want to miss it.

http://amparo-ortiz.blogspot.com/2010/10/character-interview-with-kody-keplinger.html

And later this week, Lindsay (aka Isabella) will have a character interview with Luc from Personal Demons (by Lisa Desrocher). Stay tuned for that swoon-worthiness!