Karen Sandler

Tag: characterization

  • My Characters’ Miserable Lives & NOT Drawing from Personal Experience

    Full Cover-mA good friend of mine emailed me recently. She’d just finished reading Clean Burn, my crime novel from Exhibit A. Clean Burn’s heroine, Janelle Watkins, is, shall we say, edgy. Janelle comes from an abusive childhood, is twitchy and dark, and has a rather alarming self-destructive habit.

    My friend praised the book’s story and the realism of Janelle’s character, but there seemed to be an unspoken question in the email. Out of concern for me, I think my friend was fishing around for information. I think she was wondering if maybe I’d written Janelle’s dark character from personal experience. The short answer–no. The long answer–um, well, no again.

    I had a pretty unremarkable childhood. I did get the occasional, rare spanking (it was more the thing to do when I was a kid), but abuse? Uh uh. No way. In fact most often, my mom would wave that wooden spoon around and we’d all take off for the hills. I don’t think she had the heart to actually use it anyway.

    Am I harboring any secret, self-destructive habits? Erm, no again, unless you count my occasional over-indulgence in ice cream. I’ve also never been shot in the leg or had an affair with a married man, although Janelle has gone through both of those experiences.

    Awakening Final cover-sI think it’s pretty fabulous that my friend thought Janelle’s character was so realistic that she worried I’d based her on my own personal experiences. Nice to know I’d written such a convincing, compelling character. But a teensy little part of myself was the weensiest bit annoyed.

    Why? Because it ignores a very important part of this character-creation equation. The fact that I’m a professional. I write for a living. Creating realistic characters and making them miserable/heroic/strong with weaknesses/evil with redeeming qualities is part of my job. Creating complex stories that fill a novel, also part of my skill set. Writing dialogue or narrative that intrigues, moves the emotions, keeps the reader reading, ditto.

    Celebrate sThere’s a piece of writing advice that is oft-repeated, that I’m sure you’ve all heard: Write what you know. That might be where my friend got the notion that I must have gone through something horrible in order to write my character so realistically. But a writer (luckily) has another important tool in her toolbox to draw upon when venturing into the unknown–her imagination. What I don’t know first hand, I imagine. In other words, I make it up.

    No, I don’t make up my characters and their stories entirely out of whole cloth. I do take experiences from my own life and from the lives of those I know well (beware, friends, you might end up in one of my books :-)), and I observe the lives of strangers. I read widely, diversely, seeking out the interesting and mundane. All of these elements I weave into a character like Janelle Watkins from Clean Burn, or Kayla 6982 from Awakening, or Sarah Meyer from “The Eighth Gift,” my contribution to the Celebrate holiday anthology.

    The end result is indeed a little bit of me in every character. But much, much more of that fictional person is just a figment of my fertile imagination.

    Full Cover-sClean Burn–buy the Kindle version here or the Nook version here

    Awakening–buy the Kindle version here or the Nook version here

    Celebrate–buy the Kindle version here or the Nook version here

  • Taking Responsibility for Your Pets–Or Your Fictional Characters

    ZakAlmost three-and-a-half years ago, I had to say goodbye to my orange long-haired cat, Charlie. He was a wonderful cat, and sorely missed. But after a few months, I started thinking about how much I like having three cats and decided I would be open to the possibility of adopting another kitty.

    As circumstances would have it, a feral cat had kittens right outside my son and daughter-in-law’s apartment. My son and dil coordinated with a local cat rescue organization and planned to capture the kittens and bring them in. Sadly, they could only grab one before the rest of them scattered.

    Zak CuddlingStill working with the rescue group, they got the little kitten fairly comfortable with humans, then arranged for me to adopt him. Rather, they arranged for me to adopt her–there was a little confusion about gender, even after the kitten arrived at my house. It took me calling the vet and confirming that yes, she did a neuter and not a spay, to establish that the new addition was Zak, not Zoey.

    It had been a long time since I had adopted a kitten and a feral kitten was a…well, a cat of a different color. He lived in my office for a few weeks, and whenever something startled him (which was often), he would race into the corner under my printer, completely out of reach. He would burrow under the covers at night, keeping me awake. He would play fetch with a toy mouse. And sometimes he would hide somewhere in the house, terrifying me that he’d gotten outside and was lost.

    He’s now one of the best cats I’ve ever had, although at 13+ pounds, he can be quite a lapful. He still dips a paw into his water dish to lick it off and test it before drinking. And although he doesn’t play fetch, he’ll still run around the house carrying that mouse in his jaws.

    Awakening Final cover-sWhat does this have to do with fictional characters? Well, they may not be living, breathing beings, but they can be as complex and problematical as a finicky feral kitten. You have to consider characters them from every angle, and take as good care of them as you would that pet cat.

    How do you “take care” of a fictional character? You get to know them inside and out. You write dialogue for them that fits them, give them actions that are realistic for their personality, write a storyline for them that allows them to achieve the goals you carefully set up for them. You make them seem as real as that wide-eyed kitten I adopted.

    You don’t make them a prominent character at the beginning of the book, so your reader thinks they’re important to the story, then drop them partway through, never to be seen again. You don’t introduce them a hundred pages in, as if they’re an afterthought. If it’s a minor character that’s intended to have a small role, that’s okay. But even minor characters must be necessary to a story, and have their part to play out. They can’t just be dropped in and dropped out at a whim, any more than you would adopt a kitten for no particular reason, then return it a week later.

    Full CoverOkay, maybe I’m stretching the cat analogy a bit. I am this close to being a cat lady and could go on and on about felines until your eyes glaze over. But I’m also a fanatic about characters, about every one having a purpose, and each character behaving in such a way that makes sense. When a character acts out of character in a book, it spoils the story for me.

    So, cats or characters, make a commitment. Take responsibility. Give them the care and feeding they both deserve.