BE the Bird -- reblogged from MarianAllen.com

Well, not the bird, necessarily, but, you know, the whatever.

Say you're writing a story about a murderer. You know you have to put yourself in the place of the murderer: Why is killing acceptable/inevitable/enjoyable? What does it feel like to think about it, to plan it, to do it, to remember it?

But that's still pretty thin. Because a murderer isn't A Murderer. A murderer is Bill or Jolene. A murderer is an otherwise regular person who kills. Okay, yeah, possibly a wackadoo swivel-eyed loony, but probably just a regular person who does that thing. A murderer is somebody's child, spouse, employee/employer, co-worker. A murderer has a paper carrier, a mail carrier, a regular cashier at the grocery, neighbors. You're always hearing people who know murderers interviewed, saying, "Oh, he was so sweet!" or "I always felt like there was something wrong there." That's because a murderer has social interactions, bad hair days, kids they buy band candy from.

That's not to say all this needs to go into your story, but it needs to go into your head and heart -- in my opinion -- but some of that might impact how that character behaves that is in the story. It can make your character a real, rounded person, not a Murderer sock-puppet.

You can't just think, "What would it be like to kill?" You have to think, "What would it be like to be this person who kills?"

To be less grisly, it's the same for any character. What would it be like to be this person who falls in love? What would it be like to be this person who lives on this particular space station? What would it be like to be this person who gets a job teaching in this particular inner city school?

Picture by Marian Allen -- actual cat actually on Mom's side porch actually eating actual bird seed

Sure, you can skirt around it by asking, "If I were in love / on a space station / teaching, what would I be like?" That's okay. That works. But that runs the risk of your making the character an idealization of the best of yourself and either eliminating or glossing over the flaws that make a character really interesting.

Much better to take some time to sit staring into space and getting into the zone -- the zone where you try to step into somebody else's skin, try to experience somebody else's emotions, think someone else's thoughts.

It's kind of creepy.

Nevertheless, the best books and stories and movies and television shows give you the kind of quirky, specific speech and action that make the stories and characters captivate you and stay with you for-like-EVver.

Marian Allen, Author Lady
Fantasies, mysteries, comedies, recipes

What Do Your Characters Want?

The most compelling characters are those who want something desperately and who will do anything to get it, which is why Scarlett O’Hara is such a perennially popular character. Frankly, I find her a bit over the top -- selfish and greedy and way too egocentric. I can’t write such characters, at least not at the beginning of a novel. I prefer quiet, unassuming characters who are forced into action by circumstances. (To me, life is the real villain. It does things to us that no make-believe villain can even begin to imagine.) Still, my characters do want.

BOB STARK, the point-of-view character of my novel More Deaths Than One, wants serenity, though what he gets are nightmares, both the sleeping and the waking kind. Debilitated by headaches, he doesn’t have the energy to discover the truth, but Kerry, a young woman he meets in a coffee shop, goads him into it. (I know their meeting is trite, but where would you meet people if you just returned home after eighteen years in Southeast Asia?) When Kerry is threatened, though, he becomes what he needs to be to keep her safe.

My other novel, A Spark of Heavenly Fire, has four point-of-view characters, all of whom want something.

All KATE CUMMINGS wants is a good night’s sleep.

Her husband, a semi-invalid, committed suicide thirteen months ago. Many times during the years of his illness she could have treated him a little better than she did, and she is haunted by her own mean spirit.

Then the red death descends on Colorado, the entire state is quarantined, and martial law is declared. As a patient’s advocate and an insomniac, forty-two-year-old Kate sees more than her share of the horror. People with bright red eyes spewing blood, then falling down--dead. Tanks and trigger-happy troops patrolling the streets. Men in biohazard suits throwing bodies into the back of delivery vans.
Now she wants not to be afraid.

All JEREMY KING wants is to leave Colorado.

He has everything. Two Oscars. A vast Montana ranch. Wife, son, daughter. He also looks better now, at fifty-eight, than he did when he was young.

Having grown up poor in Grand Junction, he hates Colorado, and only came to Denver to finish a film. As soon as the director yells cut, he’s in his rented Lexus on his way to the private airfield where his jet is supposed to be ready for take-off. It isn’t. Instead, armed National Guardsmen inform him that airspace is restricted. Furious that he’s being treated like one of the peasants, he decides to drive home, but the mountain highway is clogged with a thousand cars going nowhere. He returns to Denver, determined to leave Colorado if it’s the last thing he ever does.

All GREG PULLMAN wants is to know the truth.

Since childhood he’s been consumed with the need to know why creatures act the way they do. It is no different with the red death.

After discovering that the disease is a bio-engineered organism, he tries to find out who would develop such a thing, and why. He learns that despite the ban on bio-warfare experimentation, all over the world deadly organisms are being produced and stockpiled. Bubonic plague. West Nile fever. Green monkey virus. Combinations such as smallpox with Ebola and encephalitis.

Burdened by the awful truth, he turns to his friend Kate for comfort, and finds himself wanting her, though he is engaged to Pippi O’Brien.

All PIPPI O’BRIEN wants is . . . well, she doesn’t know what she wants.

After college, she wanted a job at a New York television station, but accepted a position as weathergirl in Denver. Now, at thirty, she wants to marry handsome Greg Pullman, but when he takes the hint and proposes, she says she’ll think about it. A few days later, deciding she does love him after all, she says yes. While waiting in a bar for him that very evening, she meets Jeremy King. Feeling the full force of his personality, she leaves with him, forgetting about Greg. Now she has a new dream: lovely consort to the charismatic King.

She is signing autographs with Jeremy on a downtown street when UN soldiers arrive, level their weapons at the assembled fans, and order everyone to drop to the ground. Fighting back the urge to scream, she obeys. Those who don’t obey are immediately gunned down.

Now all she wants is to accompany Jeremy on his quest to escape from Colorado.

So, that’s what the characters of More Deaths Than One and A Spark of Heavenly Fire want. What do your characters want? What do they get? And in the end, do they get what they want, or do they get what they need?

'Creating a Character Wall' on WritersReaders.com

Cheryl Kaye Tardif recently attended a writer's conference and had the pleasure of meeting renowned book marketing expert and author Jerry D. Simmons.

In his TIPS for WRITERS newsletter, Jerry had this to say:

"Recently I was fortunate to meet author Cheryl Kaye Tardif and she graciously agreed to submit some of her fabulous articles to my newsletter. To read this week’s edition, click Creating a Character Wall ."

http://www.cherylktardif.com