The small town I live in now is a wonderful community. Each day someone says or does something at the convenience store, the post office, or elsewhere that I will use in a novel. But it is in the more meaningful close relationships in them that lead to complex and nuanced characters on the page with a specificity found in real genuine exchanges. 

A few years ago, I volunteered to coach my seven-year-old son’s Little League team. I’d never coached at any level and was in over my head. So was the other father who volunteered for the first time. We quickly learned that wrangling a dozen seven-year-olds on weeknights when the kids, and we, were exhausted is not easy, even for a Detective-Lieutenant of the Major Crimes Unit who oversees all homicides across Vermont, which the other father is. We’d never met before, but soon learned each other’s careers. He: the state’s lead homicide detective. Me: a “crime writer.” 

As we struggled together with the learning curve of coaching kids, we became friends. I’d ask about his job and he began to offer me ideas for good crime novel plots. I’d ask how to handle a certain murder case in a book and he gave me the answers. What I learned from him was invaluable. Not just procedure and the law, but about him as a father and husband, a high school soccer game emcee, youth baseball coach, and a homicide detective who sees the ugliest side of human behavior.  

One Friday night after a practice, our families were heading to the parking lot and he said, “See you at the game tomorrow.” But before we got in our vehicles he got a call, said a few words, and hung up. He wouldn’t be able to coach the next day. He’d been called to a murder investigation. His daughter was upset, his wife was disappointed. The murder had taken place hours away in northern Vermont. He had to head out straight away. He had a go bag ready in his truck. It was a three-hour drive north to the crime scene, and once he got there he would spend several, 16-hour days before he came home. His job meant leaving his family for an indeterminate amount of time, without notice, anytime at all times, whether it was 2 a.m. on Christmas Eve or while on vacation in Maine for the 4th of July.  

Another time when we were picking up our kids at school, he said he had to head out right after. When I said it must be hard dealing with violence and murder, he said what was hard right then was finding a babysitter for the next few days, and someone to pick his daughter up and drop her off at school because his wife’s schedule didn’t allow it. He had to find a mom and pop motel to stay in for three days up north in rural Vermont. It was supposed to snow hard, making a three-hour drive a treacherous five-hour drive.  

These, and many more practical real-life considerations inform how I write detectives now. I have a genuine insight into the pragmatic and emotional challenges and stresses, and the coping skills needed to navigate them and a family and small-town life. It’s not even information you can get in an interview and definitely not by just doing research. It’s made my characters richer and more realistic. 

When I was working on the early draft of Remote: The Six, my novel that’s out now, a friend asked me casually about it and I told him it involved FBI agents and I had no clue what I was doing regarding the FBI. Well, he had a friend who knew two career FBI special agents. He set it up for us to speak. They are a married couple with long careers as Special Agents. I was very fortunate. They spent hours on the phone with me and answered every question I had about their profession, from the gear and weaponry used to surveil and swarm a house in very specific situations, to chain of command, warrants and flak jackets, hi-tech surveillance and going undercover, and what their ordinary family lives are like and how their careers impact them, and how real life impacts their careers. Without randomly talking to this friend one day, I’d never have found these two particular agents who were so generous and specific. They made Lukas Stark, the FBI agent and protagonist of Remote, authentic and believable in a way I could never have done with my imagination or online research.  

Bookshop | Amazon
[WD uses affiliate links.]

Another, darker, instance where community gave me insight into believable characters was when a close childhood friend robbed a Denver bank at gunpoint and fled in his vehicle. He was chased by a CNN helicopter and the police. This was the late 1980s. It was the first live fugitive chase in history. While I was watching it unfold, I had no idea the fugitive was my friend. He ran down and killed an officer going 80 MPH, then crashed his vehicle. He attempted to kidnap a mother and her baby and commandeer her car but she got away as he fired his handgun at her. He took an elderly man hostage and had him drive. The helicopter eventually cornered the truck in a parking lot and my friend was shot 13 times and killed, on live TV.  

I had no idea this was my friend until after he was killed and they showed his mugshot and said his name. He’d escaped a Texas prison where he was serving a life sentence for kidnapping. I had no idea about that either. This friend had always been an easy going, charming, and funny teenager when I knew him. A good friend. Generous and down to earth. Athletic and handsome. Ever since then, I’ve explored what happens along the way to turn some people to violence and crime.  

In this case, I learned a traumatic and horrific event happened to him regarding his father’s suicide before he moved to our neighborhood. This stuck with me my whole life. It gives me great insight into how I write certain criminals whose backgrounds are traumatic and very hard to escape, who would not be criminals at all if not for that trauma that triggered it years prior.  

Every day, everywhere we writers go in our communities, the people we meet, every friend and co-worker and stranger, every fellow citizen is an opportunity to discover how a person’s voice and mannerisms and beliefs and appearance can help create realistic and nuanced characters to inhabit the communities in your fiction. 

The post The Character Next Door: How to Tap Into Relationships and Communities to Create Realistic Characters appeared first on Writer's Digest.

(Unforgettable Settings in 5 Simple Steps.)

Thoughtfully crafted small town settings do more than simply frame the narrative. They can become part of it, weaving the emotional and romantic threads that connect each character’s journey.

Think of your setting as the soil from which your characters grow. It forms the backdrop that defines their histories, influences their motivations, and guides their actions. In Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, the small-town setting of Alabama in the 1930s profoundly affects the characters, shaping their worldviews and development. Similarly, in Robyn Carr’s Virgin River, the town itself becomes a place of healing, reflecting the internal journeys of the characters.

Your small town should feel like a home to both your characters and readers. Delve into the town’s history, its nooks and crannies, and the places where your characters spend their time. These details should subtly influence their journeys. A cozy local diner, a bustling community event, or a long-forgotten street can all reflect and challenge your characters’ growth.

More Than a Location

Setting is also much more than location. For each scene, think carefully about weather, climate, even time of day, then utilize those factors to reflect your characters’ emotions. Use your setting to magnify those emotions. It isn’t simply about where they are, but how the environment resonates with their inner struggles or triumphs.

A tempestuous thunderstorm can mirror turbulent feelings, while a bright day might contrast with hidden struggles. A winter storm could symbolize inner conflict, while a spring festival might represent rebirth. Ground your setting in specifics, allowing it to enhance each characters’ emotional arc. This taps into your readers’ senses, making the story not just something they read, but something they feel.

To capture the essence of a small town, start by asking yourself key questions: What history does this place hold? Where do characters naturally gather? How do these spaces influence the unfolding story? Include the landscapes, the unique culture, and the sensory details that anchor readers in your world.

For truly memorable small towns, it’s important that writers treat the setting with authenticity and be wary of falling into stereotypes. Move beyond the familiar nosy neighbor trope and create unique, compelling characters to fill your town and help move the story forward.

Click to continue.

5 Tips for Enhancing Setting

1. Visit locations: Spend time in small towns similar to your setting for inspiration. Observe the people, sights, sounds, and rhythms unique to the town.
2. Know how your characters might see their surroundings: As an exercise, describe your small town through each character’s point of view. How do your characters’ individual life experiences shape how they see their community and how does that perspective influence their motivations and behaviors?
3. Map it out: Sketch a map of your town, detailing important locations and how they relate to characters’ lives, focusing in particular on spots of key emotional turning points.
4. Immerse the senses: Describe settings using all five senses, integrating details gradually to create a rich, evocative experience without overwhelming readers.
5. Reflect growth and change: Allow your town to evolve alongside your characters, reflecting changes in economy, population, or social norms, which can fuel character development.

These techniques will help you visualize and deepen your narrative landscape.

Setting is far more than simply a static stage upon which your characters perform. It can be the dynamic heart of your story, inviting readers into a vibrant, living world. Craft your settings with care, and they will deepen your characters’ connections and enthrall your readers.

Check out RaeAnne Thayne’s The Lost Book of First Loves here:

Bookshop | Amazon

(WD uses affiliate links)

The post The Heart of the Story: Using Small-Town Settings to Deepen Character Connections appeared first on Writer's Digest.

(Find more Killer Writers conversations here.)

“Writing has changed a great deal since you started.”

 “I wrote my first eight books on a 1958 manual, portable Olympia—solid steel. I started out in the newspaper business in the 70s, tapping away on a typewriter. We had copy paper and carbon paper. We had paste pots with a little brush stuck down the middle—cut and paste. It’s all different.”

“There’s something to be said for that tactile experience.”

“When I was doing magazine stories, I’d have pages all over the floor of my apartment living room, and I’d be on my hands and knees trying to figure out where everything went. To this day, when I’m working on a book, I have chapters laid out on the floor because I’m trying to find if I’ve duplicated something or if I should move something. I still print and edit. I print it out every day. I just finished yesterday hand-editing the draft that I’m doing. For some reason, I can’t really edit on the computer. I have to hold the manuscript in my hands and duplicate the reading experience. I see things when I’m reading the manuscript that I don’t see on the screen, including typos. I think it was on Facebook, a young writer was asking the other day, ‘What are you supposed to do, print out the whole book? And then you have this giant stack of pages?’ And I was like, ‘Well, you kind of do it chapter by chapter.’ I felt like I was from another era.”

“Or another planet. You started as a newspaperman?”

“Yeah, I was doing paid summer internships in Southern California for the Santa Monica Evening Outlook chain, covering city council meetings when I was 19. I’ve just always been a writer. I’ve been a writer in lots of different formats—magazines, television sitcoms, screenplays—and my ultimate goal was books. It took me a long time to work my way to getting my first novel published.”

“And it did well, your first novel.”

“Yeah, it did. Not as well as Hoagy did, but my first novel was actually a coming-of-age novel called Kiddo. It got a rave review in the Sunday Times Book Review. I got my own page with my picture and the whole thing, but I didn’t marry a movie star, and I didn’t become a millionaire. My first murder mystery, The Man Who Died Laughing, was based on an experience I had. One of the things I did along the way was ghostwrite a memoir of a real-life murder in the late 70s that took place in New York. It was a major tabloid murder. I don’t know if you’re old enough to remember this, but it was Sid Vicious and Nancy Spungen.”

“Oh, yeah.”

“He allegedly killed her in Room 100 of the Chelsea Hotel, knifed her in the bathroom. It was her mother’s story. I learned a lot from that experience. That’s how I got the idea of a young novelist who had achieved great success, married a movie star, and then got writer’s block, fell on his ass, snorted everything away—his marriage, his career—and as a last-ditch fallback, his agent talked him into ghostwriting a memoir of a famous comic from the 1950s. It was called The Man Who Died Laughing, and it was nominated for an Anthony Award.”

“That was your first mystery.”

“Yep. My editor, Kate Miciak, called me up, and I said, ‘What’s an Anthony Award?’ And she said, ‘It’s awarded every year at Bouchercon,’ and I said, ‘What’s Bouchercon?’ I didn’t know anything. I wasn’t part of the mystery community at all. It didn’t win, but my third one, The Man Who Would Be F. Scott Fitzgerald, did win an Edgar Award and an American Mystery Award. At that point in my career—this was the late 80s—I would sit down every day, and I didn’t have the slightest idea what I was doing. I really didn’t. After I won the Edgar, I realized that I actually did know what I was doing. I just didn’t realize it.”

Check out David Handler’s The Man Who Swore He’d Never Go Home Again here:

Bookshop | Amazon

(WD uses affiliate links)

“Let me ask you a couple of questions, then, about knowing what you’re doing. A lot of our readers are writers-to-be, and they want to avoid plot dumping—which you don’t do. You’ve got snappy dialogue moving the story forward. When you first sit down to write a scene, do you start with what needs to be said, or with who’s saying it?”

“It varies from book to book. I try not to crowd too much. I’ll try to keep the pacing going, and whatever will keep that going and move the story along.”

“You carry a lot of the story in the dialogue.”

“I do. I write pretty good descriptions. My prose is good, particularly in the Hoagy series, but my strength has always been dialogue. That’s why I got paid a lot of money to write TV—because I wrote good comic dialogue. But in a weird sort of way, I feel like a bit of an impostor as a mystery writer, because I don’t really consider myself a crime writer. I consider myself a writer of character fiction. I create interesting, smart characters—people I’d want to know more about, or people who have a lot of secrets. I create this ensemble. It’s a story about these people, and somebody ends up dying. I don’t start with the murder. I start with the characters.”

“You start with ensemble first.”

“That’s the most important thing for me—coming up with my ensemble of characters. What is going to happen? I don’t quite know how I’m going to get there, but I have a basic thumbnail idea. I know pretty much who’s going to die and why and who did it, but the fun part is creating all of the different characters and their interlocking relationships, interlocking pasts, their motives—and making them all plausible.”

“In your dialogue, there’s a lot of emotional subtext. How do you say what needs to be said between the lines without beating the reader over the head?”

“I do a lot of trimming. I just try to be as low-key about that sort of thing as possible. When I first started out, I used to try a lot harder to be funny. I was coming out of TV, where you were used to doing five jokes to a page. My dialogue now tends to be a little more reflective.”

Click to continue.

“And you accomplish multiple things at once.”

“You have to. One of the things you have to learn how to do is to accomplish more than one thing with your dialogue and your description. You’ve got to get heart in there, in addition to humor and information. If you’re not moving the story forward, then the scene has no purpose.”

“And you use yours to plant clues, give misdirection, suspicion.”

“Without hitting people over the head. I worked with some amazing people when I was doing movies. I wrote two projects with William Goldman, and one of the things he taught me is that if you’re not moving the story forward in each scene, then the scene has no purpose.”

“Even the funny scenes?”

“We used to get into arguments. Remember L.A. Confidential? One of the most famous scenes is the Lana Turner scene. Kevin Spacey and Guy Pearce are at Formosa Café, and Pearce thinks the woman is a hooker pretending to be Lana Turner. Turns out she’s really Lana Turner. She throws a drink in his face. Hilarious. Bill said that scene should have been cut because it didn’t move the story forward. And I said, ‘But everybody loves that scene!’ He didn’t care. He was a purist.”

“Something that struck me in The Man Who Swore He’d Never Go Home Again is how distinct your characters’ voices are.”

“I make notes about each character before I start writing the book.”

“You don’t even need dialogue attributes. The voices are that clear.”

“It’s really important to write good characters. That’s what I try to focus on—making them individual.”

“And you make them sympathetic—even the murderer.”

“Yeah, I don’t write monsters. I think we’re weak and greedy and want things we can’t have, or think we should have, or carry a grudge. I try to make the murder an outgrowth of a character’s flaws and weaknesses. Over the drafts, I work on making them as fleshed out as possible.”

“This is book sixteen in the Hoagy series. What was different this time?”

“I went all the way back to the beginning—before the before, in a way. When Hoagy walks into the Blue Mill Restaurant in Greenwich Village and sees Merilee. They lock eyes, and their lives change. Lulu the basset hound isn’t even in the picture yet. Merilee’s about to pick her up in a few days.”

“So even after all these books, you’re still discovering new ground.”

“I got to explore Hoagy’s childhood. We knew almost nothing about it before. His family had operated a brass mill in Connecticut for five generations. But we didn’t know why he and his father hadn’t spoken since high school. I also brought in his childhood friend and high school sweetheart, Maggie McKenna. She calls to tell him the town librarian—who really saw his gift early on—has died. That librarian was a big figure in his life.”

“Sometimes writers turn dialogue into soliloquies. How do you know when to divide it up?”

“I’ve written like 34 books. At this point, it’s instinct. I just know when something needs to be broken up—or when we don’t even need it.”

“Do you ever break the William Goldman rule and keep a line just because you love it?”

“Yeah. I’ve got running gags and Lulu things I can’t resist. But I’ve learned to pare them down. A little bit goes a long way. That took me a long time to learn.”

_____________________________

David Handler is the Edgar Award-winning author of several bestselling mystery series. He began his career as a New York City reporter. In 1988, he published The Man Who Died Laughing, the first of his long-running series starring ghostwriter Stuart Hoag and his faithful basset hound Lulu. http://davidhandlerbooks.com/

The post A Conversation With David Handler on How the Character Comes First (Killer Writers) appeared first on Writer's Digest.

(How I Write Compelling Characters in Spy Thrillers.)

Can two people love each other and still betray each other?  InThe Poet’s Game, Alex Matthews and his wife, Anna Kuschenko, are trained to use lies and deceit in the course of their intelligence work, and they ultimately contend with a dark secret that will forever keep them from being entirely truthful with each other. How does a couple that uses deception in the normal course of their professional duties, approach intimacy in marriage?  

The Secrets in Three Fictional Marriages

The marriages portrayed in The Odyssey, Rebecca, and Berlin Game artfully depict the tension between love and deception, and I studied the texts to see how the authors succeeded.

Odysseus’s wife Penelope, often described by the epithet, long-suffering, is surrounded by suitors seeking her hand in marriage during her husband’s 20-year absence. He is gone and presumed dead. Penelope defends against the suitors’ entreaties, but it becomes increasingly difficult for her to remain steadfastly faithful. When Odysseus returns, he appears in disguise as a beggar, recognized only by his household’s elderly swineherd. He hides his identity from Penelope. Is he suspicious that she betrayed him and he doesn’t want to reveal himself while he investigates? His deception is one of the epic’s curiosities, but Odysseus’s withholding makes their ultimate reunion more satisfying and Odysseus’s deceit adds dimension to his character.

Odysseus’s behavior is a good example of what John Le Carré said of complex characters: “The more identities a man has, the more they express the person they conceal.”

Rebecca, Daphne Du Maurier’s 1938 romantic thriller, uses suspense and deceit in a marriage differently. The unnamed first-person narrator, a naïve young woman in her 20s who is a companion to an older woman in Monte Carlo, happens to meet a vacationing wealthy Englishman, Maxim de Winter, a 42-year-old widower. They fall in love, marry, and he brings his new wife back to his estate in Cornwall – Manderley. Maxim’s household servants, and particularly his spinster housekeeper, Mrs. Danvers, take an immediate dislike to the young wife—comparing her disparagingly to the first Mrs. de Winter, Rebecca, who died a year earlier in a sailing accident. 

At Mrs. Danvers’s suggestion, the new wife dresses in Rebecca’s clothes to please her husband, who mourns the dead Rebecca. But rather than please Maxim, he is angered. The new wife suspects something is not right in their marriage, but she is helpless to discover what is wrong. Only a freak storm one night that sinks a ship off the coast results in the discovery of the missing sunken sailboat, and Rebecca’s body. The discovery causes Maxim to confess to his new wife that his marriage to Rebecca was a sham. Rebecca was cruel and selfish, took many lovers, and on the night that he murdered her, Rebecca confessed she was with child from a beau.

Click to continue.

Layers of deceit are drawn back in the final scenes and all that was hidden from the narrator about Rebecca’s death comes to light, drawing Maxim and the narrator closer together. Jeopardy of the shared secret deepen their bond.

Len Deighton’s 1983 novel, Berlin Game, features the loving couple of Bernard Samson, a middle-aged British intelligence officer working for MI6, and his wife, Fiona, also an MI6 intelligence officer. They have two children, live a respectable middle-class London life that is filled with the demands of parenting, family and friend obligations, and office scandals of adulterous colleagues. Samson is charged with exfiltrating an important East German asset and in the process confronts uncomfortable evidence that there may be a KGB traitor among his MI6 colleagues. Samson’s suspicions of treachery are confirmed when he is arrested in East Germany as he helps his asset escape, and is confronted by his wife, Fiona, dressed in a KGB uniform. She joined the enemy as a young college student drawn to communist ideology.

The villain in Berlin Game is the wife. But, in spite of Fiona’s treachery, her relationship to Samson has all the appearances of an affectionate marriage with young children, an active social life, and the little intimacies of a hard-working couple. 

How the Secrets in Fictional Marriages Move Stories

In each of these marriages, one character’s lies and deceptions deepens the complexity of the relationship, and provide the surprises that make for a compelling story. One partner hides an important detail of their life, and the revelation of that detail operates to bring the couple closer together, or thrust them irreversibly apart. The reveal provides an insight into what a character wants from the spouse—Odysseus wants to test Penelope’s fidelity, Maxim wants to protect his new marriage, Fiona wants to hide her treason. Deception and a surprise reversal in the relationships propels the plots of these stories.

Exposition is helpful to establish scenes and context, but dialogue provides the beating heart of the relationship and deployed effectively reveals the dynamic between husband and wife. Dialogue is used to imply, suggest, and hide and always for the purpose of adding to the unstable relationship between spouses. When characters come in contact with each other, sparks fly and the reader is riveted by the uncomfortable arguments and unexpected intimacies. The appearance of trust masks the inconsistencies and lies that point to betrayal. The best scenes are laden with uncertainty.

A character’s hidden motives make use of complex maneuvers to maintain the dark secret, all the while under cover of a gauzy film of intimacy and love. The layering of intimacy and artifice creates three-dimensional characters who come alive on the page. 

Check out Paul Vidich’s The Poet’s Game here:

Bookshop | Amazon

(WD uses affiliate links)

The post Secrets We Keep From Each Other: Building Tension in Fictional Marriages appeared first on Writer's Digest.

(How to Write a Romance Novel: Keys to Conflict.)

The characters include the numerous people who live and work at Ravenswood, the inhabitants of the nearby village of Boscombe and the surrounding countryside, and family and friends from more distant places. The seven-part format allows me to individualize a good number of these people as they develop over the 15-year span of the series and interact with the main characters. Consistency is important here. They must remain essentially the same people in each book.

This is especially true of the family members, each of whom will be a minor character in six of the books and the romantic lead in one, a tricky balancing act. Devlin Ware, the earl’s heir, is hero of the first book, followed in the second by his sister Philippa, then by his half-brother, Ben Ellis, then by his mother, the now-widowed Clarissa, Dowager Countess of Stratton. Nicholas, Owen, and Stephanie’s stories remain to be told. As the series grows, I have to take particular care over the development of these characters. It will be too late when it comes time to write their own love stories to change anything significant in their past, no matter how much I wish I could do so, for those details will have appeared in already published books. Although I have little idea of their stories in advance, I need to shape them into the people I believe I want them to be in their own love stories. It is all part of the endless challenge (and joy) of writing.

The whole of the writing process is stimulating, especially as it relates to the couple at the heart of each book, for the development of character and the growth of a powerful love relationship always go hand in hand with me. Two people, very different from each other, must grow from indifference or even hostility, through liking and friendship to falling in love, and ultimately to the fullness of lasting and unconditional love. Happily-ever-after is not enough in itself. The reader must be left with the conviction this couple shares the sort of bond that will last a lifetime and even beyond.

How do I set about accomplishing all this convincingly? Readers must be drawn into the world of the story and into the lives and minds and hearts and very souls of the two lovers. They need to be emotionally engaged to the degree that the real world recedes around them, and in imagination they almost become these lovers—both of them, for the hero and heroine are of equal importance to me.

The characters, then, must seem like real people with whom the reader can relate and empathize. They cannot simply be cardboard figures with little depth beyond some life history and personality traits I have given them in advance. They must have all the complexities we know from ourselves and the people around us.

Check out Mary Balogh’s Always Remember here:

Bookshop | Amazon

(WD uses affiliate links)

One way to delve deep into character and pull the reader in emotionally is through a careful use of point of view, that is the eyes and mind through which a particular episode of the story is being told. It is possible to narrate the whole story in the first person, told by one of the lovers, though in that case the events can be experienced only through the mind and emotions of that one character (just as in our own lives). I prefer to use what I call third person deep interior point of view. I alternate between the hero and heroine, telling one episode from his point of view and another from hers. This way the reader gets to experience the story through the minds and emotions and viewpoints of both main characters, though not at the same time.

If you think about it, everything that happens in our lives has an emotional component. We are the ones who experience everything that happens to us and in the world around us, and everything that happens is colored by our own character and values and background and emotions. Especially our emotions. Very little happens to us that does not carry some emotions with it. They are everywhere! My aim as a writer is to duplicate this reality with my fictional characters. If their story is told from deep within them, then the reader will be there too, experiencing everything with them and feeling what they feel—living and suffering and loving with them.

Creating this emotional connection of writer, character, and reader is one of the greatest challenges in the writing of a love story. I need to make readers laugh and cry with the characters and feel the whole gamut of human emotions with them—and fall in love with them, as individuals and as a couple.

I find repeatedly as I write that I must stop, go back, and rewrite certain episodes because I have learned more about one of the main characters and need to make the necessary adjustments. I find it impossible to know either one of them well enough until they come alive in the narration itself. Crafting a whole story never comes easily to me, because I am not satisfied until I feel I have a complete understanding of the hero and heroine. I constantly struggle with them until I feel I have uncovered everything there is to know about them.

Sometimes this means discovering where their deepest pain lies hidden. Once I know, then I can set about bringing the characters healing so they can reach the point of being able to both give and accept love in a meaningful relationship. But this must happen for both main characters and involve both. One must never be simply a prop for the other.

Let me illustrate these points with Remember Me, Book 2 of the Ravenswood series, Lady Philippa Ware’s story. In Book 1, Philippa, as a minor character, is a pretty, sunny-natured, uncomplicated girl who is looking forward to leaving the schoolroom, being presented at court during a London Season, marrying a man of suitable rank and fortune, and living happily ever after. But then her father is involved in a public scandal during a summer fete at Ravenswood, when Devlin, his eldest son, discovers him under compromising circumstances with one of their guests and refuses to keep quiet about it. As a result, both Devlin and Ben leave home abruptly and stay away for six years, the countess becomes reclusive, and everything in the seemingly charmed lives of the Wares changes for the worse.

Philippa tries to keep her focus upon the future of which she has long dreamed, but, during a dance in the neighborhood, she overhears the very handsome house guest of one of her neighbors insult her horribly when he learns that she is the daughter of the Earl of Stratton. The guest disappears the next day, but the damage has been done. Philippa loses her confidence, and all her dreams are shattered as she imagines that the family is forever disgraced. She refuses to go to London for a come-out Season and becomes even more reclusive than her mother. Remember Me begins three years later, when Philippa has finally been persuaded to gather up her courage and go to London after all with her now-widowed mother and Stephanie, her younger sister. She is not the sweet innocent she once was. Her dreams are more modest and practical, but she is determined to meet society and perhaps make a decent marriage.

Lucas Arden, Marquess of Roath, has been heir to his grandfather, the Duke of Wilby since the death of his father when he was in his mid-teens. He has been carefully educated to take on the responsibilities of the dukedom when the time comes, and he has remained obedient to that commitment. He loves his grandparents and his sisters, the elder of whom is contentedly married while the younger, Lady Jennifer Arden, has been effectively crippled and wheelchair bound since suffering a severe bout of polio in her childhood. Now the old duke is ailing and has demanded that Lucas marry and produce an heir before he dies. He and the duchess are going to London for the Season to choose an eligible bride for him.

Lucas does not like the plan, but he accepts it. He does, however, go to London ahead of his grandparents in the hope of choosing a bride for himself before one is chosen for him. He is a pleasant, quiet man, who always does his duty but acts from a position of love. When he meets Philippa on the very day of his arrival at a party his aunt and sister are giving, he is strongly attracted to her. It is only when she asks him rather icily when they are alone together for a few minutes if he remembers her that he does remember how he once insulted her, how the friend with whom he was staying was outraged, and how he left abruptly the following morning.

And so begins the love story of these two, against the backdrop of a social Season in London and with the addition of Lucas’s relatives and associates to the cast of characters introduced in Book 1. There is much to know about the characters of Philippa and Lucas and how they will react to circumstances—especially after the stubborn Duke of Wilby sets his heart upon Lucas’s marrying Philippa and will not take no for an answer. There is much Lucas and Philippa must learn about themselves and about each other. Almost everything that is wrong with their lives concerns the other, yet the obvious solution—to stay away from each other—proves to be not so simple, for they seem strangely destined for each other.

In the course of the book, then, they must work out who exactly they are and what they want of life. They must work out what can be forgiven and what cannot. They must learn when capitulation is weakness and when it is strength. They must come to a point at which they not only love each other but trust each other too and are able to give and receive with no conditions and no doubts.

Perhaps most important of all, I have to convince readers that Philippa and Lucas really do belong together. Readers may find it hard to forgive Lucas even after the truth behind that long-ago insult has been revealed. They may consider Philippa weak for forgiving him and marrying him anyway. It is my job to make the reader understand that Lucas is no villain and that Philippa is no weakling. They must be shown that this is indeed a powerful and convincing love story in which two flawed, but basically strong and worthy individuals come together in a love relationship that will stand the test of time.

The post Building Character and Interpersonal Relationships in a Novel Series appeared first on Writer's Digest.

What’s the Backstory?

As writers, we have the important job of understanding every motivation our characters have. We need to know their histories all the way back to their birth because their pasts explain why they are the way they are, what choices they make, what fears and challenges they have, and how they can grow throughout the story. The beautiful thing about romance is that we have two characters with two different personalities, and our goal is to bring them together, despite all the obstacles between them, for a harmonious and satisfying conclusion. So how do we make that happen?

Let Your Characters Decide

Understanding how two individuals will interact when thrown together (whether by choice or not), and how they can overcome their challenges and find their happy ending, is my favorite thing about writing romance. When I know my characters well enough and I maneuver them into some kind of challenge, it feels like they choose what happens next. I may be the writer, but my characters tell the story, live the story, and I’m just a witness, copying it all down.

While this may seem like an abstract concept, I think most writers can relate to the feeling of a story telling itself. When we know our characters intimately, the decisions they make in a given situation become obvious. For them to make a choice that doesn’t align with their personality feels wrong and goes against who they are, and trying to force it is often when we hit a block. As writers, it’s our job to listen and observe. The story is there. We just have to follow it.

Check out Aurora Ascher’s Sanctuary of the Shadow here:

Bookshop | Amazon

(WD uses affiliate links)

Triumph Over Trials

The higher the stakes, the more compelling the story and the more satisfying the conclusion. Because the romance genre is so deeply rooted in character development, it’s important that the characters grow and vanquish their foes (inner and outer!) in order to fall in love and find their happy ending. But high stakes don’t necessarily have to be world-altering events.

What may seem like an impossible feat to one character may be a non-issue for another. Whether the fate of the entire world lies in their hands, or simply their future happiness, it has to feel as real and as terrible to the reader as it does to the character. My goal as a writer is to always stay true to my characters and remember where they stand in relation to their challenges.

Fantasy Still Feels Real

Writing fantasy adds another level of subtlety that needs to be addressed when getting in your characters’ heads. In addition to knowing their backstories and motivations, we have to put ourselves in their world. The social and political structures of their reality may be vastly different from ours, but the goal remains to make the characters feel real. So how do we connect to someone living in a magical universe that doesn’t exist?

Their world may look completely different, but readers will still view their story through the lens of their own experiences. The same human emotions affect characters in a fantasy world as they do people in real life. Fear, loneliness, pain, lust, passion, love—these are universal experiences, whether real or imaginary. We relate to the human struggle no matter what setting a story is told from.

Fantasy + Romance = ?

When a romance is told in a fantasy setting, we have a wealth of new possible conflicts to explore. This is the fun part! We can let our imaginations run wild dreaming up scenarios to put our poor characters to the test. (But the beauty of a romance is that we know they will triumph in the end!)

Are they different species of creatures who are considered enemies? Do they have opposing kinds of magic? What are the taboos and socially acceptable customs in your world? Does their relationship fit outside societal norms? How will the two characters falling in love be looked at by other characters? How will their love affect the world at large? All these questions influence how the two protagonists will interact, and it also sets the stage for some delicious and spicy forbidden love, enemies to lovers, mutual pining—or whatever dynamic you choose to build their love story. The possibilities are endless.

You Make the Rules

You are the ultimate master of the universe in your imagined fantasy world, and that is one of the greatest joys of writing. So revel in it! Know your characters inside and out and then have fun throwing them into impossible scenarios and watching them find their way out again. Their resilience might surprise you. 

The post Character Dynamics in Fantasy Romance appeared first on Writer's Digest.

(4 Tips for Writing Engaging Frenemies.)

There’s no categorical definition of frenemies. Some sources insist they’re the opposite of friends. However, most lean toward characterizing frenemies as people who behave like friends for the most part but are, in other ways, rivals. For whatever reason, it’s in their best interest to appear to be your friend. But they’re contrary and adversarial, even as they smile at you.

In my experience, frenemies are motivated by envy and competitiveness. Friendships sour when one party resents the other’s achievements and/or happiness. Sometimes, where the advantages of maintaining the bond seem to outweigh the shortcomings, you try to bear the tension. However, it’s an exhausting exercise in tightrope walking and most frenemy dynamics are unsustainable. Bitterness, jealousy, and mistrust proliferates like mold on cheese. No matter how close you might once have been, it’s impossible to edit the outcome and the bond breaks.

History is full of frenemies. Among the most prominent is Caesar’s friend and ally, Brutus, who made a 360-degree turn, sided with Cassius, and assassinated the Roman general. In the 1500s, Mary, Queen of Scots, experienced frenemy toxicity (or should that be “knoxicity”?) from the founder of the Presbyterian Church of Scotland, John Knox. It suited Knox to assume the role of the queen’s esteemed hunting, riding, archery, and falconry companion. However, he was a misogynist who couldn’t abide the idea of a female sovereign. Knox ultimately celebrated Mary’s downfall and death.

It’s no surprise that frenemies feature in literature. Not only are we familiar with friend-foe relationships in life, which makes them relatable, but they’re also great mediums to advance intrigue and build tension. Among the prevalent traits of frenemies is their ability to wield power using their intimate knowledge of their quarry, as is demonstrated by the rivalry of former besties, Helena and Hermia, in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. It goes further in other books. Friend turns frenzied frenemy in Patricia Highsmith’s 1955 psychological thriller The Talented Mr. Ripley when Tom Ripley’s fondness for Dickie Greenleaf turns to deadly obsession.

Other authors handle friend-foe relationships with more ambiguity, sometimes compelling readers to ask wonder whether the frenemy dynamic isn’t an ordinary component of some friendships? In her account of Elena and Lila’s relationship in My Brilliant Friend, Elena Ferrante demonstrates how different and ever shifting friendships are and how it might be natural to compare and compete with friends.

However, while “frenemiship” doesn’t always destroy relationships, it typically damages them. In her biographical fiction, Another Woman’s Husband, Gill Paul reimagines the long friendship of Wallis Simpson and Mary Kirk. They’re teenagers when they meet, and Mary is immediately awed by fearless, ambitious, and glamorous Wallis. This characterizes their relationship over several decades during which Mary’s unfailing loyalty is put to the test time and again while Wallis wields the power. Another Woman’s Husband is a compelling study of the frenemy dynamic.

The frenemy dynamic is central to Rebecca F. Kuang’s Yellowface, where Juniper makes no bones about how she feels about Athena. On page two, she writes how “unbearable” she finds the other woman. “It’s hard, after all, to be friends with someone who outshines you at every turn. Probably no one else can stand Athena because they can’t stand constantly failing to measure up to her.” Despite the loathing, Juniper and Athena are “friends” who party and end up at Athena’s apartment, where an inciting incident occurs.

My historical fiction The Woman at the Wheel is based on the life of Bertha Benz and describes the integral role she played in the development of the world’s first commercially viable automobile with her husband, Carl. At a time when people are barely at ease with the steam train, Bertha and Carl’s vision of creating a horseless-carriage is considered outlandish and even blasphemous. They persevere with Bertha not only working alongside Carl but also raising their children. She misses her sisters who leave Germany to live in the USA and is pleased by her new friendship with Ava, which becomes as close as any sisterhood. However, as matters begin looking up for the Benz family, so cracks appear in Bertha and Ava’s relationship. While The Woman at the Wheel is inspired by Bertha’s life, I drew on my own experience to explore what might’ve happened to severe the bond between Bertha and Ava. I’ll leave to readers to decide whether they were ultimately frenemies or not.

Check out Penny Haw’s The Woman at the Wheel here:

Bookshop | Amazon

(WD uses affiliate links)

One of the pleasures of reading fiction is the companionship we find with stories and characters. Their relationships, emotions, and thoughts show us that others experience the same things we do. Fiction gives us perspective, builds empathy, and helps us understand others better. Because life is complicated and frenemies exist in many guises and circumstances, their inclusion in literature is arguably inevitable, bringing characters and stories to life.

Who are your standout frenemies in history and literature, and what have you learned from them? 

The post Frenemies at the Gates of History and Literature appeared first on Writer's Digest.

(4 Tips to Write About Family in Fiction.)

In my second novel, The Second Chance Hotel, a character flees her messy life for a Greek island—and wakes up one morning to discover she’s accidentally gotten married to another guest and they’ve inherited the hotel they’re staying in. As if this weren’t bad enough, she has to manage her narcissistic, overbearing mother. Writing about her family issues took work—because families are difficult. 

In my first novel, A Very Typical Family, an estranged family must work to come back together after one character makes a decision that lands her two older siblings in prison. Plenty of hurt stems from the things our loved ones do to us—at any time in our lives, in any manner, intentional or not. Writing that into story without dragging it down means understanding how the pain happened and where characters stand afterwards. 

Here are some of my tips for working it into story.

Pair the darkness with humor

I try to balance the painful excavation of feelings with humor—either in the characters or in the things they say. If you have a scene in which two family members confront each other, having one of them say something hilarious—intentionally or not—lightens the mood for reader and character alike. It helps move your character out of the dark, painful place of emotions. 

For the reader, you lessen the tension on the page for a moment, and little breaks allow us to breathe. Confrontation is hard. Hurtful words slung at those we love are difficult to read.

In most cases, family members have grown up together and they have a shared past that can be mined for laughter and positive memories. Using these shared memories, especially at times of high tension, will be key in keeping things light for your characters. Laughter paves the way to healing.

Check out Sierra Godfrey’s The Second Chance Hotel here:

Bookshop | Amazon

(WD uses affiliate links.)

Use character imperfection

No one is perfect. Often, we don’t know the right way to react to stressful situations. Sometimes we snap and make the wrong decision. If you have a character who hurt a family member, dive into how they feel about it—whether they’ve made amends or not. 

Have a reason they reacted the way they did. Maybe they simply made a mistake. Can that mistake be forgiven? Take time to understand where each side is coming from. Every villain, as they say, is the hero of their own story. 

Understand what the goal of each family member is, and use it to push them against each other. If your character is unable to accept responsibility and admit their mistakes, work that into the story so that they can figure it out.

Leave room for characters to grow

After A Very Typical Family published, I heard from several readers who were estranged from family members and said my book got them thinking about reconnecting. I loved hearing that. There’s always room to change and grow no matter how many years have passed. As in real life, pain is so embedded in characters that they can’t see a way out of it.

If characters can’t forgive each another, or can’t accept the forgiveness of the other person, that’s okay too—but work that into the story. Remaining as we are and letting old hurts fester results in stasis, or character death. Since every story is about change and journey in some way, you must find a way to let a character accept forgiveness and grow from it, whether it’s fixing the issue or accepting it and moving on. 

Think about what it would take to get a character to a point where they allow forgiveness in, and see if you can work that into a scene. If you can work forgiveness into a character’s overall personal growth arc, all the better.

Have empathy

This is the most important element to writing about difficult family dynamics. Everyone is hurting. Most people don’t know how to fix it. Identifying a character’s pain allows you to write forgiveness for them. Some people will never change. Many of them want to, but don’t know how. That’s okay. 

No matter how unlikable someone is, or what they did, no one is a wall of granite. They want to feel, and your job is to let them. Even if the character is vile, they had to get that way somehow—and it probably wasn’t their fault. Somewhere in their past is their own set of hurt. Knowing what that is and feeling for them is key to writing a deeper family dynamic.

I hope these tips for handling complicated family stories speak to you. There’s endless material to mine from families because people are complicated and react to pain uniquely. I’d love to hear how you handled a tricky family situation in fiction. 

The post 4 Ways to Write Complicated Families appeared first on Writer's Digest.

Five or six lovable main characters!

Of course, with each additional main character you add to your narrative, you’re adding another layer of complexity to your writing process. You don’t want to have extra characters just to have them, after all—each character needs to be unique, compelling, and contribute a story worth telling to the narrative as a whole.

Easier said than done, I know, I know. But that’s why I’ve written this post!

My fantasy heist duology, Among Thieves and Thick as Thieves, features a whole host of main characters. I had so much fun building them and helping them find their place in my story world. So, this post is going to cover the five tricks I discovered while writing these books. Hopefully, you can use these tips to craft compelling ensemble casts in your own stories!

Order a copy of M.J. Kuhn’s Thick as Thieves today. 

Bookshop | Amazon
[WD uses affiliate links.]

Tip 1: Interview Your Characters

Building unique characters is hard. Understatement of the year, I know! If you’re stuck trying to create characters for your latest project, or if you have the basics down but you need a little push to help them feel like real, fully fleshed-out people, I have a trick!

Character interviews!

What’s a character interview? It’s exactly what it sounds like: You’re going to sit down and pretend like you’re speaking to your characters. Is it a news interview? A gossip rag interview? A police interrogation? That’s all up to you. The questions you ask? Also up to you! The only important thing is that you answer each question as your character.

For example, if I were to ask, “What’s your full name?” you don’t need to simply write down the character’s name and move on. Consider how they would truly answer that question. Would they lie? Would they give their name up freely? Would they greet that question with another question, like “Who’s asking?”

When I interview my characters, I like to ask a mix of serious questions that will help me build up the character’s history, attitude, and world outlook, and some fun questions that help me get a sense of who they are as a person.

Is it relevant to the story world of Among Thieves that, were Ryia Cautella to walk into a Starbucks (somehow), she would order a dead eye (a black coffee with three shots of espresso)? Absolutely not. However, does that give me, as the writer, a little wink into who Ryia is and make me feel more like she’s a real, full human? Absolutely.

Tip 2: Mix and Match On-Page Pairings

When you have an ensemble cast, some characters will inevitably spend more time with each other than others! For example, in the 90s show Friends, Rachel and Monica spend a lot more one-on-one time together than Rachel and Chandler do.

But you know what is always fun? Those random episodes where Rachel and Chandler do get paired up. (Hello, the episode where they’re eating cheesecake off the apartment hallway floor).

When you mix and match your on-page pairings, you give the audience a few things. First, you give them a switch-up—something unexpected and, hopefully, enjoyable to read: a change of pace. Secondly, you give yourself the opportunity to explore parts of your characters that you might not have explored previously.

After all, every relationship brings new opportunities to compare and contrast your character’s personality and outlook. Don’t be afraid to change things up as you’re writing and see what comes out of it!

Tip 3: Back Your Characters Into a Corner

Like tip number one, I think this tip is a great one for character creation in general, not just ensemble casts. However, it offers a few benefits to ensemble casts in particular. First, though, let me explain what I mean.

What I mean is, be as brutal to your characters as possible. Sounds awful, I know! But if your plot isn’t testing the character, pushing them to their absolute limit, whether that’s physically, emotionally, mentally, or spiritually, you’re not getting the most out of your characters!

For better or for worse, people show their truest colors when their back is against the wall. Backing your character into a corner is a convenient way to show your audience exactly what your character is made of. Your readers are also going to be more willing to readily sympathize with a character when they’re in a pickle.

This is where your ensemble cast magic comes into play!

Getting a reader to sympathize with one main character is hard. Getting them to sympathize with three, four, or five main characters? WHOOF. When you put every single one of your characters in a seemingly inescapable situation, you give yourself a better chance of getting readers to connect with your characters, put themselves in their shoes, and really feel for them.

Tip 4: Voice Is King (or Queen)

Crafting compelling characters is one thing… but you can have the most interesting characters in all of literature and they won’t ring true if you skip this step: creating unique character voices. If you skip this step, you’ll find that every member of your ensemble cast will sound the same. And they’ll all sound an awful lot like you!

Each character should have a unique way of speaking. This will show up not only in the words they say, but in the things they say, and, by extension, the thought process behind their words. Best case scenario: it should be obvious without dialogue tags which character is speaking.

You can start crafting character voice in your character interviews! But to make sure the voice is consistent throughout your draft, I’d recommend reading your manuscript aloud during the editing process!

Personally, I like to have a little fun with it and put a literal different voice on for each character as I’m reading their dialogue or POV chapters. That way, I can ensure that each line of dialogue and snippet of prose in their point of view sounds and feels unique to that character.

Tip 5: Build Interconnecting Character Arcs

Last but not least, if you want to build compelling characters, they need to grow and change throughout the story. Similarly, if you want to create compelling ensemble casts, they need to grow and change together as the story goes on.

The people we surround ourselves with influence us, for better or for worse. Your characters should be no different! Your characters should all impact one another in some way. Are they helping one another grow? Are they bad influences, bringing one another to regress? The choice is yours!

Just remember, the power of the ensemble cast is like Voltron: The combined robot is far more powerful than the five adjoining robots on their own. Cheesy comparison? MAYBE. But it’s true. Only when your characters come together to impact one another deeply and profoundly will you be able to impact your audience in that same way with your ensemble cast as a whole!

[Click to continue.]

The post 5 Tips for Creating Compelling Ensemble Casts appeared first on Writer's Digest.

Most vampire tales are allegories about sex or being marginalized in society. The protagonist is often the vampire or one of their soon-to-be exsanguinated victims. My book, Night’s Edge, changes the protagonist’s relationship with this supernatural entity.

Mia is a 10-year-old girl whose mother contracts a vampiric disease. She is her accomplice. She has no choice in the matter, because she is a child, and a child needs a parent. In turn, Mia’s mother needs HER in order to stay hidden and satiated. She feeds from her daughter’s own veins each night.

Order Liz Kerin’s Night’s Edge today. 

Bookshop | Amazon
[WD uses affiliate links.]

By changing the relationship our main character has with the vampire in question, I was able to look at this popular trope in a whole new light. Themes about codependency and enmeshed families emerged, something typically reserved for literary fiction and memoir as opposed to vampire lore. But that was the story I wanted to tell. Vampires just so happened to be the vessel.

Flipping the script on relationships can help us, as writers, find a refreshing angle on old tropes. Take the classic haunted house story. Most of the time, our characters abhor it. They want to escape. But what happens if this wicked place was your childhood home, filled with nostalgia and old longings, like in The Haunting of Hill House?

What if returning was the only way you could make sense of the evil that had come to invade your inner world, like the incredible and subversive Tell Me I’m Worthless? What if this house is your salvation and you need it as badly as it needs you? Changing the character’s relationship to the supernatural provides an entirely new way “in.”

Alien invasions are another ubiquitous trope that springs to mind. Films like ET and District 9 offered audiences a distinct and refreshing point of view because they changed the relationship the protagonist had with this otherworldly invader. The alien was a friend who helped a child recapture his lost innocence. A refugee who forced a small-minded man to confront his prejudice (and provided a wealth of commentary on South African apartheid).

Simply put: There’s no reason to avoid writing about the lore you know and love. To keep things interesting, ask yourself about your own unique relationships. What questions are you probing? What needs unpacking? Then, see how those relationships look when you superimpose them upon popular tropes.

Is it an exact science? No way. There are still plenty of tales that use classic archetypes in beautiful, timeless ways. But if you’re looking to turn the tables and make it personal in the process, ask yourself what (or who) is haunting you.

[Click to continue.]

The post Turn the Tables on Popular Tropes in Fiction appeared first on Writer's Digest.