Characters

A delightful aspect of creative writing in fiction is the ability to develop characters -- those I love and even those I don't, though, granted I don't do a lot of backstory on my villains. I write women's fiction these days, and, to be honest, the evil forces I'm most interested in are those in our own minds.

While my protagonist and her friends are modern young women (the story takes place within the last decade), I go several generations in their backstories and the history of the town. Several of the characters are elder women (the middle generation), and it is this interweaving of her-story that emerges.

The origin of people and place is at the old turn of the century, from the 19th to the 20th centuries. Here are images of three of those ancestral characters, although, as with other images, my characters are not identical to these -- the images have simply provided inspiration and a visual touchstone.

Vianne

Bertha Rose

Kisaiya

Another fun feature of creating extensive backstory is that I already have the bones of at least six more stories I could easily conjure to take place across the past hundred years!

Depths of the Sea

"To understand what makes Earth different from any other place, and why life can thrive here, it would be logical to focus on the part of the biosphere that supports most of the action -- that is, the sea, of course. Since I am by nature an air-breathing sun-loving mammal, it has taken some time for the awareness to seep into the cracks of my brain that most of the biosphere is ocean. All of life on Earth lives in the dark at least half of the time, and much of it lives in the dark all of the time -- in the depths of the sea." ~ Sylvia Earle, Sea Change
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One of the characters in my novel has a background in oceanography; she wanted me to read Sea Change after listening to Sylvia Earle speak with Krista Tippett OnBeing. I'm also going to be reading Rachel Carson's The Sea Around Us and her other two books about the sea.

I've never been much of a sea-person; I'm far more at ease hiking in the woods -- being in the depths of the forest. However, did you know that "almost anyone listening to a recording of humpback whales can identify them as humpback whales--but experts can pinpoint where a song has been sung, and even when." (Earle) Isn't that incredible?

Digging Up Character

One fun thing about writing a novel is the ability to explore all kinds of personalities, lifestyles, and occupations. I've mentioned before that my current fictional WIP has been morphing and expanding. With that evolution, I found myself diving further into the history of the protagonist's parents. I mean, maybe other writers do it differently (probably do), but I find it difficult to flesh out my lead character without knowing her past and the ghosts that may be haunting her.

In addition, since I'm envisioning this story as the first in a series, I want to start as I mean to continue, and that, for me, means understanding the forces that drive the characters.

This first book is seated in the "father story" of the protagonist. I didn't intend it to be this way, it just happened as I moved deeper into the storyline. With that in mind, I'm not only reading some psychology books on fathers and daughters--Daughters of Saturn, Leaving My Father's House, The Wounded Woman--I'm also reading some books that focus upon the career I gave the lead's father, including this one called Accidental Archeologist.

The previous two novels I've written were not as complex as this one, and I am enjoying the challenge--a challenge that would have sunk me earlier on.

This coming week, my second semester at UA starts, but for now … on with story-building!