How do you pick a name (for a cat or a character)?

This is Zeke. Our grandchildren started out calling her ‘Trooper Zeke McGuire’ until it eventually ended up as just plain Zeke — not that either name was particularly appropriate for a female kitten. Of course at the time of naming, everyone thought she was a he, and by the time it was discovered she wasn’t, nobody was about to change the name.

Zeke has attitude. Oh, I know… you’ll tell me all cats do. I’m not a cat person so you could fool me. My life has been filled with dogs for more than sixty years but there’s never been a cat. Zeke and I have the loosest of relationships. She belongs to my son’s family, and has a chocolate Lab in her household to boss around when she feels the need to play her dominant card.

The Lab barks when she wants into the house. If the cat also happens to want in, when the door opens she darts in ahead of the dog. When Zeke wants in and the dog isn’t around to offer assistance, Zeke backs up to the French doors and thuds a rapid tattoo against them with her back paws! For some reason that reminds me of a jackrabbit. Why couldn’t they have named her Jackie? Or then again, wasn’t it the song about Frosty the Snowman that tootled, “Thumpity-thump-thump, thumpity-thump-thump, look at Frosty go?” Why couldn’t they have named her Frosty?

Zeke’s Chocolate Lab is called ‘Java’. Our own Black Lab is ‘Tynan’, which is Gaelic for ‘the dark one’. No further explanation needed, right? But ‘Zeke’ for a grey, long-haired female house cat???

Finding suitable names for cats or dogs, babies or characters in a novel is a challenge. How can anyone know what will suit them when they first arrive… before they’ve displayed or even developed a personality?

When it comes to characters, I usually have an image in mind. Then it’s a matter of checking the image against a list of potential names — sometimes it’s in my mind, other times it’s in a telephone book, a ‘name your baby’ book, or possibly rolling credits on the movie or television screen. I discard them one by one, depending on who I might have known with a particular name, and whether it suggests either positive or negative connotation or remembered personality traits. It can be a slow process.

I’ve been known to change a character’s name several times in the course of writing a story. That can cause problems of its own. While the ‘search and replace’ function in my word processing software is very handy, it’s not fool proof, as author Denise Jaden reminded me on Facebook yesterday when she said she’d “changed a character’s name using the Find and Replace option in Word, but forgot to add spaces before and after the names. Now I’m coming across words like resebastianable (instead of remarkable). Makes me laugh every time.” Later she added, “ Upon further thought, I think I may keep reSEBASTIANable as my own addition to the English language. I’ll use it whenever anything is extra remarkable.”

How difficult is it for you to find the right name (for a cat, kidlet or character)? Have you ever regretted your choice?

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It’s that ‘same old, same old’ routine

A walk to our marsh isn’t anything new for me, nor is the view. Yet I wander down there regularly. You’ve accompanied me on a few occasions (here and here), following the trail and sitting on the bench beside me. The same path takes me past the same trees, footsteps cushioned with decades of fir needles and crushed cones. Ferns and mosses, leathery salal and the occasional huckleberry shrub return every spring under the same dense evergreen canopy.

Marshes don’t change much. There are always grasses emerging from their watery roots, ducks and geese diving for fresh shoots, swallows swooping after mosquitoes and herons stalking lunchtime morsels. I have photos taken fifteen years ago that I can’t tell from others taken last week except for the seasonal colour variations.

But each time I go, it feels different, perhaps because I’m looking with a different focus. This week it’s on the Canada Goose who, after a three-year hiatus, has returned to occupy her old nest on top of the beaver lodge.

She wasn’t there in the early afternoon yesterday when I went to check up on her, and I feared she might have abandoned it again. But no, soon she and the gander swam back from the deeper end of the marsh and she clambered up to settle in.

There are two pair of geese populating our marsh and they each respect their separate territories, although I occasionally hear a commotion if one meanders too close to the other’s domain. I assume it’s the same two pair every year, since geese mate for life and are relatively long-lived.

Do you suppose they have any thoughts about the recurring, never changing cycle of their lives? Do they ever experience the hamster-on-a-wheel sensation, as people do – the here-we-go-again, tied-to-the-old-survival-routine kind of monotony?  Or are they even conscious of the renewal of a season? Geese are very family oriented. They show affection for each other, welcome each other after an absence. They defend their mates and their young. I wonder if they have any other emotions in common with people. I’ll probably never know, but I like posing such questions.

I do something similar when I’m establishing new characters for my stories. I want to know what they think, how they’ll respond, what personality traits they’ll display as the plot unfolds. Will routine bore them or help keep them grounded?

What kind of questions do you ask as you begin assembling a fresh cast of characters? Has the arrival of spring inspired any enthusiasm for beginning something new? How do you feel about the repetition of the seasons?

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While the earth remaineth, seedtime and harvest,
and cold and heat, and summer and winter,
and day and night shall not cease.

Genesis 8:22

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To every thing there is a season,
and a time to every purpose under the heaven.

Ecclesiastes 3:1

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Looking over my shoulder (or… how life changes)

The traffic light was slow to change. I waited, impatient to get across the street and to my meeting. Ahead of me two young men also waited, black backpacks slung over their shoulders. Prior to the Boston bombing I wouldn’t have looked twice at them. Now…? When we reached the other side and they moved away, I peered back over my shoulder to check where they’d gone.

It was silly, I know, but instinctive. As our world changes, so also does human behaviour. Events 4,000 or 5,000 kilometres away may not directly impact us, yet they alter how we think. Then again, so does life in general. We are not exactly the same people today that we were yesterday, nor the same as we will be tomorrow. It’s called growth.

In our novels it’s called the Character Arc.

In PLOT VERSUS CHARACTER, Jeff Gerke points out that in some novels, notably mysteries, the main character may remain unchanged, because the story is all about the plot and how it unravels. In most other genres, however, the story is about how the main character is affected by the plot. Jeff suggests the Character Arc should have five distinct parts:

1. Initial Condition
2. Inciting Incident
3. Escalation
4. Moment of Truth
5. Final State

A static character will be flat, despite all the personality quirks we may give him. If we want him to come alive for our readers, he has to be challenged by something that requires him to reason and react. Inevitably he must encounter obstacles and/or discoveries that will change him either physically, mentally or emotionally.

Do you consciously develop a pattern of change for your character as you plan your stories? Do you evaluate during revisions whether or not you achieved an effective character arc? In your opinion, how important is such change in a short story compared to a novel?

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Fitting in or standing out — are we fictitious characters or our real selves?

Some time ago there was a poster circulating on Facebook that said, “Why try to fit in when you were born to stand out?” I also have a poster in my office — I’ve mentioned it before — that says, “Be Yourself. An original is always worth more than a copy.”

The truth of both axioms is obvious, and yet I’m not sure why I relate to them… why it appeals to me to have copies. It has something to do with believing I shouldn’t hide the authentic me behind a barricade.

Years ago I had a friend who understood how I felt. We would joke about how we hid behind brick walls and only occasionally pried a brick or two out so others could peek in for a glimpse. After we moved from that city I seldom saw her, and she’s been gone for many years now. I sometimes wonder if she allowed others beneath her protective surface or if most people missed out on getting to know the real person.

To figure out if anyone actually “gets” me would require understanding myself, and I’m not an introspective kind of person. Still, as an aspiring author, I wonder if my writing will allow readers access to me through my characters. (Scary thought!) Writers are often asked if they base their characters on real people, and it’s supposed to be true that we write a little bit of ourselves into all our protagonists, albeit unconsciously. In getting to know my characters I don’t recognize anything of myself in them, but since I don’t really know myself all that well, is it any surprise?

What do you think? Writer or not, how well do you understand yourself? Could you write yourself into a novel and have readers see the authentic you?

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“I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well. My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw my unformed substance; in your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them.”

Psalm 139:14-16

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Collections… or, why I have rocks and wood in my house

Different things fascinate different people. I lean towards items with textural appeal, like rocks, wood, and pottery. I have a collection of handmade pottery mugs… singletons, each chosen as a memento of a special place. This one came from Israel as a gift from my hubby when he visited there many years ago.

The bits of wood are from two very different locales. The one piece riddled by gribbles and shipworms with a small seagull feather caught in it, came from the ocean’s shore on Vancouver Island. The other, barely two inches long and with minuscule bits of almost-petrified leaves, came from the tundra of the northern Yukon. I probably should have left the latter where I found it, but….

Rocks are something else. It’s not their geological aspects that catch my attention, but interesting shapes, designs and textures. One of my young granddaughters is attracted to rocks — she had one in her pocket to take home on the airplane yesterday — and my BFF’s husband used to regularly pick up a rock on his daily runs. Their front garden displayed an impressive collection!

I’ve taken to using a felt pen to print the source of many of mine on their undersides. It’s impossible to recall where all of them originated so you might wonder why I bother to keep them. I may not remember the exact occasions, but I know I would have been enjoying a stroll along a rocky shore, or wandering a wooded trail, visiting a special holiday location or perhaps marvelling at an awesome view when I stooped to gather the stones. Their existence is a pleasant reminder of my past and in an obscure kind of way they make me happy just by having them to admire.

In one of my novels a character dries and presses flowers to create a collection that preserves her memories of a place that was special during her childhood. Collections are distinctive and represent a person’s interests. They tell us something about that person without the need for a narrative description. (I admit to not wanting to know what my collections say about me!)

Are any of your characters collectors? Are you?

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The new and the old

Our decorating is pretty well done. There’s a pot I want to fill with evergreens, but it can wait another day or two. Today I decided it was time to make a start on Christmas baking. Other than the fruitcakes traditionally made and stashed away in early November, there are only a few stale chocolate chip cookies in the house.

Out came the old familiar recipes. Peanut butter snowballs? Mmm, love them! I could eat them like candy. Oh, but they require chilling and rolling into balls; then there’s icing to make, dipping, more rolling in cocoanut. No, not today. Shortbread? My hubby loves shortbread but his favourite is the old Scottish style, kneaded until the dough cracks, pressed into a pan and chilled, followed by long, slow baking. Did I say kneading? Not the way my wrists are today, thank you.

Ah, perhaps the newer alternative — whipped shortbread. Apparently more serious bakers than I am have known about this recipe for years, but I was first introduced to it a few years ago when my son made a batch. Just put the five ingredients together and let the mixer do all the work. Drop spoonfuls onto a cookie sheet and pop them into the oven. That’s my kind of recipe. Newer isn’t always better, but, besides the ease of making, I like the tender, melt-in-your-mouth goodness of these buttery morsels. And if it means the difference between shortbread or no shortbread, my hubby is enthusiastic about them, too.

With a mug of tea in one hand and a shortbread cookie in the other, I sat down to admire the decorated tree. There are a few new ornaments on it this year — I can never resist anything to do with snowflakes — but it’s the beloved old ones that always draw my gaze first.

There are a couple that have been on every tree since I was born (I mentioned one of them in this post last year), and there are a handful that once adorned my parents’, my inlaws’ and my grandparents’ trees. This fragile bird  is one of those treasures. It’s special not so much because it’s old, although it is — possibly a hundred years old — but because of its history. It has witnessed generations of our family from its perch on various branches. Gatherings with family and friends, laughter, meals shared, gifts opened… “if it could talk, what stories might it tell?”

Many homes have heritage items — if not ornaments displayed on a tree, then perhaps other things on a shelf or in a cabinet. I don’t think of ours as valuable from a monetary perspective, but they’re significant family heirlooms. When I wrap them up for another season of storage, there are slips of paper noting their origins that go in with them because it occurred to me one year that if nobody else knows about them, their history will end with my husband and me.

The main character in my last novel is eccentric enough to keep an album with photos and an explanation about everything she values. I call her eccentric because she has no children or close relatives to peruse her albums or care about her possessions after she’s gone! But this little quirk tells the reader something about her personality. As long as they aren’t overdone quirks and idiosyncrasies can be useful in defining our characters.

My expanding waistline is going to define me if I don’t stop munching on these cookies!

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What methods do you use to make your characters memorable? Are family heirlooms of significance in any of your stories? Do you have any special Christmas treasures? Oh, and what’s your favourite Christmas cookie?

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“In every conceivable manner,
the family is a link to our past, a bridge to our future”

Alex Haley

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“In each family a story is playing itself out,
and each family’s story embodies its hope and despair.”

Auguste Napier

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Book Reviews and Giveaway — WRITING WITH A HEAVY HEART and NEVER ENOUGH — Author Denise Jaden

When author Denise Jaden shares the experiences that have influenced how she handles grief in her writing, she doesn’t mince words. A miscarriage, the death of her father in a workplace accident, the head injury of her son and her husband’s place of business burning down, all happened in the span of four months, and suddenly had her coping with unexpected loss and grief.

She says, “As much as I didn’t want it, I’ve had the opportunity to think on some teachable aspects of grief as I was walking my journey.” Not only did she think on them, she has utilized them to create a wonderful book for anyone writing about characters who are also dealing with loss.

In her first non-fiction book, WRITING WITH A HEAVY HEART: USING GRIEF AND LOSS TO STRETCH YOUR FICTION, Denise shares her ideas on how to add emotional layers to your writing about characters going through various forms of loss. She analyzes how individuals react in grief, and provides exercises to help writers apply these reactions to their characters.

It’s an invaluable resource for every writer. Released October 1^st, the paperback version is available at Create Space and through Amazon.  The e-book is available at Amazon, Smashwords, Kobo, Diesel and Sony. Check out Denise’s blog for a Goodreads giveaway. Also, if you send Denise your mailing address at d(at)denisejaden(dot)com with “Bookmarks” in the subject line, she’ll  be happy to send some bookmarks your way

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This is the second of Denise’s books to be released in 2012. In July I was pleased to attend the launch of her second YA novel, NEVER ENOUGH. It’s a remarkable story about two sisters each coping with their sense of self-esteem and inadequacy. About it Publishers Weekly said, “In her sophomore novel, Jaden (Losing Faith) offers an intimate and enlightened rendering of anorexia and bulimia…Loann’s fight against forces that might be beyond her control is both harrowing and inspiring. While Jaden does not provide simple answers for the problems presented, she dramatically illustrates the importance of speaking out and reaching out.”

Like Denise’s first novel LOSING FAITH, NEVER ENOUGH is another story that caught me up and kept me reading non-stop to the end.

I have a signed copy of NEVER ENOUGH to give away to one of you who leaves a comment below before noon on Sunday, October 7th. Please be sure to leave your e-mail address when prompted so I can contact the winner. Draw is limited to mailing addresses in Canada and the United States. Winner will be announced on Monday.

NEVER ENOUGH is available just about everywhere I look, including on Amazon.

If you’ll be attending the Surrey International Writers’ Conference, October 19-21, 2012 at Surrey’s Sheraton Hotel, I believe Denise will also have copies of her books available there.

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Stereotyping the Sexes

Some bird species are monomorphic, with no easily identifiable differences between the male and female birds, but other species are dimorphic, which means there are visible differences in appearance.

Female and male Red-winged blackbirds

Reading that information in my bird guide led me to thinking about how we portray male and female characters in our writing.

Female Black-headed grosbeak

If we women need a reason to rationalize why we sometimes feel dowdy and unattractive, the birding world has the nerve to flaunt proof that it’s the male who’s meant to sport the gorgeous plumage and strut around challenging other guys and courting the gals. The females are “usually duller, with less distinctive markings that make it easier for them to blend in to the surroundings while they mind a nest or protect young birds.” *

Male Black-headed grosbeak

Men might  love this, but the women? Not so much. Then again, literature makes reference to men who strut like peacocks, displaying them as characters with vanity or overconfidence and suggesting, as scripture does, that “pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall. [Proverbs 16:18]

Ah ha! Maybe there is something about characterization in these birdy and biblical references that we can utilize in our novel writing. Or would that leave us open to accusations of stereotyping?

When you’re developing your characters do you layer traits that are specific to the sexes? How do you avoid typecasting?

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“Did St. Francis preach to the birds? Whatever for?
If he really liked birds he would have done better
to preach to the cats.”

Rebecca West

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“As a bird that wandereth from her nest,
so is a man that wandereth from his place.”

Proverbs 27:8

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“Yea, the sparrow hath found an house,
and the swallow a nest for herself, where she may lay her young
even thine altars, O Lord of hosts, my King, and my God.”

Psalm 84:3

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* about.com

Including traditions in your storytelling

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Traditions are big in my family. There are things we’ve done for generations. Ask any of us about making Christmas fruitcakes, for instance, and you’ll be told November 11th is THE day for that project. Even a granddaughter who doesn’t actually like fruitcake made time to bake a batch on that day last year as she prepared for her first Christmas away from home.

This baptismal dress and its underslip have a long history with us. They were first used in 1934 for my brother-in-law’s baptism. A few years later my husband was baptized in them, and since then all of our children and most of our grandchildren, boys and girls, have worn them, too. The accompanying shawl was handmade by a family friend for our children, so isn’t quite as old, but is equally special.

How do such traditions get started, and why do we carry them on? For us, something meaningful is associated with an action or article and every repetition brings back pleasant memories. Their continuation isn’t a necessity – nobody has to bake fruitcakes, and not every babe born into the clan is required to wear the dress – but for those who do there is a subtle strengthening of the sense of family.

You guessed it. There’s a writing application coming.

As I create characters in my novels I try to find ways to individualize them within their settings. One way is to make certain traditions important to them. Those things will reveal something about their personalities and give us a glimpse of their uniqueness.

Are your characters affected by any traditions? Did they originate during childhood or develop later? How do they play into the story?

Making appropriate use of quirkiness in our characters

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Recently Jeanette Levellie had us sharing our pet peeves and Jessica Patch talked about our quirks. They were referring to those things that either annoy us or seem peculiar. The thing is, neither is unusual. Don’t we all have them?

I admit to some idiosyncrasies (only the unkind would say they border on OCD). When doors and drawers are meant to be shut, I like them closed all the way. Sliding closet doors that are left slightly ajar force me into corrective action, even when I’m already in bed. Honestly, do you expect me to sleep with that gaping void staring at me all night? Bifold doors and open drawers that snag me as I walk by, beg to be slammed shut. Cushions askew on the couch, and towels crooked on the rod? Need I say more?

If normal people have quirks (hey! I’m normal… at least in most areas), isn’t it logical that our characters not only might, but should, too?

There is a danger in creating stereotypes – for instance, looking at physical features and bronzing the hero’s brawny chest while scarring the antagonist’s cheek. A lot is written about using character flaws to make our protagonists real, but to accomplish realism takes more than simply portraying random weaknesses and strengths.

Personalities are complex – just ask anyone who has examined the results of a Myers-Briggs test. If we are to develop credible characters we need them to display the kind of strengths and weaknesses that we would find in real people but also have a few quirks to make them memorable. Not too many. Just a few, such as we all have.  (I hear you objecting, but I’m almost positive I’m not alone with mine.)

The Myers-Briggs test divides us into four main personality types that can be combined in multiple ways to create sixteen:

1. Extrovert (E) versus introvert (I),
2. Sensitive (S) versus intuitive (N),
3. Thinking (T) versus feeling (F), and
4. Judgmental (J) versus perceptive (P).

We can’t just pull quirks out of the proverbial hat and assign them to our characters. The quirks or idiosyncrasies need to be reasonably in line with the characters’ personalities.

Who’d have guessed that making our characters appear real could be so much of a challenge?

In your current w.i.p., what quirks does your main character have? Do they fit his/her personality? Are they ones you possess or have you borrowed them from people you know?

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