Writing a Sequel ~ #MondayBlogs

As writer’s we often create characters and mold them according to the convenience of the story plot — it’s an exciting, godlike and powerful feeling to produce “someone” who comes to life through words and who the readers (ideally) care about. By the time we write The End our task is complete. We send our characters out into the world to live on their own, to inspire peoples’ imaginations, and to remain who they are throughout perpetuity.

Unless we decide to revive those characters in another book.

Why, why, why would we do that? They’ve done their time, did their job and now they deserve to rest. …but maybe not. Sometimes our characters stay with us just begging to move on.

Maybe we write a spin-off and our once favorite NAGGING characters appear in the storyline again. When I wrote His Lucky Charm I literally fell in love with a secondary character. Tom Hughes suffered tragic heartbreak in his past and he was just the kind of man to council his cousin and her heartthrob about the need to grab onto each other while you can, and his cousin and her heartthrob did get married. I wanted Tom to have his own HEA (Happy Ever After) ending and I wrote Within the Law. This was pretty easy. While I did create Tom’s character and an important chunk of his history, it wasn’t until I wrote Within the Law that I really concentrated on developing him fully. And while the lovers of His lucky Charm did make appearances all I had to do was put a bit of time into their storyline. Easy peasy.

Another spin-off I wrote stemmed from Final Sin where I created Jake and Julie, and Julie’s sidekick Matt. In the spin off book, Hyphema, I was able to really develop Matt’s character and introduce his wife who had only been mentioned in Final Sin. The focus was entirely on Matt and Sudah in the spin-off book.

Then I wrote Karma Visited about Annie who is able to astral travel in her sleep to people in need and when she needs help who will be there for her? She meets Dave and it’s a tense story. As an author I liked it and readers have told me that they liked it as well. I wanted more of Annie and Dave’s story so I wrote a sequel. A sequel is literally a continuation of a story line and often including the same main characters. A sequel is also in the future in respect to the first book so your characters have to show growth and still remain the same people we fell in love with. If they had an HEA in the first book though we also need to introduce new conflicts or the sequel will effectively be just one long epilogue. I admit it was very difficult, I kept starting and then scrapping everything I had written. It was frustrating.

I believed I had a terrific story in my head, one that presented some major conflicts and great action, but how was I going to tell it? Finally I decided to interview each of my characters, separately, and I asked some pointed questions. What had transpired since Karma Visited? Where had they hoped to be by this point in their lives? What were their biggest fears? And there were many more questions, some much too personal to tell everyone else. I got a clear picture of who Annie and Dave were in the year after Karma Visited ended. The sequel did get written and I am pleased to announce that Annie’s Karma will be available later this month.

Writers have a responsibility to create real people (aka characters) who have had lives before the first pages of our books and will live long after the words The End are typed.

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The Fictional Life of a Fiction Writer ~ #MondayBlogs

We’ve all seen those funny T-shirts and mugs warning people that THE WRITER is around and ready to put them into the next story. One would think that people would tend not to want to disclose personal info once they’ve been warned “Be careful what you say, you could wind up in my next book.”

I adore creating characters that I have (almost) total control over, they take my advice with little argument and even though sometimes they need a bit of nudging, they don’t disappoint. And the best part, I can KILL someone off if I so desire! However I have found that a writer does have to be careful when doing research…

There was the, time I needed help in “hiding” a murder that would eventually be found once the medical examiner knew what he was looking for after exhuming the body. So I called an acquaintance who worked as an investigator at the local MEs office, explained that I was researching a story and asked my questions. He was very cooperative and helpful — until I thanked him and was ready to hang up the phone. I was then subjected to a few minutes of his questions making sure that everything was okay between my husband and me.

Considering the topics that writers discuss on the phone with editors, publishers and critique buddies, we must truly keep the NSA hopping. Paranoia set in one day when my sister and I were discussing a murder scene and we both thought we heard a few clicks on the phone, every minute or so after that one of us would speak clearly into the phone and state this is for a fiction story we were formulating.

I have discovered that my husband is not appreciative of those sudden lightbulb moments I get after trying to work out a scene and somewhere in the middle of dinner and I say “Oh yeah, I have to make so&so do that!” It took him a while to realize I wasn’t talking about some long lost relative turned up during a genealogy search a long lost cousin was conducting. Of course sometimes I talk in my sleep and mumble about all these juicy tidbits that leave him wondering exactly what I do all day.

And of course all of the research I do as a writer, both for my fiction and my alter-ego journalist, turns into all of this useless trivia knowledge, but G-d forbid I can hold my own during a couples’ Trivial Pursuit game.

Yep, being a writer is certainly an adventure.

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What's In a Writer's Mind?

I am obviously the source of great consternation for my offspring. Just a few days ago my daughter questioned my comfort level with my rather solitary work conditions.

True, I work out of my home and spend the bulk of my time on the computer… I tried to explain that in addition to whatever writing projects I am working on, I also have to do research and promotions. And yes, I do enjoy the occasional social chat or email. Besides I live in an area where going anywhere besides a visit to one of my neighbors requires driving, something I only do out of necessity.

“But Mom, sometimes we worry that you’re becoming an agoraphobic.”

This made me laugh. But I did look up the true meaning of agoraphobia just to be sure; agoraphobics generally resist leaving the safety of their homes due to a fear of an uncontrolled setting and fear of social embarrassment. Well that settles it. I assured her that I am in no way even close to the description. First of all, and many of you already know this about me, I had been a volunteer Emergency Medical Technician and first responder for nearly three decades and that means constantly running towards uncontrolled situations – and even more than that, I am probably one of the most shameless folks around, I LOVE to leave people speechless over my behavior!

Now getting back to the solitary nature of my work – a writer’s life is NEVER lonely. We entertain all kinds of company all the time. All of the characters we create and all of the stories running through our minds keep us very busy. Everywhere I go (and despite my children’s concerns I DO go out) there’s always people watching, there are scents and sounds to feed my senses, and there are real life mirages that form the basis of lots of new stories. I always make it a point to examine motivations for the things people do, whether I agree with them or not, because it helps me to add dimension to the characters I create. I never stop working no matter what I am doing because everything I see, feel, hear and think offers the possibility of being in one of my stories.

“But Mom, don’t you ever turn it off?”

I can no more turn off my brain than I can turn off my need to breathe. I told her how her how my rabbi once teased me that he knew I was trying to figure a way to rewrite all the biblical tales to create some new story as I read on a Sabbath morning. She looked at me with doubt. I reassured her that no writer ever stops working even when they sleep and then I told her about my dear friend Charmaine Gordon who “sleep writes” and keeps a memo pad on her nightstand to record the dreams she turns into great works of fiction.

I don’t know what it is about the way our brains work, but other writers understand our drive to weave our fiction and manipulate our words. Perhaps there is something questionable about the writer’s mind. For years everyone said that the right brain fostered creative energy and went on to claim that writers and other artists were truly “in their right minds”; nowadays there are alleged professionals refuting the right brain-left brain theories and taking away our claim to the creative right. While we all may raise an eyebrow or two when we hear someone say they hear voices in their head, writers may indeed feel a kinship. …maybe there is just a bit of, ahem, you know.

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added note  (3/3):

While I certainly didn't plan it ahead with him, last night during the Academy Award ceremony, Robert DeNiro added to this post with these words:  "The mind of a writer can be a terrifying thing - isolated, neurotic, caffeine-addled, crippled by procrastination, consumed by feelings of panic, self-loathing, and crushing inadequacy - and that's on a good day"

I think it is just fantastic that Mr. DeNiro agrees with me!  

Cracking the WIP

            All alone. Not me, the heroine of my current WIP (work-in-progress). She’s married, lives with her husband and his mother in a small town where everybody knows her name. But she is alone. She feels lonely and is looking for a way to escape. For now my working title is “Dreamwalker”, I have to wait and see what the final title will be.

            I've been blessed with my life since, even when I might have been at odds with a person or two around me, I've never experienced such total isolation, I have never felt the desolation that my heroine, Annie, feels. So I am trying to get into her head and understand the sadness and the frustration.

            The story is a Paranormal, a first for me, I've never written in this style before. I am not sure WHAT kind of paranormal will this be, will it be a Paranormal Romance, Paranormal Thriller or what. But I am starting to get into the heads of my characters little by little and I am finding they are writing their own story. And this is a good thing, it’s the way I write.

            Several times I've been surprised by some of the choices and actions my characters have made. In His Lucky Charm I never expected the heroine’s cousin to be such a “bad boy” who was still mourning the loss of his high school love. I definitely did not expect Paige to bolt in Bartlett’s Rule when Lon was just doing his best to protect her. And it really surprised the heck out of me when Sudah turned her back on Matt in Hyphema and blamed him for her cousin’s death.

            I allow my characters to come to life and that is what I am doing now with Annie, Dave, Scott and Dianne (be warned, the names may change before I finish if the characters decide they don’t like the names I chose for them). They tend to become real and yes, like many writers experience, they talk to me and tell me what makes them happy or sad, or why they want their life to be different. Sometimes I play the role of a stern, lecturing parent to try to get them back on the right track, or at least the concept I had of them. Sometimes I am forced to add a twist to my story simply because I didn’t want my characters angry at me.

            I once said I give birth to my characters and sometimes the labor is long and arduous, but it is always well worth it. As I put words to paper I grow more and more anxious to see the way this turns out. I think I am probably going to be a bit surprised.

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