ARE YOUR CHARACTERS REAL TO THE READER?

I’ve been on a character-defining kick of late. You can see my latest Fireside with the Phoenix chat video here and watch me go nuts as I show you how to examine your character for real features. (You can also see how I screwed up and forgot to allow my phone to auto rotate!). I like characters that seem real, even if they are supernatural or alien. Characters that have “issues” and quirks are some of the most fun.

Here’s a question I posed a few years ago: What’s your Quirk?

I have a thing about sitting with my back to a front door when in a restaurant or anywhere that has people moving in and out. Comes from my father who served in the military, was a crew chief in Korea, and who didn’t like the idea of anyone “sneaking up” on him. I came to see the value in this philosophy and, also having served in the military, I saw it as a smart defensive posture. This philosophy is a permanent part of me. I act on it without thinking. I can sit sideways to the door though this will make me a little uncomfortable. This is my quirk.

A friend of mine claims she isn’t superstitious but when she sits down to eat, she always turns her spoons upside down so that the hump faces up. When I asked why, she shrugged and said, it was something she started as a kid. Her grandmother told her that bad luck settles in the cracks and bowls. She would rather not consume any bad luck or bad karma, so she turns her spoons upside down. Quirky.

Do you have a little quirk that makes your friend smile? (or wince?)

When we read books, the characters that stand out to us have characteristics that become classic or are indelible. We remember things that are original as well as beautiful or classic. Iconic characters have physical characteristics that are memorable, sayings that are endearing or catchy, and habits that make characters easy to understand.  And when they are quirky, well, that can make us smile and laugh because their foibles or quirks are ours!

From biting the nails, to turning spoons upside down, to the cop who can’t sit with his back to the door, the quirk is what makes the character real. Think of Ron Weasley from Harry Potter and his ratty, second-hand clothes. Think of an evil villain who whistles just before he kills. Think of Scarlet O’Hara who procrastinated with “tomorrow is another day.” Are your characters stereotypes?

Are your characters imbued with quirks that can make them seem more real or endearing? Do they do things that make us smile and laugh or want to scream, “run!”  as we read?

Switch things up. Take one of your characters and change them. I call it “re-coloring.” Not just skin, but qualities and emotions, motives and emotions. Make them different. Lose the stereotypes. Forget the norms. How do they change?

Do yourself a favor and look at your character sheets. Find ways to add a quirk, something unique. If you do, you will give your book flavor and the character will become more three-dimensional for it. Those are the characters we want to know. They will be the characters we remember long after the last page.

Just like my friends who make room for me so I don’t have to sit with my back to the door. Quirky. But they remember!  I try to make my characters memorable not because they are perfect. But because they aren’t and that makes them real.

How about you — are your characters REAL or just pretending? We might only pretend to like them if that’s the case.

Thanks for stopping by! Tell me what you thought of my video, if you would. And tell me how you develop your characters into real people.

I remain,
Yours Between the Lines,
Sherry

Writing is a solitary business. Writers build offices, private “caves,” or special hideaway places to where they can retreat and live in worlds they create and with people they birth. These absences might be for a few minutes, a few hours, or become the hibernation of an entire year, depending on the writers and their projects.

Plenty of writing pundits offer advice on this solitude. Some will declare that such time away is necessary and must happen if a writer is to succeed. Other experts will shame writers declaring that withdrawal into a special, private place is self-indulgent nonsense and unnecessary. Other authors – best-selling trendsetters – use their success to guide and direct authors for or against this solitude. Right or wrong, what is the “write” way? 

There is no one way despite all of the voices who declare they know.

I would like to offer that the solitude is a writer’s singular choice. Personally, I believe every writer needs a designated space designed for that writer where creation and imagination are the primary purpose. Just as the office worker has his or her own desk and space (even a cubicle), so does the writer require a designated space. This special “corner” announces “this is my work,” and must be respected. This special place gives a writer a sense of purpose and a private place to meet that purpose. As I said in the beginning, writing is a solitary business and should be treated as a business.

But I must also insist that though the writing work is done in solitude, writers cannot afford to live their lives alone. I don’t mean the kind of singleness that comes with living alone. Your living status, marital status, or sexual need isn’t what I mean by alone. Writers require contact. Writers need people.

And how, you ask, does that meet up with the solitary writer?

You see them in the coffee shop, libraries, on the grass under a tree — the writer working on a laptop, or writing in a notebook, earbuds or headphones on. These are solitary writers but they are not truly alone. They come out of their writer caves to mingle, to find like folks and get understanding smiles, to listen to stray conversations, and generally to observe behaviors. Writers need input to keep their work interesting and the best way to get it is to emerge into the world and be with the very people that end up as characters in the stories and novels readers come to demand.

My attitude is authors need people. They don’t always WANT them, but they – we, me – NEED them. People are fodder (sorry, not flattering, but true). And writers want to observe and listen in their solitude place, separate and alone. That doesn’t mean no socializing because writers certainly know how to “get down and dirty” with the rest of the world. But writing can only be done alone (even sitting in a crowd of people, the headspace is solitary).

(Beloved writers who are fun-loving cut-ups)

Wait, you say, there are writers who chose to be alone and without people!

Yes, there are writers who opted out of public life and chose seclusion instead: Bill Watterson (author of Calvin and Hobbs), Emily Dickinson (author of many books after death), Harper Lee (author, To Kill a Mockingbird), and JD Salinger (author, Catcher in the Rye). Add to the list William Faulkner and Edgar Allan Poe. Some will want to argue that they were solitary and reclusive because of fame, but for most of these writers, this would be patently untrue. And if you don’t believe they mingled despite their hermit lives, then you would be wrong.

Perhaps writers are life’s lurkers. They keep to their space and fringe walk with others. 

So here’s my advice to you. Create that private sanctuary, the cave, the office or even just a corner, were the writer in you can imagine and create. In in a house with kids and pets, you need a quiet singular place to call your own where magic can be born. Then use it. Sit yourself in this space but do not petrify there. Go out and be in the world. Interact. Observe. Remind yourself what the pulse of the world feels like. Listen and feel the rhythm of many voices, young and old. Mingle, breathe, touch. Be one with your living world and then be only from it.

Writers need input. But in the end, writers MUST have solitude. It is who we are, it is what we are.

We are the Solitaries and we are proud!

Thank you for stopping by. Let me know your habits and share what you’re working on. Now I’m off to find some people to listen to and spice up my book’s conversation!

I remain, Yours Between the Lines,
Sherry

(Disclaimer: I am not a book cover designer and I have never designed my own covers. This is an opinion/commentary but it is based on research, experience and extensive reading. Hence, I consider it an educated opinion but still my opinion. I urge you to do your own research. Also, I am not providing links to books or authors this time because I am not promoting or excluding any particular author or genre. I support all authors no matter their style. All of these can be researched).

Let’s get intimate with our clothes on. Book covers are a way to be intimate with our readers. We use our covers to entice, seduce, and tease the reader into purchasing our novels. But I have noticed that in the last several years, our book covers have gone way beyond trying to tease and into showing the reader exactly what they’ll receive. And for me, this both disturbing and sorrowful.

Sex has always been a tool, but those who wielded the tool the best were the ones who could draw you to them without giving away their secrets, their privates, their punch lines. Sex sells, always did, but the idea of sex was more compelling than the showing of it.

As an example, go back to the legendary 30s and 40s when Hollywood was its most glamourous. Clothes of the period epitomized the “tease, don’t show.” The social values of the times reflected this idea in fashion and in the book covers. Showing an ankle with a strappy shoe, a tight bodice fully covered, wrist gloves that hid delicate hands, stockings with a line down the back that emphasized a promise up high…all concepts that carried forward in movies and books. Sure, times were a bit more prudish when it came to what was allowed in public and on screen; but again, the suggestion of sex, the hint of passion, was enough to set imaginations (and tongues) off and running.

Take a page from the queen of the tease herself, Gypsy Rose Lee, who first gave you a falling dress strap – and nothing else! – and suddenly the IDEA of her naked was more compelling than being naked. That’s why her fan dance – removing clothes behind large ostrich plumes – was so erotic. You never see skin but you believe the skin is naked and you are seduced.

Thus, less is more. But book covers did, and didn’t, follow this idea. While real life was more about how to beautify and tantalize without truly showing anything, as with Marilyn Monroe, it was forgivable to show more if the subject wasn’t real (as with pulp fiction). Here are some examples through time.

While sultry actress Elaine Stewart teased us in the 1950s through lace and let us peek at a promise of skin, book covers were more intense.

For example, in 1955 while Ava Garner was seducing us with silk and a particular “look,” the popular erotica novel was as equally teasing with more showing than Ava (though we also get “the look”).

When the free-wheeling, free sex 1960s arrived, tantalizing and teasing took on a new meaning from fashion to erotic book covers (remember what they might not approve of in person, they could draw). Until some underground presses, and more open-minded ones, boldly “went for it” in 1965.

In the 70s, claiming intimacy was more about closer relationships and it showed in book covers, too. More covers with men and women holding and touching, teasing and tantalizing. Even mainstream covers now, openly seduced the reader.

The 1980s brought us the “bosom busters” and readers – particularly women – flocked to read the steamy romances whose covers promised sizzling ultimate sexual fulfillment. I’ve owned a few of these (Rosemary Rogers anyone?) but after a while, the covers all began to look alike. They became more about the sex and less about the story. Not only did the women’s clothes get scantier but the men started losing theirs! It seemed that suggesting and teasing were Gone With The Wind.

In the 1990s a funny thing began to happen to romance and erotica. In the 90s, more books showcased women only covers and in the new millennium, we found a shift in focus heading toward a new, solo showcase of men.

Maybe as we left the 20^th century we left behind our sense of good taste. In the newer, fast food society we wanted everything now, immediately, and without preamble. We had to know how movies ended, we wanted reviews of everything so there were no more surprises. We seemed to lose our understanding of the tease and any value of wonderment or the tantalizing joy of seduction. It was like we skipped foreplay. We lost our need for the hint, the tease.

And then, something odd happened. Instead of showing everything on our book covers, we pulled back. Publishers and authors drifted in new directions. Gone were the people. We pulled back on skin in fashion and we gave up on skin for covers. We went to symbols instead. Men’s ties (think Grey, shades of), cufflinks, key chains. Think feathers, swords, and flowers. Think snow globes, glass jars and amulets. And instead of bodies, think half faces, shadowed faces, and women’s backs.

Collage borrowed from ceciliatan.com from fall 2012

Books referenced: Broken, Megan Hart (September 11, 2012, Harlequin MIRA), The Angel, Tiffany Reisz, released September 25, 2012 in the US, October 1 in the UK, Eighty Days Yellow, Vina Jackson (September 25, 2012, Open Road Media), Destined to Play, Indigo Bloome (September 11, 2012, HarperCollins), Temptation’s Edge, Eden Bradley (October 24, 2012, Penguin USA), Anything He Wants: Dominated by the Billionaire, Sara Fawkes (November 27, 2012, St. Martin’s Press), Release Me, J. Kenner, January 1, 2013

That brings us to present day and my real reason for this post (and good for you if you’re still here).

A recent trend has emerged where covers are either one person nearly naked, or two people and the woman is nearly naked. And the posts are about as suggestive as they can be. Little is left to imaginations and hands poke into jeans about to fall from the tops of groins, where bottoms are bared and pearls or whips tickle skin, where women lay in the arms of a bare chested man and their clothes look pulled up but not off, pants jerked down but not off. I don’t want to get into female objectification but hey, there’s that too.

Maybe my imagination is off but there’s little left for my imagination to create. Like that fast food society I mentioned, it seems that book covers again are leaning to baring all and forgetting about the true art of the tease. I’m sorry but there is nothing teasing me when the body is all but bared and clothes are nearly ripped off.

Book Cover, book blurbs, and book videos are meant to entice, to tease, and suggest. When we lose our ability to trust that the reader will get the book and imagine what now is blatantly shoved on the cover seems insulting to me. We’ve lost the “less is more” standard. More is not better. More is just more and often, too much.

There is an old saying, why buy the cow if I can get the milk for free? If a book cover shows me everything about the book then what need have I to get the book? Even if I don’t know the ending, show me too much and I stop being enticed. Tease me. Tantalize me. Suggest and Seduce. Make me want it. Don’t shove it at me.

I realize there are genre expectations. They shift with time, tastes, and expectations. Maybe it is time to believe in the reader again. After all, fashion has taken an upswing and a return to Hollywood glamour. Why can’t book covers turn the tide too?

Let’s return to imagination and suggestion. Let’s be innovative and creative again. Look, even vampires don’t have to go on a black background with dripping blood and graveyards, or biting some hapless sap. See? He seduces and he’s popular!

He’s mine.

Let’s get intimate, emotionally, spiritually and then tease me with what else I might get. Let’s do our jobs and provide “the tease” with a promise of something more because we are artists and we can! Use the talent to entice instead of to bare. 

Let’s be intimate and leave our clothes on, at least until we get between the covers!

Go on, surprise me as a reader. And as an author, I will try to do the same for you.

Yours Between the Lines,
Sherry