C.P. also featured my guest post on writing historical paranormal novels on her blog in correlation with the release of my new book, Wolfsblood. Check it out here!
Those Pesky Characters
What’s more
appropriate for a guest spot on a blog called Character Purgatory than a post
about fictional people? Like any novelist, I wreak havoc on my characters,
constantly thinking up ways to complicate their world, get them in trouble,
mess up their relationships, force them to grow whether they like it or
not—until they reach that magic place where they have achieved what I set out
for them to do and I can release my grip and let them enjoy life for a while.
We novelists are sadists, ever on the alert for new types of suffering to
inflict on our characters. It’s our job.
But not all
the pain goes from authors to their creations. Although imaginary people,
characters can attain an amazing level of reality. Some of my best ones prove
to be stubborn as mules, laden with techniques for getting their own back. They
hide in the shadows, refusing to reveal themselves (we call this writers’
block). They take time to develop, just like real people. They go off on their
own, surprising me with their insistence on solving a problem in this way, not
that. I find myself arguing with them, as if they were teenagers with attitude,
patiently explaining that in that time and place they should be more
independent or less, should take the privileges of their gender or class for
granted, should be gentler or meaner, more religious, better educated, more
eager to swing a sword or ply a needle. They laugh in my face and go their own
way, and if I want to see where they will end up, I have to trust them to lead
me there.
If you’re a
writer of fiction, you probably have encountered this phenomenon yourself. If
you’re not, you may be searching the local directory for the number of a nice
psychotherapist to recommend. But bear with me, please. Of course, I don’t
really believe that my characters maintain an existence separate from me. I
create them and their world, and they represent facets of myself (yes, even the
baddies). But the human subconscious is a strange and marvelous place, and a
smart writer takes advantage of its capacity to weave seemingly disconnected
elements of personality and life into a rich and coherent story—sometimes in
ways that the conscious mind cannot immediately comprehend. A decision that a
novelist makes on the fly for practical reasons—to kill off a character’s
mother, say—may turn out to hold the key to that character’s whole personality.
When one of my fictional people gets balky or an image nags at me or a plot
element keeps butting in, I’ve learned to go with the flow, confident that the
story will benefit as a result.
The same
point applies even to titles and central images for each book, as illustrated
by my ongoing series, Legends of the Five Directions. The first two novels are
out, the third roughly plotted (with luck, I will finish it in about a year,
unless the Magic Book Fairy blesses me with an independent income that allows
me more hours to write), while the last two remain vague collections of ideas
corralled by titles and cover pictures. The title of The Golden Lynx refers
to a creature of the Russian woods but also to a piece of Scythian jewelry
given to the heroine to remind her of the past she has reluctantly left behind;
more deeply still, it evokes the heroine herself, a small but determined
fighter against injustice. The Winged Horse represents the forces of
air, the element linked to the east in Chinese and Turkic cosmology, as well as
the hero’s main antagonist and the personality changes the hero must make to
succeed; the horse flies between this life and the next, both literally and
figuratively. The swans of the Russian north are pushing their way into The
Swan Princess as I write, urging the heroine toward loyalty, toward
commitment, toward the fierce defense of those she loves. I’m not sure yet how
she will get there, but based on my past acquaintance with her, I suspect she
will fight me all the way, insisting that she knows where she’s going, thank
you very much. And I will shut up and listen, hoping with fingers crossed that
she’s right, while beating back the phoenixes and shamans demanding my
attention for books 4 and 5.
Maybe that’s
why we writers torture our characters: because we are equally convinced that
they are torturing us. But it’s an honor and a privilege to map out their
journey, even if our subconscious, in the end, turns out to control the wheel.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
BIO
C. P. Lesley,
a historian, has published three novels: The Not Exactly Scarlet Pimpernel,
The Golden Lynx (Legends 1: West), and The Winged Horse (Legends 2:
East). She is currently working on The Swan Princess (Legends 3: North).
For more information, follow her blog. http://blog.cplesley.com You can
find links to her books at her publisher’s website. http://www.fivedirectionspress.com/books
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The Not
Exactly Scarlet Pimpernel
A modern-day
graduate student enters the virtual-reality world of an eighteenth-century
novel. Her life—and the novel—will never be the same.
The Golden
Lynx
16th-century
Moscow hums with rumors about its newest hero, the Golden Lynx. Everyone knows
the Lynx must be a man, but “everyone” may be wrong…
The Winged
Horse
Dispatched to
collect his almost-forgotten bride, an inexperienced Tatar prince must overcome
a deadly rival to obtain his inheritance and secure his future.
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