Tag: Crafting Characters - Mala Naidoo's Book World

Research and Fiction

Historical fiction either reveres, subverts, or shames the past through citing actual places, creating imagined characters and perhaps recreating a historical figure.

Historical fiction is the unequal blending of the real and the imaginary

Time is fluid in historical fiction, moving between the past and present depending on how the plot unfolds. Is it a character in the present time speaking, recalling a time past, or is the character narrating an experience having lived in a past era?

The cautionary reminder is in ensuring the imaginative aspect of the story is respectful of the truths of the time, while preserving the overarching fictional plot/characterisation and quality of the writing. Culture, values, and social issues researched lend an authentic historical flavour to the fiction crafted. Transporting the reader to a time past enhances the storytelling without rewriting a history textbook.

Find that sweet spot between what is fact and fiction to elevate the fiction on culture, values, and social mores.

Including actual historical figures is the writer’s choice in relation to whether they will be a speaking character in the fictional tale, or a few cursory references would suffice.

Research should not overpower fiction. History has been written and read many times over—add the imagined juice for an entertaining read that prompts speculation on whether the fictional aspects could have possibly occurred.

Memorable characters, a believable setting, an intriguing plot, and a dash of history is a good measure for a satisfying read.

Ultimately, knowing who the intended audience is for a particular work of fiction is just as important as the message it creates.

Honour the history researched to enhance the setting and add lustre to the fictional plot without repeating what has already been documented. Recreate rather than rewrite. The risk of overly recounting a history is losing the fiction to non-fiction. The decision ultimately rests with the author. Readers of fiction will be the primary audience.

In honouring the history, notions of sensitivity to time, place, and people should be observed. However, shaming a dark history is the fictional storyteller’s prerogative.

There are no clearly defined genre parameters when the power of the story is honoured in its ability to move and entertain which is paramount in fiction.

The truth that all historical writing, even the most honest, is unconsciously subjective, since every age is bound, despite itself, to make the dead perform whatever tricks it finds necessary for its own peace of mind. Carl Becker, American historian (1873-1945)

If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality. Bishop Desmond Tutu.

History is the study of all the world’s crime. Voltaire, French writer, and philosopher (1694-1778)

Fiction is the truth inside the lie. Stephen King

Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities: Truth isn’t. Mark Twain.

Please share your thoughts in the comment box below.

Romance Across Genres

The days of writing rigidly to a particular genre, crime fiction, detective fiction, sci-fi, horror, historical fiction, thriller fiction, and romance have slipped, crept, and rolled across the genre borders.

Romance has the potential to capture the coldest of hearts.

The basic elements of the genre remain. Mystery and suspense with a soft touch of romance add to the allure of the tale. Romance as a genre in its pure form has limitless power to create relationships that stretch and bend the imagination as far as it will go.

While romance engages the emotional side of the reader, it does not overwhelm the crime/detective/historical/sci-fi, which occupies the greater space of the genre.

The love story element in any story adds the desirous human connection.

Age is no deterrent to romance. It’s not restricted to young love such as that of Romeo and Juliet. Including older characters in the angst and joy of their romantic interludes creates an inclusive perception of love. It increases the appeal of the overarching genre at work.

The happily ever after isn’t always true. Fiction is a mirror of life. Testing the strength or commitment of a relationship between crime/detective fiction heightens its entertainment value. Romance, while not central to the story outside the romance genre, might add a satisfying element against the crime/detective fiction at work.

Love is just a word until someone comes along and gives it meaning ~Paulo Coelho

Wonderfully true — it is indeed our charismatic or struggling fictional characters who love, or are in love, that linger to remind us why love given and received should never be extracted from the soul.

There is no charm equal to tenderness of heart ~Jane Austen.

Magical! The reader is drawn to the story regardless of the genre.

I would like to be the air that inhabits you for a moment only. I would like to be that unnoticed and that necessary ~ Margaret Atwood.

Brilliant! This stirs ideas on how this would unfold in a crime fiction tale!

The gist of these well-known lines deepens the human connection in any genre.

Happy Reading. Happy Writing.

Please like, share, comment and hold on to a tender heart. We need it in both fiction and life.

Tripartite Character Connection

Quick access and the desire to know more, allow novel/film/ trilogies and series to thrive.
Writing a trilogy is planned either before Book 1 is written or while the first book is being written, but in my case, it emerged as the first book ended. Films such as ‘Mission Impossible,’ ‘Pirates of the Caribbean,’ ‘Spider-Man,’— to name a few, and novels: ‘Century Trilogy Series’ by Ken Follet, ‘Border Trilogy by Cormac McCarthy,’ ‘African Trilogy’ by Chinua Achebe, and ‘Hunger Games’ by Suzanne Collins — and so many more… have stood the test of time.

Being more of a pantser is probably the reason why Book 2 emerged after Book 1 was completed, thereafter a plan was mapped for each book which morphed along the way as characters spoke about their lives/situations. What is originally envisioned does not really end up as expected — this is my experience. With Souls of Her Daughters, each book that follows may be read as a standalone book or in combination as a trilogy.

In writing Souls of her Daughters, Chosen Lives and What Change May Come two arcs are included through the lives of sisters Grace and Patience, first as sisters, and then as professional women. Felicity Cassano, friend and associate to both sisters is the third arm in the tripartite connection. There is also the suggestion that Andrew Lang, young, handsome intern at City Hospital could be the third connection — ultimately the reader will pick a favourite for a host of reasons — tragic childhood or unrequited love, the emotional hook shapes preference.

Trilogies allow the inclusion of a range of characters to enter and intersect with the main arcs. Book 2, Chosen Lives, sees the entry of Ming, Audra, Masuyo and Zuri. This adds intrigue and colour to the lives of each character in their growth and development through the three books. The beginnings of a love story in Book 1, develops in Book 2, faces challenges in Book 3 adding more drama and intrigue in the rocky life of Grace with her beau Keefe Daly. Patience’s social justice initiative in creating safe houses for women of abuse in Australia sees her traveling to different places and finding commonality of the human spirit in any geographic location. Multicultural representations feature in all my books as an expression of a world where difference is of no consequence, professionally and personally.

Additionally, characters that attract negative attention for their human flaws in Book 1 can transition in Book 2 or Book 3. Such is the situation with Felicity Cassano, the legal eagle with good intentions that go awry in her sharp-tongued impulsive criticism of Grace, a medical practitioner she believes is somewhat faint-hearted.

We are voyagers, discoverers of the not-known… we have no map ~ (from HD – Hilda Doolittle’s – Trilogy- Tribute to the Angels)

Trilogies have value for both readers and writers — readers immerse themselves in the lives of fictional characters by finding limitless connections to their own worlds, and the writer relishes the depth of creative expression in fleshing out lives and situations that leave the reader wanting more.

What are your favourite trilogies? Drop a comment in the box below.

Happy Reading! Happy Creating!

Fiction: History, Culture, Truth

Every voice like every story has its place in the world. A niche audience might be readers of a particular history, people and culture of forgotten voices.
In an era that has in so many ways moved leaps and bounds forward, the opposite is true of human tolerance. Everywhere we dare to look, the capacity of the human spirit for evil outweighs the good around us, often overshadowing a multitude of voices and actions for common good.

Stories, fictional stories, even if thematically dark demonstrates the human capacity for change.
Fiction has had and continues to have the rite of passage to dismantle oppressive notions of the wicked side of human nature.

At the Sydney Writer’s Festival last week, the festival theme, ‘Lie To Me,’ resonated with memories, of the apartheid era where race and power/powerlessness named and played the game, and understanding of the impact of assimilation on the stolen generation.
An evening of storytelling affirmed the need to keep telling our societies’ truths to dispel the mistruths in the media, in politics and the use of social media as a tool to denigrate.

Forgetting past atrocities in no way heals the human condition. It’s a double-edged sword — remembering keeps the pain alive, but alive in recall that has the potential to thwart such heinous future acts. To quote Descartes, ‘I think therefore I am,’ is significant, but must be married to, ‘I feel therefore I am,’ and what better way than through a fictional story that ensures that the movement towards human value for all lives, does indeed matter.

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. ~ George Santayana

Cultural stories of forgotten people hold them in conscious thought, remembered as life lessons to pass on to the next generation. While such stories might have a micro niche audience because they tell of the far-flung corners of history, they must be told.

Lines from Vindication Across Time sees the character Marcia Ntuli telling Michael Morrissey, a human rights lawyer about her mother’s hardship as a single mother under the apartheid regime.

Mama Dolores…the police would barge into our home and drag her to the police station for questioning. They were rough with her, they broke things in the house… kicking her in the back, calling her an evil kaffir. It was horrible. ~ Vindication Across Time.

Michael walks in Marcia’s and Mama Dolores’s shoes to gain an understanding of what preceded democracy in a troubled land. His theoretical basis on what constitutes human rights has a ‘live’ life lesson in a recount of the terror Marcia’s mother endured at the hands of the district police. This, in turn, opens the depth of understanding on what might have been misreported in historically written and spoken accounts of this era. The voices of men/women struggling on the fringes of society are left forgotten if not told through story, to entertain and awaken compassion that a history forgotten is dangerous — it lurks in the dark corners of the mind ready to be unleashed in the terrors we experience today.

The storyteller has the power to dispel untruths by telling stories that make us uncomfortable, those stories that some publishers are reluctant to put out into the world, so why wait, when a world of empowerment, without gatekeepers, awaits the telling of unheard stories.

Go tell those stories today. Keep an underrepresented history alive, in the minds and hearts of a niche audience in engaging fictional stories -stories that tell of truths that have been swept under a forgotten, tattered rug.

Share your reading that has inspired a new wave of thinking in the comment box below.

Happy Reading, Happy Writing.

Fiction: Perfection in Imperfection

Perfection is too exhausting. It’s not true to who we really are as individuals, communities, and societies.

Fictional characters echo this representation of imperfection without necessarily being labelled Shakespeare’s Iagos of the world – they do exist – the first page of the daily newspaper or the first news item on the evening television news reveals that Iago exists in politics, education, the corporate world, and other dark corners.

Nobody is as good as gold…

My tag line, Perfection in Imperfection, the themes in my novels, and short stories, and essentially most novels, illustrate that life is just that – a mix of the good, the bad and the ugly. Nothing is perfect nor is anything entirely imperfect – there is always a reason for the apparent ‘imperfection,’ the interpretation of which is dependent on one’s value system in either accepting or rejecting a perceived ‘imperfection’. The psychological benefit of understanding that ‘perfection,’ as defined by ‘particular’ standards, is not the norm, invites the greatest learning in appreciation, understanding and compassion which is born from trial and error or walking in the shoes of others.

Perfection bores, it disconnects the reader from the lack of reality evident in the world around. A saintly character who holds pious thoughts and performs selfless acts through the duration of a story might offer some inspiration, but insufficient entertainment value for the reader. Give that saintly character’s perfection a dent or two and they are endearing as human after all.

The socially moral cop with a particular weakness, perhaps peeling bags of onions, eating tubs of ice cream, or engaging in a ‘monkey-ish’ tossing of almonds into his/her mouth, or some such habit, when a case is in a deadlock or about be nailed, is either loved, creates amusement, or is despised. Inspector Aldo in Vindication Across Time, a man who controls the media and women, particularly the rich, widowed, and lonely like, Ana Kutnetsov, a housekeeper with a big heart, and a secret past, grates on every character’s nerves. He is enigmatically dark – a looming manifestation of Iago.

Literary heroines such as Tolstoy’s, Anna Karenina, illustrate this point, and Margaret Atwood’s speech, Spotty-Handed Villainesses, on the good-bad women of literature highlight the fallacy of crafting perfect female characters as unrealistically flawless or insanely bad. Flaws might engender empathy in the reader when weaknesses or vulnerabilities are exposed, not the overt Jekyll and Hyde associations – which exist, depending on the genre of the tale.

Nuanced human foibles draw connections and acceptance, that to err is human. From Count Dracula, Robin Hood, Ned Kelly, to Portia and Desdemona – it’s the yin and yang, the balancing between the scales of imperfection and perfection that makes them timeless characters through reader held values, and the emotions elicited.

Perfection in the natural world is not assured, periods of drought, fires, snow and floods, etc, strengthen human and animal reactions or behaviour to changeability.

As What Change May Come is released this week, my heroes and heroines are both weak and strong. Even the selfless character Patience has her weaknesses much to the embarrassment of her sister Grace. While there are consistencies of characterisation across the three novels, Souls of Her Daughters, Chosen Lives, and What Change May Come, there are times when change elicits or decrees an unexpected behaviour in the character. They are all human after all and aren’t we all?

Happy Writing, Happy Reading!

Please share your thoughts on the topic in the box below.

Are you a dog with a bone?

In my world being a dog with a bone is sometimes needed to get the job done.

Persistence pays.

By the same token, I am aware how utterly annoying the person who is always a dog with a bone can be … gnawing at issues or situations for self-aggrandisement. They gnaw at the issue or situation with dogged intent. Is it with a power-laden agenda to prove a point and claim a hubristic victory?

An ego trip might well motivate a dog with a bone syndrome (my definition) hence such characters are quick at the ready to prove a point, make a statement or perhaps just want to be heard. A sad dog with a bone.

This excessive gnawing suggests self-obsession, the ‘look at me’ need.

You will find this character type in my novel, Vindication Across Time, or can you identify characters in literature you’ve read, where such attributes are identifiable?

How about some of these characters?

-Shakespeare’s Duke Orsino in Twelfth Night – hankering after love:

If music be the food of love, play on/ Give me excess of it, that, surfeiting/The appetite may sicken and so die.

– Shakespeare’s King Lear in the play by the same name, desirous of hearing how his daughters love him:

… which of you shall we say doth love us most. That we our bounty may extend.

A vain ploy, albeit by an aging king and father, to ‘buy’ profanations of love.

Note the positions of power in each of the above, male, duke, king, etc.

But what about the humanitarian goal-focused dog with a bone? What defines this person?

#courage
# resilience
# hope, authenticity, and determination
# achievement
# embraces challenges
# wants the best things in life for self and others

Shakespeare’s Cordelia, King Lear’s daughter, says:

I love your majesty according to my bond, no more no less.

This girl tells it like it is! She speaks from the heart in her truth. She stands by her truth like a saintly puppy with a bone, she is prepared to forgo her part of her inheritance from her father’s kingly estate in:

Nothing will come of nothing.

This is an admirable quality which has been included in my novel, Across Time and Space. Who is it?

Meryl?
Marcia?
Ben?
Andrei?
Michael?

I leave you to decide.

But while pursuing these noble intentions, individuals/characters might walk all over those who support and promote them by becoming consumed by their goals, to the point of frustrating others with their exuberance, self-centred, and misfired passion.

So how does one or one’s crafted character become a pleasant goal-focused dog with a bone?

# have a purpose that will also benefit others
# know when to take a break from the bone of self-promotion – in other words, give the jaw a break.
# consult with peers and others and share by being an active listener.

Where are these characters in literature?

How about Friar Laurence in Romeo and Juliet? He knew he could no longer prevent Romeo from wanting to marry Juliet, so he dutifully got them married.

And the upright, Atticus Finch, in Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird who was relentless in proving the African American, Tom Robinson, innocent of the allegation by Mayella Ewell and her father Bob.

The dog-with-a-bone fictional characters make interesting case studies and create engaging plots with perhaps a moral lesson.

A valuable, and historic determination is Martin Luther King in:

I refuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become a reality… I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word. ~ Martin Luther King

Be a dog with a bone or craft such characters but know when to give the gnawing a rest. Craft characters who echo tireless values that promote change for a better world, or expose the dark side through characters who invert goodness.

Some valuable motivational quotations to guide your characters’ actions:

I hope you enjoyed this and encourage you to comment and share your views on characters who have had an impact on you. Please share your thoughts in the message box below.

Continue reading “Are you a dog with a bone?”