Saturday, September 14, 2019

Guest post: 'Creating Characters Readers Love or Love to Hate' by Mystery Authors Rosemary & Larry Mild




A mystery story usually begins with an intriguing or even preposterous plot that tickles your fancy, or an outlandish character you can‘t get out of your mind. No matter how gripping the plot, that story will be an unconvincing hollow shell without memorable characters. In mystery novels, one way to make a sleuth memorable is to play him or her against type—not what you’d expect.  Rex Stout’s genius detective, Nero Wolfe, grows orchids; Janet Evanovich’s tough bounty hunter Stephanie Plum loves Rex, her hamster; and P.D. James’s Scotland Yard Commander, Adam Dalgleish, writes poetry.


Everyone wants something—it’s the pursuit of that something that makes a plot move. Immerse and embroil them in active conflict and imagine how they’ll swim. Put them in harm’s way and give them preferences, hurts to nurture, barriers to hurdle, and goals to achieve. They can be sarcastic, humorous, skeptical, vengeful, vulnerable, and/or opinionated. Keep their demeanor consistent, but not to the extent that they become predictable. 

 To build and flesh out your main characters, create profiles for them. Make up a list of questions aside from the obvious ones like name and physical appearance. What are their favorite and most disliked foods? Schools, job, mannerisms, odd ways of speaking? What do they fear most, crave most that’s missing from their lives? Above all, each character must be a unique individual: sarcastic, humorous, skeptical, vulnerable, opinionated, romantic, etc. Of course, no character is all one thing. Allow the characters to be faulty, neither all good nor all bad. Allow them to keep secrets, create confrontations, and express emotions.

Our characters usually come from real life. Mostly, they’re composites of people we’ve known, loved, admired, and hated—or read about in the newspaper. Some authors start by clipping photos out of magazines so they can easily visualize their characters. Listen, listen, listen wherever you are. Eavesdrop if you must and learn how dialogue tells you about the inner person and sets one character apart from the next. A piece of wicked gossip told to you by a friend or an argument overheard at the airport can work wonders in making a character juicy and real.

The choices your characters make are personal to them, and the writer can make use of all sorts of preferences, including colors, styles, friends, food, drinks, vehicles, and athletics.

Few main characters are born on the day your story starts. Every character has a backstory, a past that affects behavior and choices. Where have they been? Who or what are the influences shaping their lives? What are the formative influences? Has vengeance, loyalty, or ambition left a scar? Backstories—succinctly written—can be useful to explain motivation and deepen the main characters. Boring stick figures grow out of confining descriptions to age, height, weight, girth, hair and eye colors, and clothes. Avoid regurgitating these traits in one fell swoop or “information dumping.” Give the reader only as much description as needed to move the story forward.
 
Ken Follett builds memorable characters in his twentieth-century trilogy. The first book, Fall of Giants, is a historical suspense novel. We never feel that we’re subjected to an academic lesson. We experience all the historical events through the characters’ eyes and actions. Follett is a master at bringing every character alive.

Dare the reader to run with the main character. Allow him or her to experience the same pain, fear, joy, terror, and suspense. Challenge the reader to anticipate and possibly experience the main character’s endearments, repugnancies, logic, and conclusions. There’s something of each author in the characters they create showing up mostly in their dialog. Above all, keep characters from sounding alike
                                                           ABOUT THE AUTHORS

ROSEMARY AND LARRY MILD, cheerful partners in crime, coauthor mystery, suspense, and fantasy fiction. Their popular Hawaii novels, Cry Ohana and its sequel Honolulu Heat, vibrate with island color, local customs, and exquisite scenery. Also by the Milds: The Paco and Molly Murder Mysteries: Locks and Cream Cheese, Hot Grudge Sunday, and Boston Scream Pie. And the Dan and Rivka Sherman Mysteries: Death Goes Postal, Death Takes A Mistress, and Death Steals A Holy Book. Plus: Unto the Third Generation, A Novella of the Future, and three collections of wickedly entertaining mystery stories—Murder, Fantasy, and Weird Tales; The Misadventures of Slim O. Wittz, Soft-Boiled Detective; and Copper and Goldie, 13 Tails of Mystery and Suspense in Hawai‘i.


ROSEMARY, a graduate of Smith College and former assistant editor of Harper’s, also delves into her own nonfiction life. She published two memoirs: Love! Laugh! Panic! Life With My Mother and the acclaimed Miriam’s World—and Mine, for the beloved daughter they lost in the terrorist bombing of Pan Am 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland. On her lighter side, Rosemary also writes award-winning humorous essays, such as failing the test to get on Jeopardy; and working for a giant free-spending corporation on a sudden budget: “No new pencil unless you turn in the old stub.”  

LARRY, who was only called Lawrence when he’d done something wrong, graduated from American University in Information Systems Management. In 2019 he published his autobiography, No Place To Be But Here: My Life and Times, which traces his thirty-eight-year professional engineering career from its beginning as an electronics technician in the U.S. Navy, to a field engineer riding Navy ships, to a digital systems/instrument designer for major Government contractors in the signal analysis field, to where he rose to the most senior level of principal engineer when he retired in 1993.
Making use of his past creativity and problem-solving abilities, Larry naturally drifted into the realm of mystery writing, where he also claims to be more devious than his partner in crime and best love, Rosemary. So he conjures up their plots and writes the first drafts, leaving Rosemary to breathe life into their characters and sizzle into their scenes. A perfect marriage of their talents.

THE MILDS are active members of Sisters in Crime where Larry is a Mister in Crime; Mystery Writers of America; and Hawaii Fiction Writers. In 2013 they waved goodbye to Severna Park, Maryland and moved to Honolulu, Hawaii, where they cherish quality time with their daughters and grandchildren. When Honolulu hosted Left Coast Crime in 2017, Rosemary and Larry were the program co-chairs for “Honolulu Havoc.”

Over a dozen worldwide trips to Japan, China, Australia, New Zealand, Thailand, Cambodia, Burma, Great Britain, France, Italy, Israel, Egypt, and more have wormed their way into their amazing stories. In their limited spare time, they are active members of the Honolulu Jewish Film Festival committee, where Larry is the statistician and recordkeeper for their film ratings.  

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