C: Writers and Character

When a writer looks at character,
those slippery descriptions
build a conundrum:
physical,
emotional,
and the oft talked of
(and carefully constructed)
backstory.
A piece of cake. Ha!
I offer you a view from the castle,
full of cautions.
For when the page is complete,
do our characters sing or dance?
Talk to us when the lights are out
and the computer is shut down?
And do our readers e-mail love letters,
asking for more?

Some writers pursue a long getting-to-know-you checklist that itemizes every possible 'reality' for their characters. Others hop into story, hoping their characters will morph -- through dialogue and action -- into something more than shadows of their own past.

Some writers are able to bring their characters to life with that telling detail that aches with precision and echoes in your memory as you turn the page.

Do our characters ring with truth when we create a hero who is male when we are female? Or, vice versa?

I was surprised how much my character's motivation and actions changed when I flipped genders for my hero/heroine. Shades of long ago: my female character is far too submissive; my male character too easily leaps to rescue. But I didn't 'see' what needed thinking about until I changed genders (and will, most likely change them back). 

For I'm still working on those lists and random drafts of scenes and character sketches, circling around how I create that authentic voice of my character.

Source: Nicholas Brealey

Today's post is for April's Blogging from A to Z Challenge. Why not see what others are writing about?

J is for Jackeroo . . . and Jackey Jackey

This neat word, jackeroo or jillaroo, today means a young man or woman who goes out to work on an isolated sheep station in Australia, not quite a hired hand, but not skilled, more like an apprentice.

Wikipedia said the word may have come from an aboriginal word, or may have been inspired by the folk hero, Jacky Raw (who is a contempory musician). But I was remembering an Australian folk tale I read about Jacky Jack, so I dug a little deeper to discover Jackey Jackey, an aboriginal tracker later honored for his skill and steadfastness in helping Edmund Kennedy's 1848 expedition into the backlands of Cape York on mainland Australia.

And, pay dirt for my story, Years of Stone, set in Tasmania 1842-1843, for there were two men named Jackey Jackey. William Westwood, later dubbed 'the gentlemen bushranger"  and known as Jackey Jackey in New South Wales, was originally transported to New South Wales for highway robbery in 1837. Westwood, a master of disguises and of escapes, once up a tree in chains, was finally sentenced to Van Diemen's Land , arriving there in March of 1842, where he was sent to Port Arthur, an isolated prison one could only access by boat. 

Yet Westwood escaped two times in 1842; his punishment 100 lashes each time. In November 1843, he escaped once again, this time, he and his mates swam across a channel. Westwood made shore, but according to the Australian Dictionary of Biography, his companions were eaten by sharks. I'm not sure I believe this last; they may have drowned. The guards floated rumors about sharks to prevent escapees. Recaptured, Westwood faced three months in solitary confinement at Port Arthur.



There's more to the story. Westwood lived only to be 26 years old. He leaves few records behind for he was literate. Authorities must have considered him to be incorrigible, for he was sent to the dreaded Norfolk Island, where he was hanged in 1846 for leading an insurrection against Joseph Childs. I have more research to do, for Westwood's accounts were published in the Australasian in 1879. Maybe I can find these online.

Image of Port Arthur (source: Wikipedia)

F is for Firestorm . . .and Fleas

I've been told to write what I know. How was I to know that a short story about selkies would take me to a three-novel plan about the Industrial Revolution, clearances, and transportation to Van Diemen's Land?  The actual writing becomes a kind of intuitive blend of what I've read (research) and experienced and try to integrate what "good writers" do. And an excuse to travel, though Tasmania just now seems very, very far away.

So this morning, thinking about F, I was reminded about a piece of writer's advice. Go back to the basics. Conflicts internal and external -- against other characters, against nature.  Earthquakes, natural disasters. Fire.

A few years back, we (that is my DH (dear husband) Allen and I) went camping in California's Siskiyous, the first trip in a long time. Actually, the trip was more a disaster. We carried, yes carried backpacks and canned food and a small propane stove (I can't believe we did this) UP four miles of a mountain trail to set up our tent by a lake. No can opener. No matches. No fire. But the lake was pretty and later the stars came out.

In the morning, the air was a strange color of blue, very hazy everywhere. We were just taking down the tent when a ranger came by and told us to get out, a fire was headed our way. Was our campsite taken down fast? Yes! The fire was a big one. We drove through it at one point with fire on both sides of the road. So, a little research and I found that Tasmania is susceptible to bushfires, several tragic fires have occurred there, and I wondered what might have happened out in the bush in 1842.

My "F" is also for fleas. We stayed in some nameless lower-than-budget hotel on one trip. Allen refused to sleep under the covers; he's fastidious, but I was too tired to care. In the morning, my entire body was covered with flea bites. The hotel owner had some hokey story about his wife and her dogs and some fight they had. I didn't care. I love dogs anyway, and the bites healed. But the shock of seeing those bites everywhere stayed with me.

Such experiences large and small shape our writing.

So I do write what I know, but I also write to learn, to expand my understanding of how others have lived and struggled and survived great calamities. Somehow that's reassuring, maybe cathartic. Do you write what you know?

Today is Day 6 of the Blogging from A to Z Challenge. Visit to read what other writers have written.

D is for Deception

This morning, gray rain fills the sky, and I'm thinking the weather forecasters are predicting a little snow sometime over the next several days. I'm always surprised, not having grown up in snow country, when rain becomes these funny white fat flakes, a somewhat magical transformation that turns all things white and new.

Writing about writing does not advance the story.

But plopping that butt in the chair may lead to writing. Not necessarily good writing, but once those words are on the page, and the story is done, a writer revises, following that inner sight that says this works and this does not.

Discipline, training, creativity, and tenacity -- these are the gifts I wish you.

Discipline to write every day for then all parts of your mind are brought to the task.

Training to bring to the writing the full complex of tools that will meld story from character, conflict, plot, pacing, setting, dialogue, and action. Of these, we writers could say one or more present challenges. Most of the time, I like my conflict off stage as I generally hate conflicts of any kind, except when something threatens those I love. And under the umbrella of training I would put a command of English -- grammar and syntax, the tools to play with, and later, the tools needed to revise and edit with a very cold eye.

Creativity is a gift, a certain way of seeing or expressing or something mysterious, like a guest we so want to visit, some call her 'the muse,' but we know this guest will arrive on a whim, unexpectedly, full of drama, and she will leave, just as unexpectedly.

Finally, tenacity. That small inner voice that says "Yes!" when someone tells you that being a writer is frivolous or impossible or won't pay the rent. Well, in my case, such stubbornness may stem from Swedish roots, but I suspect many writers are tenacious. At least some of the time. Enough of the time?

So D is for Deception for sometimes we deceive ourselves. Our characters do not speak truth. Our job is to push through and write. Ah, outside I see a soft snow that flickers white and then gray with rain. A man walks by my apartment wearing a red knitted hat, his dog in front, a German Shepherd with tail lifted, happy to be outside. It's time to write.

Today is Day 4 of the Blogging from A to Z April Challenge. Visit to read what other writers have written.

C is for Convict . . .

Three women of three different classes interact throughout my current work in progress, Years of Stone. Deidre, a schoolteacher, has followed the man she loves to Van Diemen's Land. Deidre was quickly befriended by Lady Jane Franklin, an actual historical person, the wife of ill-fated and quite famous Lieutenant-Governor John Franklin, who later died on his quest to find a Northwest Passage.

At first I thought my story would be about these two women, Deidre, fictional, and Lady Jane, this fascinating, quirky woman of the 19th Century, who was villified by the press in Van Dieman's Land as the 'petticoat' behind the scenes who unduly influenced government decisions. This intrepid woman actually lobbied local leaders on policy, wrote correspondence to the London Home Office, climbed mountains, and in many ways would have been more comfortable in modern times.

But then along came Mary Dallow, what I call 'blue collar scrappy,' a conduit between prison life and the very small middle class and the elite class of Van Diemen's Land. Mary, like other transported women, moves in and out of the Cascades Female Factory, a euphemism for a woman's prison, shaped by the Victorian passion for reform through work.

I am comfortable with Deidre, the middle class schoolteacher. for I did teach. Lady Franklin is the least accessible for me, but letters and diaries are available, as well as histories that track the accomplishments of the elite. Mary Dallow is the most fun for she takes me in unexpected places.

My father was a bartender, and and one of my stepfathers was a steelworker. As a kid, I knew about neighborhood taverns and how to 'make do' with my baby sister when no one was home. We moved often, as one joke goes, when the rent was due, and I found solace in books, working my way through college and into the middle class at a time when college tuition was much lower than it is today.

At first I wanted to be a social worker, but a field trip for a criminal justice class to a local prison changed my goals immediately. As we entered the prison, each of us were taken -- one at a time -- through a double locked door. For just a moment, as I stood there alone, locked in a sort of cage with bars on both sides, I knew I was totally dependent on whoever held the key. Later, the young women in our group were taken to an all female facility. I watched the girls fawn on the guards, saying what 'the man' wanted. But when the guard turned away, sneers and asides showed me what those young women really felt and how they survived. As Mary Dallow would say, "An' who wants to know, ya pig sticker."

I'm still working on Mary Dallow and whether she will have a happy ending. Is happiness a middle class invention?

About April . . .

April has its writing challenges. National Poetry Month -- a poem a day with Robert Lee Brewer from Writer's Digest's Poetic Asides and new to me, Blogging from A to Z, a blog hop with daily blog entries. Most days I find it easier to write on my current project (Years of Stone, historical fiction set in mid 19th Century Tasmania) and leave my blog to languish. But this April, prompted by writers from the IWW (Internet Writing Workshop), I will take on both challenges.

And continue work on Years of Stone. On good days, the writing is fun, the characters talk to me, and the story unfolds in dialogue. I can see Tasmania of 1842, sense the conflict between characters, their desires and their realities, and the words spill onto the page. My goal is simply to finish the draft by  the end of 2012. OK, maybe by the end of summer. My word count is 50,000 so far; goal maybe 70,000 to finish the story.

The biggest unresolved plot question I have right now is tied up with smart-mouthed secondary/main character Mary Dallow. Mary survived the four-month voyage to Hobart Town by sleeping in sailors' quarters whenever she was bored (did I say this story is not YA and not a bodice ripper?). She found work at a waterfront tavern, fell in lust with a bushranger, and serves as a conduit between the two main characters -- Mac (a transportee) and Deidre (Mac's fiance who follows him to Tasmania). So, would Mary (despite her many travails) jump to get married? I'm beginning to think not. Or would she?

Some mystery writers start with a dead body and figure out who-done-it by the end of the book. Maybe Mary Dallow will let me know what she really wants . . . by the end of the book! But whoever she winds up with will have to be her equal, no pandering to convention for Mary, even in 1842. Unless . . .