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I had people who were doing the National Novel Writing Month send in their votes to see what was kicking their butt the most on their novel: character or plot. The vote was very close. Also, many seemed to be having problem with both, or a combination of both, so I decided I’d give a few tips for both those pesky characters and that twisting plot.

Characters:

1. First problem is usually when you can’t get a character to have a distinct voice in your head, let alone on paper. The person you’ve tried to create just sits there on paper and is as flat as the computer surface your working on. What can you do?

1a. I sit down at the computer and talk to the character, or complain to the character. Sometimes it feels more like character begging as I try to figure out in a long rambling way why this imaginary person is not alive on paper. Its a type of freeform almost stream of consicousness writing and I find that it will often help bring the character to life, or point out why the character isn’t working.

1b. If the above doesn’t work I’ll switch to doing the same thing on paper in long hand. Sometimes reluctant characters seem to prefer pen to paper therpy rather than computer. I actually think its that the physical act of writing helps open up new pathways in my own head and body, but whether its the fictional character or me, it often shakes something lose.

1c. I sometimes have objects that help me get into, or stay in, a character’s voice. This usually means you already have the voice and it was working, but now you feel like you’ve lost the feel of them on paper. For Anita Blake it’s coffee, sometimes just the smell of coffee will be enough to bring her voice roaring back to life. A nice mug with a message on it that would make Bert, her business manager, cringe also helps. For Jean-Claude my master vampire its silk or lace, something pretty to wear, or hold and stroke.

1d. Exercise, I find that a walk, or some weight lifting will often knock something lose whether its a character not talking to me, or a plot not working. We are afterall physical and not just mental, sometimes using both helps me think and write better.

1e. Ok, this is probably the oddest one, but I’ve used it and it really works for me so I’ll share. There is a book by Dr. Daniel Tortora entitled, “The Right Dog for You.” Now not only did I use this book to find my ideal breed of dog, pugs, but I’ve used it to get characters clear in my head. How? The book has a series of tests in the back that the prespective dog owner is supposed to take so they will know themselves better, and thus pick the right dog for them not the dog they think they should have. Example I was a big dog person, but my ideal was, and is, a pug which is a toy breed. The tests if you’re honest are very eye opening.

The first character I used it on was Nathaniel. He’d been a minor character in several books but when he hit the stage in a major way neither Anita nor I understood him. He was so submissive a personality that he wouldn’t tell me what he wanted, he wanted to conform to my ideal which was very him when he entered the Anita Blake series. But I needed his voice, him, to talk to me not just wait to be ordered about. Neither Anita nor I have that kind of patience. Tell us what you want, what you need. There are about twelve different personality tests that you take in the back of the book. Now, first take them yourself and see how you turn out. If you’re not honest enough to get thorugh the tests and recognize your own self then you may not be open enough for your characters to speak to you like this. First, know yourself because in the end all the characters all the voices have to come thorugh you. You are their mirror, their camera, their voice. Its okay if you don’t know yourself as well as you think you do as long as you’re willing to learn.

I took Nathaniel through these series of tests and once I did I just knew more about him. Having to have my imaginary friend take the tests and me keep score and figure out what kind of dog he’d be happy with helped me know what kind of person would want that dog. See, I told you it sounds a little silly, but all I can say is that its worked for me more than once.

Plot problems:

1. Plot isn’t working and the book has ground to a halt. I try to find where in the book I last enjoyed myself as a writer. I often find especially with the Merry Gentry series that is where the plot train jumped the tracks. I back up and rewrite from there and it works again.

1a. Now if its a mystery plot and its not working it may be lack of planning on your mystery, your clues, and your slueth. The mystery is usually the backbone of most of my books and I find that if I haven’t thought it through I may wonder around a bit. That requires thinking on paper about how we can solve this mystery so it will be fair to the reader and require no cheating on the part of our slueth. There are tons of books and articles that detail that, and I will tell you the sad fact that sometimes until somone else reads the book you don’t know if the mystery worked or not, because sometimes the who done it is so loud in your head that you can’t see that what was in your head never made it onto the page.

2. You’ve written yourself into a corner, now what? Sometimes you have to back up and figure out where you lost that wheel, so you can get back in the race, but sometimes its your character going I wouldn’t do that. If that happens I count it as a blessing and let the character tell me why it doesn’t work for them. Then with more insight into the character I move on from there. I will have more to say on this one at the end of this blog, but it’s a series spoiler so I’ve put it at the end.

3. You’ve been following your character around for hundreds of pages and they suddenly sit down and look at you, and you really had no plot other than following the character around. That’s a tough one and one of the main reasons that I always put the spine of a mystery in my books because that gives me major events I know I have to hit and helps keep everyone on the page moving forward. If mystery isn’t your gig then I’m going to refer you up to the ideas for getting your characters moving in the first half of this blog.

3a. Again, go back to the last place the book was working for you and sometimes you find where you jumped the tracks. I’ll be honest and say I’ve never had this happen to me so I don’t have a lot of suggestions.

4. You’ve outlined in detail and your book won’t stay on the outline. Now there are two camps of writers on this one, the outliner and the none outliners. Now, even I make notes and have a list of events that will happen in a book, but I know one writer friend that outlines almost a quarter of the length of the full book so that she knows nearly every event. If I outlined in that much detail it would take away the need for me to write the book, I’d feel done before I’d ever gotten a page, but she can’t write without one, so there you go.

4a. If you’re an outliner, and you’re sure of that, then beat that character into submission and bloody well make him, or her, behave, and get your book back on track.

4b. If you are not an outliner, or aren’t sure which you are yet, let the character have their head for awhile and see where it leads. I find that sometimes my characters and my subconscious are a lot smarter than I am and if I trust them it will be all right.

5. The rabbit hole. I first heard this term from writer Emma Bull, I highly recommend her book War for the Oaks, fairies in modern day America years before I would write my Merry books. She and her husband also a writer, Will Shetterly, called the rabbit hole that moment when a character or the plot takes you down a blind alley or kidnaps your plot and you lose control. They put rabbit holes up as bad things, and they are, or can be, but the problem is that sometimes as a new novelist its hard to tell if a rabbit hole is really just a rabbit hole leading into the dark, claustorphobic underground, or if it will lead you to Wonderland and some really cool adventures with your own character version of Alice. So beware of rabbit holes because they will swallow your book and leave you trapped in the dark with no way out, but occassionally they lead you to wonderful places you wouldn’t have found otherwise.

5a. Sometimes I get rabbit holes in my books and I will cut them out and save them in a different file. One of the joys of writing a book series is that just because a scene, or idea, doesn’t work in this book doesn’t mean it won’t work beautufiully later.

6. The scene that would not die. There is one of these in almost every book I’ve ever written. Its usually a dialogue heavy scene where I just can’t get people to stop talking or find an exit from the scene. I’ve cut out seventy pages of an Anita book and ninety pages for Merry and both scenes were literally big dialouge scenes with lots of characters.

6a. When I was first starting out as a writer I would just power through these scenes and cut them later, or edit them down later. But as I got more expeirence I began to get a feel for when I’d hit the-scene-that-would-not-die. What do you do if you know you’re trapped? I make a list of what the scene was suppose to accomplish. Are there clues you need? Character background? World building. What was the reason for this scene? If the scene has now accomplished all the goals you had for it just stop, pull the plug on this scene and move on. If you have no goals for your scene or your book I can’t help you since I am one of the most goal oreinted people I know. I can only advise on what I understand and lack of goals isn’t one of them. Sorry.

7. Your character and your plot seem to be arguing. I always side with character and have thrown out a third, or more of a plot so that my characters are happy. Recent example is the end of my Merry Gentry novel, Swallowing Darkness. I had this epic fantasy battle planned for this book, I knew it would be the seventh or eighth novel, and I knew exactly my end. Ok, guys what follows is a serious spoiler so please be warned. Very serious spoiler, are you still reading, ok you’ve been warned.

Spoiler: Last chance to avert your eyes.

I had planned on Merry and her royal guards getting an army of the goblins, the lesser fey, and kicking Cel and Andais’ ass. I’d planned on Merry taking the throne, choosing a single king, or kings, and living-happily-ever-after in fairy land. But somewhere in A Lick of Frost, Merry decided she didn’t want the throne she wanted the men she loved. The loss of Frost was a real blow to Merry and she finally fought back against my plot, my plans, and the sticky note timeline that I’d had up on my wall for years. She stepped up in Swallowing Darkness and she said, no, and she meant it. In giving up the throne for love and taking her royal guard back into voluntary exile in Los Angeles she destroyed years of planning and blew up a fourth of a wall of sticky notes that will now never be used at all. My grand, epic battle was trashed and a much more personal combat ensued. It was more powerful and more real than the original plan, and it just flat worked. Not only for Merry as a character but for Doyle and Frost, and the others. This was real, this was right, and my plot was well sacrificed to get where Merry wanted to be.