Build Your Characters From Reality. Show, Don't Tell.

Characters build the novel. If your protagonists don’t have enough substance so you can get into their soul and experience what they feel, or you can predict how they are going to respond to a situation, you are going to lose your reader. Beginning writers hear, from their writer’s group constantly, the words, “Show, don’t tell.” Isn’t enough to say, ‘he felt lonely, alone and abandoned’?

No, it is not. Consider my male protagonist, Gideon, in Maddie’s Choice. Grandparents raised Gideon and his brother when their parents were killed. Zeke was about ten. Gid was about six. His grandfather, who had no time for the rebellious Gid, favored Zeke. After Gid’s grandmother died, when he was about ten, there was no love at all for Gid, so he joined the military right after high school, and became a sniper in Afghanistan, which led to his return to the ranch with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

Now, this is entirely too much backstory to dump on a reader during a scene. Bits and pieces of this are revealed throughout the book, but I use a flashback scene to reveal the source of Gideon’s loneliness. To whit:

“A wisp of memory floated through his mind, of a time right after his parents disappeared. He was six years old, feeling sad and lost because his dad had gone. He wondered if they were dead, but the word was never used. He’d been told Dad and Mom went to “a better place,” and it confused him. They were his whole world. Why would they go someplace better and leave him behind?

On that day, lonely and yearning for comfort, he’d found his grandfather working in his office. Needing to be held. He tried to climb up onto his lap, only to be pushed off.

“I don’t have time to play with you, Gideon. Go find Zeke.”

As young as he was, he understood that is grandfather was lost to him. His older brother, Zeke, was the favored one with lap privileges.”

Where did that scene come from? It came to mind when I remembered something similar happening to my young son and his grandfather.

As I said before, draw from within yourself to give life to your writing. This tale is a preface to a PTSD attack in which Gideon seeks refuge in the corner of the barn, where Maddie finds him.

This is much better than simply saying, “Lonely, and distraught, he sought refuge in the corner of the barn.”

I’ve had readers ask me if Maddie was somehow me in this book. Well, yeah, as it will be in every other book. If you don’t pour yourself into your book . . . the famous advice to ‘open a vein and bleed,’ your readers won’t sense the realness of the story. It doesn’t have to be you, but you have to listen to every conversation you will ever have and sense the story underneath, so you might use it.

There is a t-shirt out there that says, ”Careful, you might be in my next book.”

So true! 

Where Are All The Heroes?

I attended a ceremony yesterday to honor three Viet Nam War veterans for their service to their country. Fifty years it has taken us to recognize and say ‘thank you’ for what they endured. At their discharge, these three men had simply been handed an envelope, containing at least six medals for service and valor. One veteran recalled that when they got off the plane they were warned to keep a low profile because people might spit on them.

 There was a Purple Heart, which brought a lump to my throat, because I had never seen one and the recipient is profoundly disabled with PTSD and has two service dogs with him at all times. It has only taken fifty years for us to honor their service.

As I sat in that small room in a shopping center in Fayetteville, Arkansas, among some fifty friends who had shown up to honor these men, I listened to their stories and the history of these wars. I’m old enough to remember the Second World War and the ensuing conflicts and, as I listened, I recalled the monstrous acts of brutality perpetrated on our soldiers by the Japanese, the Germans, the Koreans, and the Vietnamese. How could we have forgotten this? The Bataan Death March? The tortures the VC perpetrated? These men haven’t forgotten. The rage is still there.

Why do we react with such outrage to interrogation techniques used at Guantanamo, which are part of the militant Muslim’s culture and expected by them? Indeed, our disgust is, to them, an example of our weakness.

I think it’s time, on this Veteran’s Day, to take another look at what I feel is one of the finest films on the Viet Nam War—Born On The Fourth of July. Tom Cruise earned his acting chops on this one. It is told from the disabled veteran’s point of view and is the story of a young man who bought the whole myth of men proving their courage by fighting for their country, an attitude championed by his parents. He joined up, came home in a wheelchair, and had to deal with the scorn of his fellow countrymen. His scream of rage at the end when he demands to know, “What was it all for?” says it all.

You can rent this film for $2.99 from Amazon Film Library and play it on your Kindle or computer. Let’s give real homage to these veterans of all these thankless wars including Iraq and Afghanistan by remembering. Watch the film.  

I Want To Write A Book, or....Where do ideas come from?

So you want to write a book. What should you write about? How do you find an idea?

I've published two books, appeared in one anthology, have a western romance coming out later this year and have two more finished novels and a novella to sell. Where did the ideas come from?
You've been told, "Write what you know," but what if you don't know anything? You're not an expert on anything and you don't know anyone who is. You just want to write a good, entertaining story.

Ignore this  advice. Being smart is not about what you know; it is how fast you can find out. Research is half the fun of writing fiction. My new book, Maddie's Choice, due in October, is about modern day cattle rustling in the Midwest, Angus bulls, motorcycle gangs, methamphetamine dealers and PTSD--all of which I knew almost nothing. Once i had the idea I had to research everything and met a lot of interesting people in the process. It is part of writing. I discovered people love to answer questions. So where did the idea for this book originate?

I live in a tourist town in Arkansas, and one weekend members of a large motorcycle gang known as Hell's Angels came to town to celebrate an event. Yeah, the gang Marlon Brando made a movie about. This group is from California and the East coast. There is another gang, called the Bandidos, out of Texas who consider this their private territory, and they arrived to throw the others out. A knife fight ensued. Paramedics were called, along with police and the FBI, who happened to be in town, because the meth trade in this country is controlled by motorcycle gangs and the Feds had been watching them. I didn't know anything about drug trafficking, biker gangs, and the FBI, but I knew a story idea when I heard it.

About that time the newspapers were reporting several cases of cattle rustling at the small ranches in the area. That's when the "what if" question that is the start of every novel, hit me. What if there's a drug dealing motorcycle gang in the area--let's call them The Red Hand--and  they're about to get a big delivery from Mexico? To keep the local police too busy to notice they start rustling cattle from these small ranches who can't afford the loss. The book could end with a big gun battle.

So far, so good, but this is a romance. Besides a small cattle ranch right outside Peachville, Arkansas, I need a man and a woman, who must live together on the ranch, in unlikely circumstances, who can't stand each other but have to get along.
Okay. Let's suppose the woman, Maddie a romance novelist with a thriving career, from New York who's never been near a cow, has writer's block and desperately needs a change of scene.

The guy will be moody, and rough-edged. He's Gideon, the ranch boss--big, handsome and hostile to women, especially New York Bimbos. He clearly needs the love of a good woman but he's afraid to get near because he's suffering from PTSD, a result of ten years in combat in Special Forces. Oh yeah, he's guardian of two orphaned nephews yearning for the love of their uncle. Throw in an Angus bull addicted to chocolate, a barn cat named Deuteronomy, and we're on our way.

I had a lot of fun and pulled out all the stops writing this book. I added some evil dirty guys, some eccentric small town residents, a lot of romantic dialogue, passionate sex, and some really good fights between Maddie and Gideon before they finally get together. The final kicker: Twenty thousand dollars worth of Angus cattle were rustled in Southern Missouri last week.
 Maddie's Choice, to be published by Coffeetown Press this fall thanks to my agent Jeanie Loiacono.