The Road to Echoes: Writing Difficult Characters

I had a conversation with my friend Misty early in the drafting stage for In the Echo of this Ghost Town during one of our writing sessions. Note: she’s been a huge advocate for The Stories Stars Tell from the beginning and even featured me in a lovely conversation for her podcast Rainy Day Collective where we discussed purity culture (here’s a link if you’d like to listen to it). 

During that writing session she asked what I was working on, and when I revealed I was writing a book about Griffin, she said “What the hell for?!?!” I laughed at the time because I understood her incredulity. Seriously. Griffin was horrible in The Stories Stars Tell. Toxic as toxic can be. Now, I feel warmth in my bones because she’s read In the Echo of this Ghost Town and asked me “I don’t know how you can get me to go from hating a character to loving him. How do you do that?”

I’m not sure. I remember telling her during that same writing session that I was really struggling to develop Griffin because he was so freaking unlikeable. Look, I know this isn’t selling you on his story, but please stick with me. I think you’ll fall in love with Griffin as much as I have. And ultimately, this is a post about how sometimes we have to look closer at those difficult characters. 

While I don’t have a magic bullet, here are five things I did to excavate Griffin as a difficult character.

1. First, I had to let go of my bias. I hated him. In The Stories Stars Tell he was such a jerk and so disrespectful to… well, everyone. There’s a scene in that book that solidified my dislike of Griffin. Tanner wrote a poem about Emma in his notebook, and Griffin makes fun of him for it. Not only did it break my heart for Tanner, but it sealed my dislike and informed every other scene moving forward with Griffin.

2. I had to use what already existed in The Stories Stars Tell to begin to understand Griffin’s perspective. While these clues were superficial at best, they offered some perspective about Griffin’s world view. For example, Tanner mentions Griffin’s dad being in prison. He also indicates that his older brother has left. There’s a scene when Tanner arrives at Griffin’s house at noon, and Griffin is just getting out of bed. Then there are all of the moments Griffin opens his mouth and tears things apart.

3. I started with a pivotal moment for both Tanner and Griffin—the fight. It was already drafted from Tanner's perspective, so I changed it to Griffin’s to see what would happen. My understanding of him began to shift. It made me wonder about hitting rock bottom and what would happen to someone who’s lost everything?

4. Next I had to dig a little deeper. I started with asking questions about his family. Who were his mom and dad and brother? What was their family dynamic, and if the father was in prison, why was he there? How did that impact the family? Griffin? And what about his brother? What would it feel like to think he felt like he’d been abandoned by both his dad and his brother? How might that inform his behavior? His motives? His wants? And if his mom was never around because she was trying to hold the family together financially, how might that impact his teenage perspective? What did Tanner mean to Griffin, and how might the fight have impacted him? This exploration made me begin to see Griffin in a new light, one that made me empathize with—though not excuse—his choices.

5. Next, because I saw a theme emerging in the character development, I began doing research about male culture, toxic masculinity, and abandonment. I’ll write more about my research in a future post, but for now, I knew I needed to ground myself in being respectful about these topics.

Developing characters is already challenging, but I find it always comes down to the question: why?  The more you’re willing to ask that question of your characters, the deeper they will take you into their motives, the roots of their own why. For the author, this only helps writing their stories. Difficult characters are no different, as long as we’re willing to ask those questions. If you’re familiar with The Cantos Chronicles, you know that I’m not a stranger to writing the difficult, morally gray character. Seth from The Ugly Truth was a villain in Swimming Sideways and The Bones of Who We Are.  So, I guess I find difficult characters interesting and challenging.

Next time: Writing Secondary Characters

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Ask the Author: Advice for Newbie Writers?

What advice do you have for new writers?

We’ve reached the last post of our Ask the Author series, and today’s responses were inspired by several requests for what kind of advice would you give new writers?

So here it is, five points for new writers to help you as you begin your writer’s journey.

If you want to write stories, make stories a part of your life.

Brandann Hill-Mann said it best, “Consume stories.” Her advice is predicated on the idea that stories are presented in a myriad of ways: books, TV shows, movies, comics, plays, so on and so forth. “Find ways to consume the same story in different mediums to see what appeals to you and why. Consume media you love so you can take those elements forward with you. Consume media you don’t like so you can think about why it didn’t work for you, and how you’d do it differently.” And each of the authors expressed the same sentiment. Rayna York, Sophie Fahy both intimate that reading provides tools to develop plot. Cognitively, we learn thought modeling because our brains are set up to mimic first in order to build the skill set necessary to develop our own unique style, so reading is critical. My advice has always been to Read. Read and read some more. Read widely. Read within the genre you want to write as well as outside of it. Stephen King wrote in On Writing that, “If you don’t have time to read, you don’t have the time (or the tools) to write. Simple as that. Reading is the creative center of a writer’s life.”

“If you don’t have time to read, you don’t have the time (or the tools) to write. Simple as that. Reading is the creative center of a writer’s life.”

— Stephen King, On Writing

If you want to write stories, you have to write.

Most writers you talk to will tell you to write everyday. Since Stephen King is my go to, he wrote in On Writing that “I write everyday [...] and when I’m not I feel at loose ends with myself and have trouble sleeping,” which resonates loudly for me. I do write everyday and when I don’t I turn into a version of mom-wife godzilla tromping through my house screeching and expelling vitriol fire. Writers work hard to determine a routine that sets them up for the success of forward movement and meeting deadlines, but this can look different for every writer. Rayna York suggested “write everyday, even if it’s crap,” because like Jody Piccoult’s famous quotation, “You can’t edit a blank page.” Sophie Fahy suggests writing everyday even if it's just letters, journals or a diary, and when you feel comfortable there, begin to learn the craft.  Julia Scott offered this golden nugget, “draft as though no one will ever read your book, and edit as though everyone will,” which ties into Ally Aldridge’s warning not to give into “perfectionism.”

If you want to write, find a writer community as a means of support.

Do you read acknowledgements at the end of the novel? Writers notoriously write the following phrase: writing is a solitary endeavor, but the book you’ve just read had a lot of help getting it to where it is.  This is followed by the plethora of names. The truth is that though writing is solitary, every writer needs their “writer friends” like Piper Bee suggests. “Not only will they be a source of inspiration and encouragement, but if you have a good relationship, they'll tell you what needs fixing. Plus, talking for hours on end about stories and books is a good time!” Rayna York added that having a group of writer friends you trust to be honest with you and your writing will make your book stronger.  “[If I’d had that support] with my last novel, [and a writing friend to tell me] that my main character was too bitchy and annoying [...] it would have saved me a lot of negative reviews.” 

If you want to write, don’t give up.

Besides being solitary, writing is really hard work. I’ve quoted it before but it works to say it again, Ernest Hemingway said, “all writers do is sit down at the typewriter and bleed,” which speaks to not only the arduousness of the task, but the emotionally draining work of it as well.  Sophie Fahy said for her the most important advice was “don’t give up. If [being a writer] is what you want to be, what you want to be doing for the long haul. DO. NOT. STOP. No matter the negativity from others or bad feedback or even self-doubt [...] I believe my current novel I've finished is the BEST book I've ever produced [...] and the amount of re-writes I did were [intense]. I wanted to give up but I didn't.” And Julia Scott added the point that a danger is getting into a comparison game. “Don’t compare your writing style, your writing speed, your routine, your methods, or ANYTHING to anyone else. Your journey is unique and won’t look like anyone else’s, and that is perfectly okay.” Add to that Ally Aldridge’s wisdom, “As long as you are writing, you are making progress [...] Don’t be the one holding you back, or putting yourself down.”

If you want to write, have fun.

Finally, even in the difficult moments of writing, ultimately it should be something you enjoy. Julia Scott reminds us, “...don’t forget to have fun with it. As soon as it stops being fun or filling you with joy, the end result will suffer and your readers will ultimately notice. You’re writing because you love it, don’t forget that.”

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Ask the Author: Favorite Part of the Writing Process?

Happy New Year! It’s nice to be back. Without further ado… onto this week’s post.

A reader asked this question: What is your favorite part of the writing process?

This needs to be said right up front: WRITING IS HARD! And all of you who write (heck, create) know that up front. Who was it that said, “all you do is sit down at the typewriter and bleed” (I’m pretty sure it was Ernest Hemingway)? The bleeding—not physical because that would be disgusting—is emotional and mental and it’s harsh. Here’s a poem by Charles Bukowski called “So You Want to Be a Writer” which hits the nail on the head, so to speak. 

Now that we’ve got that squared away, in order to explore the questions readers posed, I thought it would be awesome to add a few more author voices into the mix, so over the course of this Ask the Author series, you’ll be here from six other YA authors in addition to me: Brandann Hill-Mann, Sophie Fahy, Piper Bee, Julia Scott, Rayna York, and Ally Aldridge. Each of these wonderful women agreed to answer the same questions asked of me, so I’m going to add their incredible voices. 

Before I answer this question: What is your favorite part of the writing process, let’s begin with a common framework. 

The writing process is a cyclical series of events from the inception of a story to the sharing of it with a broader audience. These are the phases as I see them: Story idea and prewriting, drafting, rewriting, revising, editing, formatting, and publishing. This process looks more like a cycle that folds back in on itself over and over before getting to that final phase: sharing the work.

Let’s define the terms: 

First, every book begins with an Idea & Prewriting. This is the Ah Ha moment when a story idea hits me. Maybe it’s a scene like Emma standing at her locker lusting after Tanner across the hall like in The Stories Stars Tell, or maybe it’s Seth telling me not to “leave him in hell,” over and over until I finished his story in The Ugly Truth. All of us get these little “downloads” from the universe in some shape or form whether it’s writing or another creative endeavor. That’s when the “planning,” the “pantsing” or the “plantsing” happens (I happen to adhere to a combination of approaches when prewriting). 

Idea!

Seth: Cami! Do not leave me in hell. Get me out of here!

Idea!

Emma is glancing lustfully over at the school’s notorious party boy, Tanner. Why won’t she go talk to him?

Drafting is the heavy lifting of telling the story. I love how Stephen King wrote in On Writing about what a mentor told him, “When you write a story, you’re telling yourself the story…” This is drafting. The forward movement of getting the skeleton of the story on the page. Brandann Mann-Hill, author of The Hole in the World speculative fiction series, told me “Sometimes I don’t quite have the story worked out in my head—despite my best outlining efforts—until I’m drafting, so I enjoy finding out what is going to happen. I’m still telling the story to myself.” Piper Bee, author of Joy’s Summer Love Playlist added that “[Drafting is] always so fun to discover new things about my characters and to see what comes out of them when I give them room to breathe on the page.” 

In many writing process explanations Rewriting and Revising might be combined, but I’m taking my own path and expressing that these are different parts of the process. After drafting, I rewrite which could be described as drafting all over again only now there’s a skeleton available with which to work. Finishing up that awesome quotation from Stephen King’s On Writing, “‘...When you rewrite, your main job is taking out all of the things that are not the story.’” The bones of the story in draft form need a lot of work, from cutting and rewriting, to new scenes for character development and plot pacing. A lot of writing happens in this stage for me. This is where an editor would “developmentally” edit a story. Sophie Fahy, author of Through Her Eyes, said that rewriting is her favorite part of the process. “I love to rewrite. The words are already on the page to play with. Delete, re-jiggle, all the best bits so easily able to put together to create a manuscript so beautiful.” 

The difference for me between rewriting and Revision is subtle, but I see revision as less heavy lifting that rewriting requires. To use painting as an example, the picture is clear on the canvas, which drafting and rewriting provide. Now, it’s playing with color and shadow, adding details and reworking lines in order to make the picture pop. This is a distinct difference for me in my writing process. This is also the stage that I send out a draft for feedback. That feedback is helpful in supporting me to focus on aspects of the story I may have gone writing blind to.

Editing is the next stop in the writing process. There are different kinds of editing: developmental, line editing and copy editing. Developmental editing is what happens in the rewriting and to some extent in the revision phase. The “line editing” or working with sentence structure and word choice, happens in the revision stage, but also when I get closer to that finished draft. Finally, “copy editing,” which is fixing typos and usage errors, is when I’ve reached the point where I think the story is as close to “finished” as I can get it. All creatives know that this is a never ending cycle and a strong copy editor is invaluable. (Wait!!! A quick note: a developmental editor is also invaluable! Know the difference if you’re paying for an editor so you can articulate what kind of editorial support you want).

We’re nearing the end of this cycle after going through the loop of revision and editing repeatedly, and it’s time to format. I’m including this as part of the writing process, because as the writer (specifically the indie author because traditional authors don’t have a lot of input in this part of the process) the overall “look” of the book impacts the story. From cover to interior, these are part of the whole work, and I’d argue as much of its own process too! Julia Scott, one of our esteemed authors, is also a professional formatter wrote in Indie Writing Wisdom.  “Formatting that makes your book easy to read and keeps your reader engaged in the story, rather than being distracted by the oddities in the layout, is a job well done…the readability of your words is key.”

And finally, Publication (which I’m going to include means sharing the work in anyway you share it). It’s out of your hands and into the hands of the reader. This stage of the creative process requires its own process (marketing, publicity, ect.) and I’ve written blogs about it (here’s a link if you’re interested in those), so I’m going to quietly move on. We did it! And now the cycle begins anew.

So, back to the question: What’s my favorite part of the writing process?

While I love the infatuation phase of working on a new story and celebrating the first draft, it isn’t my favorite part of the writing process. It feels like internal bleeding. I force myself to the keyboard to bleed like Hemingway suggested and it’s uncomfortable. I have to work really hard to silence the perfectionist committee in my head. So my favorite part is the REWRITE. For me, this is where the real story—the one I get to eventually share—begins to take shape. I love that feeling when it feels like separate puzzle pieces snapping together and begin to make a complete picture. It makes the drafting and the discomfort worth the effort.

There you have it. Question answered (I hope). Do you have any other questions about The Writing Process? I’d be happy to chat.

Next Week for Ask the Author: Why did you choose the genre you write?

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