character interview | Bertram's Blog

Interview With a Character — Part 2

July 26, 2013 — Pat Bertram

Yesterday I posted a part of an interview I’d once done with the hero of my grieving woman book. Talking with a character like this is a good way of solidifying ideas, especially for finding out who the character is and what she wants. Here is another part of that interview:

Pat: David was always so busy, he never had much time for you, but did he have time for your daughter?

Amanda: He always managed to make time for our daughter Thalia, for which I’m thankful. She loved him very much, though she doesn’t seem to be grieving. But maybe it’s different for her. She’s a grown woman with a life of her own, so she’s not panicking about growing old alone, or worrying about money, or any of the other things that go along with grieving a spouse. But everyone’s grief is different, so she could be internalizing it. Also, she feels betrayed. Apparently, she knew I was having a cyber affair. She doesn’t understand. Heck, I don’t understand. Can you explain it to me?

Pat: Perhaps you were at a vulnerable time, grasping at life any way you could. Perhaps you needed someone to help you through the worst time of you life. Perhaps you really did think you’d moved on and didn’t realize you’d been denying what David’s death would mean to you. The best way to show yourself that he no longer meant everything to you was to find someone else who meant something to you.

Amanda: But I do love Sam. He isn’t just a replacement. And anyway, he can’t be a replacement. He’s married.

Pat: Yeah, I’m sorry for that, but there’s no way around it. I mean, I could make him single, but then there’d be no story. You’d go from David’s life to Sam’s. Period. No identity crisis. (Do they even call it an identity crisis anymore?) No coming of age story. No money problems.

Amanda: Seems good to me. After all, I’m the one who has to go through all that turmoil and grief. Alone. Hey! How come I don’t have any friends?

Pat: Maybe you were friends with other preacher’s wives. They are as busy as you once were and have little time for you. That seems to be a growing theme in the story — no time for Amanda. David had no time for you — he was too busy before he got ill, and afterward he became reclusive. Thalia has no time for you — she’s busy with her work and she’s angry at you. Sam doesn’t have much for you any more. And your friends have no time for you.

Amanda: That makes me seem pathetic. I don’t like feeling pathetic.

Pat: I don’t much like it, either. A pathetic hero is not much of a hero. Maybe I should throw more trauma your way.

Amanda: As if losing my husband, losing my daughter, and losing my home isn’t trauma enough. Maybe you could plan a trip for me to meet Sam. I’d sure like to get naked with him!

Pat: You would, you hussy.

Amanda: Not a hussy. Just a woman lost. A woman who doesn’t see herself as special yet who managed to find two great loves. It was fate’s joke that the two loves overlapped.

***

Pat Bertram is the author of the suspense novels Light Bringer, More Deaths Than One, A Spark of Heavenly Fire, and Daughter Am I. Bertram is also the author of Grief: The Great Yearning, “an exquisite book, wrenching to read, and at the same time full of profound truths.” Follow Pat on Google+. Like Pat on Facebook.

Posted in books, writing. Tags: book about a grieving woman, character interview, creating a character, indentity crisis. Leave a Comment »

Interview With a Character

July 25, 2013 — Pat Bertram

Three years ago when I was deep into my own grief, I started writing a book about a grieving woman. It’s been so long since I worked on the novel that while I remember the story, I don’t remember everything I wrote. Today I discovered something interesting. (Interesting to me, anyway.) Apparently one day I couldn’t think of anything to add to the story, so I interviewed the character. Here’s part of that interview:

Pat: Who are you?

Amanda: I don’t know. Isn’t that your job? To create me?

Pat: I was hoping you’d do it for me. Writers always talk about how their characters take over and do things the writers never intended. It’s never happened to me, but I thought perhaps this time things would be different.

Amanda: Different? Why?

Pat: Because you’re me. Or part me. The character of a grieving woman is based on me since I only know grief from my point of view, but the story is not my story. Well, it is my story since I’m writing it, but it’s not the story of my life. That part is made up, though I’m hoping some deeper truth will emerge from it.

Amanda: What sort of truth?

Pat: Hey! Who’s the interviewer here? I’m the one who’s supposed to be asking the questions.

Amanda: But you’re the one with the answers. So how can you be the one asking the questions? And anyway, you’re evading me. What sort of truth are you looking for?

Pat: The true sort. The universal sort. A truth that will mean something different to everyone who sees it.

Amanda: Clear as a bell.

Pat: Good thing you’re not the writer—clichés are so passé. But we’re getting off course here. Will people believe that a woman grieving her husband can love another man? Won’t they think that new love negates grief?

Amanda: Seems as if it’s your responsibility as a writer to make people believe what you want them to believe.

Pat: The problem is that you’re boring. How do I make you interesting? I mean, you sound like a whiner, always screaming, “I can’t do this.”

Amanda: But if you notice (and you should since you’re the one who wrote it), every time I say I can’t do something, I do it. Isn’t that the point you’re trying to make, that I don’t know who I am? That even though I’m in my fifties (cripes, couldn’t you have made me forty-something? Fifty sounds so old), I’m a chrysalis, or maybe I mean I’m in a chrysalis. I’ve been alive a lot of years, but never lived. I’ve defined myself by other people — first as a daughter, then wife, mother, and now cyber-lover. I need to learn how to define myself by myself, to find my home within me now that David’s death has stolen my home from me. He was my home, not the manse we lived in for the past fifteen years. I have to leave the manse, too, since I’m no longer the preacher’s wife. And anyway, the church is selling it.

Pat: I never asked you if you wanted to be a preacher’s wife. Would you rather be a different character? A cop, perhaps, or a CEO?

Amanda: I don’t know what I want to be — isn’t what the story is about? Me finding out who I am? A coming-of-age in middle age story? For that purpose, a preacher’s wife is as good as anything. Also could explain why I led such a sheltered life. A CEO probably wouldn’t have defined her life by her husband’s life. A preacher’s wife, by definition, defines her life by his.

Pat: I just thought of something — how about if I make you the preacher?

Amanda: Wouldn’t work story wise. I wouldn’t get kicked out of the manse when David died, I wouldn’t have defined my life by his, and I’d probably have been too busy to have an online affair. Until David got sick and was forced into idleness, he never had much time. I guess I’m stuck being the preacher’s wife until we can figure out who I will become.

***

Posted in books, writing. Tags: character interview, creating a character, grieving woman novel. 3 Comments »

Why NaNoWriMo?

October 17, 2008 — Pat Bertram

I don’t understand the point of NaNoWriMo. If people spew out 50,000 words in a month, how can any of those words be any good? Unless the writers are very talented, in which case why aren’t they already writing? So why do it? To say they did? I’ve been told that anyone trying to write that fast will write drivel, that the question at the end of the month is: Is it salvagable drivel?

For me, the answer would be no. I’ve been playing around this month with writing quantity rather than quality, and I didn’t get anything except flak from my main character who thinks I should be working harder to get him to safety. It wasn’t pretty. This is the end of the conversation. You can see the whole thing at my Pat Bertram Introduces blog.

Bertram: I really want to know. What would be doing if you weren’t talking to me?

Chip: Going home. I have a cat waiting for me. You’ve left us alone so long, it’s probably gone by now.

Bertram: Not yet, he’s still waiting for you. And he’s doing well. He’s quite a self-sufficient creature, you know.

Chip: It. It’s an it, not a he. “He assumes humanness, and it’s a higher life form than any human I’ve ever met.

Bertram: Okay. It’s waiting for you.

Chip: I hear that patronizing tone in your voice. I don’t have to put up with it.

Bertram: Oh, but you do. I’ve pledged to write 2000 words tonight, and since you’re not giving me anything to work with, we’re going to keep at this until you do.

Chip: What do you need from me?

Bertram: Something to make you real in my head so that I can hardly wait to work on your story everyday. Something that excites me so that I can’t stop thinking about it.

Chip: No one can do that. You’ve read so much you’re jaded, and now you expect me to supply the excitement you once found while reading. But at least you’re working again.

Bertram: But the writing is awful. I can’t use any of it for the book.

Chip: So? I thought the point was to write whatever flows out of your mind.

Bertram: I didn’t expect such drivel. I’d hoped for magic.

Chip: We all hope for magic. Few of us get it.

Bertram: Now we’re getting somewhere. Did you hope for magic?

Chip: Maybe.

Bertram: Then you got it, didn’t you? One day your world was the same as it always was, and the next . . .

Chip: It changed. Nothing is the same. Nothing is real.

Bertram: How does that make you feel?

Chip: What are you, my therapist?

Bertram: Just answer the question.

Chip: It makes me feel frightened. Awed. Unsettled. Lonely. Desperate. Excited. Except for the bugs. I can do without those.