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On Writing: Characters and Group Mentality

January 26, 2009 — Pat Bertram

I’ve been trying to develop the middle part of my current work. I have an idea of how my hero, Chip, will progress and how he will change due to the psychological problems he will be dealing with, but I still have to figure out how he will fit in with the group.

Groups take on a life of their own, with a culture and a group mentality that is different from the sum of the individual members. The group, in effect, becomes a character, so I need to develop this character while I am developing my hero’s character.

There are five stages of group development:

1. Coming together and finding roles
2. Defining the task
3. Disenchantment with the leader, each other
4. Cohesion, feeling like a team
5. Interdependence, acting like a team, becoming more than the sum of the parts.

Most groups unconsciously assign roles to the members, and once these roles have been assigned, tacit agreement maintains them. The most common group roles are: leader, seducer (wants to bewitch others), silent member, taskmaster, clown, victim, oppressor, conciliator, combatant, nurse, young Turk (wants to take over the leadership), the naïf, and the scapegoat.

In the first part of my WIP, where Chip deals with the loss of everything he loved, he meets three mentors, but he is mostly alone. Even his cat deserts him. In the second part, he has to become a part of a group that will escape the place of refuge, choosing freedom over safety, but he is still a loner. I know readers like forceful main characters, the go-to guys and gals (for those of you who hate the word “gals,” sorry, but I couldn’t resist), but I prefer the quieter types, the ones don’t take charge until they are pressed into it out of necessity. So, in the group hierarchy, Chip will not be the leader. He will be the silent member and he will be the scapegoat.

Groups tend to isolate one person as the source of any conflict, whether warranted or not, and they deposit their negative feelings on that person. Because Chip keeps to himself, and because the others think he’s “teacher’s pet,” he becomes the scapegoat. I don’t think he cares, though, so if you don’t care, are you still the scapegoat? Either way, that’s the role the group has assigned him.

Chip’s eventual love interest will fulfill the roles of nurse and taskmaster. A serial killer will fulfill the role of clown. A woman who never quite fit into her other life will find a fit as the leader. The combatant and perhaps oppressor will be a soldier. A lawyer, an erstwhile ambulance chaser, will be the conciliator. But I don’t yet have characters to fill the other roles. So that’s what I need to work on — creating those characters.

This was supposed to be a silly book, a story just for fun, but in the development, it’s becoming something different, something I have to learn how to write as I go along. I keep promising myself that my next book will be one I know how to write. It would make it a heck of a lot easier. But then, where’s the challenge in that?

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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 culture, fiction, life, writing. Tags: character development, characters, group mentality, group roles, hero, scapegoat, stages of group development, writing. 4 Comments »

On Writing: Characters and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder

January 25, 2009 — Pat Bertram

When writing a novel, there are so many different elements to think about, that the only way I can get them in my head in order to concentrate on the story and not the underpinnings, is to write them down. My story problem today is whether Chip, my hero, goes through some sort of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. He probably has to — everyone he knows has disappeared along with most of Colorado. That’s enough to give anyone stress. And, of course, I kept him in constant peril in order to force him to choose safety over freedom. Now that he is safe, he has time to relax and reflect. The horrors of what he endured would have to haunt him and torment him. Just because he’s safe, it doesn’t mean the poor guy gets an easy time of it.

I already established in On Writing: Characters and Grief that Chip will be going through a spot of depression, and depression and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder share many of the same traits. In both cases, people can feel helpless and hopeless, isolated and detached, fatigued and drained. They can lose interest in daily activities, and they can have trouble sleeping.

But Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder is not simply depression under another name. A person who suffers PTSD can also experience flashbacks, terrible dreams, loss of memory around the specifics of the event, diminished feelings, impaired personal relationships. The company of others can be painful. They might become hypervigilant, always watchful and alert. In addition, sights, sounds, or smells can trigger reactions or jog a memory of the trauma.

Chip is already becoming vigilant, but he needs to become hypervigilant; not only is it one of the symptoms of PTSD, it will become a survival necessity.

Until now, Chip has responded to all his problems by sleeping; he seemed to sleep all time. Of course, part of that was because of me — whenever I couldn’t figure out a way for time to pass, I’d put the poor guy to sleep. But I do think that’s a realistic reaction — too much happened too fast, that it wore him out. So, to show the change in him, he should have trouble sleeping — I like the idea of his roaming around at night while others are asleep. And when he does sleep, he should have appalling dreams.

His feelings of isolation, his inability to connect to others and the pain of being around them, will all help me keep him and his love interest apart. They have to hate each other until they fall in love toward the end of the book, though they will be thrown together much of the time. (One purpose for their hatred is that she will need to choose his way over the crowd’s way, and to make it more forceful, she has to do it despite her dislike for him rather than because of love.)

Thank you for bearing with me. I think I have a better grasp of where Chip needs to go in the story, and I know where I need to go — to write it.

See you later.

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Posted in culture, life, writing. Tags: characters, depression, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, PTSD, signs of depression, writing. Leave a Comment »

On Writing: Characters and Grief

January 24, 2009 — Pat Bertram

For characters to be realistic, they need to experience the same emotional arcs that we experience in our lives. A grieving person, for example, undergoes several stages, including denial, guilt, anger, depression, and finally acceptance. Chip, the hero of my current work loses everything and everyone he loves in a single day of earthly upheaval, but so much was thrown at him so fast, he barely had time to comprehend it all, let alone go through protracted stages of grief.

Still, he did experience a period of denial; how could he not? What happened to him and the world was unbelievable. He also felt guilt, wondering why he survived when so many others didn’t, but again, he had little time to indulge in the feeling — he had to learn to live in a plastic world. (Plastic, in this case, meaning capable of being molded and re-formed.) He dealt with it all until the final insult — the loss of the candy that was his one indulgence — and then he gave in to a fit of anger.

These first three stages, as I mentioned, were brief. Now that he is in a place of safety, away from the upheavals of his world, he could revisit those stages, but I don’t think it’s necessary. No point in taxing a reader’s patience with repetition of effects. So that leaves me with the two final stages of grief.

At the end, Chip will come to accept what happened to him. He will also come to accept his new role in life, but until then he will need to go through a period of depression. Should this depression be as short as the other stages? Should it continue for a while to make his predicament seem more normal? I don’t think it’s necessary. A character in a constant state of depression is not a vibrant character by definition and, anyway, this story is supposed to be lighthearted, a whimsically ironic apocalyptic fantasy.

I’m thinking on the fly here, letting you see how I develop a character. That’s not strictly true. I’m doing it because I need to figure out my hero’s next stage of development, and I need to post some sort of bloggery. I end up getting so many people to guest, that I forget the main purpose of this blog: me. Well, me, my novels, and my characters.

But for now, I do know where I stand with Chip. He will be going through a period of depression, but also he will be dealing with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. Or will he? I’ll figure that one out tomorrow.

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Posted in blogging, culture, life, writing. Tags: acceptance, anger, character arc, denial, depression, emotional arc, guilt, stages of grief, writing. 2 Comments »

Story

January 21, 2009 — Pat Bertram

I’m moving along at a measured pace — adding an average of 300 words a day to my current book. Not that the number of words matters to me, it doesn’t. The only reason I mention it is to let new writers know there are all kinds of writers. Some let the words gush out and try to type fast enough to catch them all. Some, like me, have to pull each word, kicking and screaming, into the world. Some have a compulsion to write; others make a conscious choice. How you write, how often, how many words you write per day are all unimportant, unless, of course, you are a writer under contract. But if you are a writer under contract, you would be writing, not reading this blog.

In the end, the only thing that counts is the finished story. The story doesn’t care how long it took you to write it. It doesn’t care if you bled words onto the paper or created it slowly, one puzzle piece at a time. A finished story exists complete and entire of itself, separate from the author and the author’s work habits.

Sometimes we wonder how our favorite authors write, but mostly we devour (or savor) their works, wanting only to immerse ourselves in the story. If it moves us to tears, makes us laugh or shiver, that’s all we care about for the moment. We don’t care how long it took for the author to create the effect. Being writers, of course, we might go back later and see how it was done, but at the time, all we are interested in is the story.

So, here’s the truth. You can call yourself a writer or not. You can write a thousand words a day or not. You can write every day or not. The only thing that counts is the story.

That’s what we novelists are all aiming for.

Story.

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Posted in blogging, life, writing. Tags: story, writers, writing, writing habits. 7 Comments »

From Conception to Birth: One Book’s Journey to Publication

January 17, 2009 — Pat Bertram

Today’s guest blogger is Margay Leah Justice, author of Nora’s Soul , available from Amazon and Second Wind Publishing. We are exchanging blogs, so I will be at Margay’s Blog. Margay writes:

Ah, the first blush of romance. The first time you see the idea, sitting there in the corner of your mind, trying to get your attention in that inconspicuous manner these ideas sometimes adopt. You look away, convinced that there is no way this idea could possibly go anywhere. It’s just a fluke, a fling. Surely, you’ll forget it by morning. But when you look back, the idea is still there, sitting in the corner, flirting with you. So what’s a harmless little flirtation? You approach the idea cautiously, in a manner you hope is suave and sophisticated, but as you get closer, your excitement rises. Your heart begins to race. You lick your lips in anticipation. It’s even more exciting up close. So you flirt with it, spend the night with it, take it home with you. In the morning, you’re surprised that it’s still with you. After two months, you begin to believe this idea has a future. So you cultivate it, give up sleep for it, nurture it as it grows within you. Soon, what began as a nugget of an idea in your mind blossoms into a full-blown creature. It grows within you, like a fetus in a womb, becoming bigger by the month, more substantial. You can almost feel it move within you; you carry it everywhere, wherever you go, it’s there with you. All of your energy is devoted to it.

After a suitable gestation period, your little nugget of an idea, which you have affectionately begun to call “the book” while you search for the right title, is ready to make its appearance. Your months of labor are about to pay off as you prepare to deliver your book into the capable hands of the publisher who will introduce it to the world. But wait, his assistant has to help you clean it up a bit first and you are struck by the niggling thought, What if my baby’s ugly? What if I put this out there and no one likes it? But with the reassurances of your publisher, you clean the book up and send it back, maybe with a prayer or two, and you wait. Now it’s time for your baby to prove its worth.

As you can tell from my whimsical tale above, writing and publishing, to me, often mimic conception and birth. The stages of both are remarkably similar. There is the courtship period when you are first introduced to the idea that will one day take over your life. Followed by the get-to-know you period during which you decide whether or not the idea has longevity and you want to commit to it. Once you make that commitment, there is the gestation period – I think you can guess what happens here. The idea grows and grows, taking on a life of its own, convincing you that you are mad, suffering from a hormonal imbalance, or both. But in the end, it’s worth it because you deliver a rollicking, three hundred page epic that someone is bound to love – and not because they’re related to you.

So I guess you could say that Nora’s Soul is the first of my literary babies. She is almost two months old now, having made her debut in November, and growing stronger every day. Bringing her to the attention of the public is similar to the care and nurturing of an infant, requiring constant vigilance. Yet the pay off is that people are noticing her, some are cooing over her, and others even want to take her home with them. She may just be crawling now, but soon she will gain her legs and walk on her own – -and I will sit back in amazement like any proud mother, thinking, Wow, I can’t believe I created that! And in the grand tradition of mothers everywhere, I will want to create another one, forgetting all of the pains and labor involved in the process. Keep your eyes open for the debut of Nora’s brother, Dante. Thank you for riding along with me on this whimsical journey into my take on writing. I hope you enjoyed the trip as much as I did.

Also see: Pat Bertram Introduces Dante, the Hero of Nora’s Soul by Margay Leah Justice.

Posted in fiction, life, writing. Tags: Dante, Margay Leah Justice, Nora's Soul, Pat Bertram Introduces, writing. 7 Comments »

Speaking of Writers . . .

January 15, 2009 — Pat Bertram

Today was my day at the Second Wind Publishing Blog, and I posted an article entitled: “What Do You Call an Unpublished Writer?” If the truth be told, it’s a reworking of a bloggery I wrote over a year ago, but back then only a few people read it, so it’s practically brand new. What is also new (or rather eternally fresh) is that particular question, and it got me to thinking how only in the arts do people categorize themselves by their aspirations not their jobs. How many self-named actors in Hollywood or New York are restaurant workers with a few bit parts on their resumes and a head full of dreams?

It seems that writers, even more than actors, struggle with this identity. When do we become writers? When do we become authors? When can we call ourselves professional writers or novelists? It seems there are many steps on the path to becoming a writer, or at least to being able to call ourselves writers, and we have all sorts of definitions to prove that we are writers and other lesser beings are not. A writer writes — always. A writer has a compulsion to write. A writer . . . well, you get the picture. I have never been able to use such adages to define myself. I don’t write always. I don’t have a compulsion to write — it’s a choice.

I do know one thing, a writer does write some of the time. If a person has a novel in their head but nowhere else, that person might be a storyteller (not a bad title in itself) but not a writer. As for the rest of it, does it matter? Perhaps on the internet, where we are whatever we say we are, it makes a difference, but when we are alone with our words and our stories, we are simply being. Not being writers, but being the creat(e)ures we were meant to be.

Posted in blogging, culture, internet, writing. Tags: a writer writes, being an author, Second Wind Publishing, writers, writing. 23 Comments »

Wahoo! My Hero is in the Zoo.

January 5, 2009 — Pat Bertram

Whew. A year and a half after beginning to write my fifth novel, I have the first of three parts finished.

The book is a whimsically humorous apocalyptic novel with a heavy theme: how much freedom we are willing to give up for safety and how much safety we are willing to give up for freedom. When the world goes through a time of re-creation, most human survivors opt to go to a place of refuge, which turns out to be a human zoo, but my hero, Chip, wants to preserve his freedom at all costs. Or almost all costs. He deals with killer toads, giant bugs, growing volcanoes, and a multitude of other traumas, but he cannot deal with the end of his stash of hard candy.

I am a slow writer, but this first part progressed slowly even by my standards. The circumstances of the book caused part of the problem — poor Chip had to traverse most of the 100 pages by himself, which is a hard task for any writer. Characters — and writers — need other characters to bounce off to bring interest, conflicts, and twists to the story. And personal circumstances caused the rest of the problem: life and death (not mine) got in the way, as did learning how to use a computer, learning the internet, editing my books for publication, proofing them, learning how to promote. (Though I wonder about the last — does anyone ever learn how to promote, or do we just paddle around until our books finally sink or swim?)

But, word by word, sentence by sentence, I got those pages written, and my hero is finally safe. Now I have to start over with a new set of problems for Chip — and me. Somehow I have to get him to the point where he wants to give up safety for freedom, but after all his trauma, I’m not sure how to goad him. I thought of making the place of refuge ultimately an unsafe place, but while it would get him out of there, it would not serve the theme.

Sorry to cut this short, but I have to go introduce Chip to some of his fellow inmates. Should be interesting. In the first part Chip had too few people to deal with, now he has too many.

I can hardly wait to see what happens.

Posted in blogging, books, life, writing. Tags: apocalytic novel, characters, freedom vs. safety, theme, writing. 9 Comments »

When Writing Suspense, More is More

December 31, 2008 — Pat Bertram

The other day I broke my rule about giving critiques (I’ve lost too many friends by being honest) and responded to a writer who asked my opinion of his work. I gave him a few suggestions about comma usage and speaker attributes, then I put my foot in it. I said there was no suspense, no reason for me to read further. (To create suspense, a writer must raise questions in readers’ minds, and he didn’t raise any questions.)

This got me a long email explaining that of course there was suspense — we didn’t know who the killer was, who he was going to kill next, and if the detective would catch him in time. True, these were unanswered questions, but simply posing questions does not create suspense.

To raise questions and to make us worry about those questions, a writer must show us readers why we should care. Just a thought flitting through the killer’s mind that he was going after an unspecified “her” does not create any sense of immediacy or concern. If we know that he planned to kill a little girl that he (and we) saw playing with a kitten, we have someone specific to worry about.

Also, if we’re supposed to care if the detective catches the killer, we have to know the detective’s stake in the matter. A cop doing his job is completely different from a father worried about spending too much time on the job and not enough time with his daughter. And if it turned out the little girl with the kitten was the cop’s daughter, we’d worry about the characters even more .

The moral of the story is, when it comes to suspense, less is not more. More is more.

And the moral for me is, no more critiques.

Posted in writing. Tags: critique, making readers care, more is more, readers, suspense, writing, writing suspense. 10 Comments »

Cashing in on the Book Business

December 28, 2008 — Pat Bertram

I’ve been looking for book review sites, trying to find places to send my books for review when they are finally released in January or February of next year. There are so many people with published books trying to get them reviewed that most of the good places aren’t accepting or else they charge exorbitant fees. Even the not-so-good places have a waiting list, and many of them charge a fee, too. (Rule of thumb: don’t pay for a review on a blog with less traffic than yours.)

The problem? When self-publishing first became popular, the authors were more or less satisfied with selling 100 copies to family and friends, but now they are learning how to promote. With the big guys making most of their debut authors do their own promotion, writers are beginning to wonder why they should bother with traditional publishers — if authors have to do their own promotion, they might as well get paid. Several bloggeries I’ve read mentioned an expected explosion of self-published books in 2009, and that a large percentage of those books will be aggressively promoted by their authors.

Makes me wonder if the whole book business could implode, with more writers than readers. Many of the people I’ve come in contact via this blog are readers as well as writers, but at least half of the writers I meet elsewhere do not read books. Nor do they buy them.

In the future, perhaps more money can be made reviewing books than writing them. I’ve mentioned before that I’ve been toying with the idea of becoming a reviewer. It’s tempting — especially if I could find others who would be willing to review the genres I don’t read. It’s one way to eventually cash in on the superabundance of published, POD, and self-published books out there, and I’d never lack for reading material. I have only a few objections: I’d have to review for nothing until I could build up a reputation, and I’d have to give strangers my address. Also, I am so jaded when it comes to reading that I’m not sure I could think of anything nice to say about any book, and if I tried to say something positive about a book with negative appeal, would it harm my (so far non-existent) reputation? Even worse, all that reading would take me away from writing, and I have enough distractions as it is.

But still, it’s something to think about as I try to figure out how and where to promote my books.

Posted in blogging, books, writing. Tags: book promotion, book reviews, review sites, reviewing books, self-publishing, writing. 8 Comments »

Describing a Winter Scene — Again

December 23, 2008 — Pat Bertram

The most viewed of all my bloggeries (supposedly that’s the correct name for blog posts) is The Origin of the Grim Reaper. The second most viewed is Describing a Scene in an Interesting Way. The third is Describing a Character the Easy Way, and the fourth is Describing a Winter Scene. Apparently, writing description is a difficult subject to master. And so is deciding how much or how little to describe.

It seems as if this year we are getting plenty of winter. So, if you want to figure out how to describe a winter scene, don’t think of this a terrible winter but as a marvelous opportunity for learning how to describe a winter scene. The secret is to find the telling details — the sights, sounds, smell, feel, taste that evoke the entire feeling of the season. Even better is to find that which only you can experience. Icicles dripping from the eaves have been described a zillion times. (A slight exaggeration, but you get the point.) The crystalline aspect of ice-covered trees has probably been described as often. And so has that childhood horror of getting one’s tongue stuck to metal. But what about shadows on the snow? Rats. That’s been done, too.

Sitting at a computer and looking out the window is no way to come up with telling details, which is why I can’t think of a single way to describe winter that hasn’t already become a cliché. Winter looks like a Christmas card when looked at from inside, but it can only be experienced (and hence described) by going outside and . . . well, experiencing it.

So, I will leave you all to your chilblained fingers tapping on warm computer keys, and I will brave the elements. But don’t expect me to tell you what I learn. My winter is not your winter. We each have to describe the winter that only we can experience, otherwise there is no reason to describe it at all.