Poll for readers of Thicker than Blood

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Hey, friends! I need your help. If you've read my novel Thicker than Blood, would you mind voting in this quick poll? It'll help me understand which characters you connected with, and which ones might get included in a future story! Thanks!

When Your Characters Don't Behave

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Last week almost every day of my writing felt like pulling teeth. I'd sit down at my laptop, bring up my chapter and . . . stare at the screen. Then when I'd start to type, something didn't seem right. I knew I needed to push through no matter what I felt, but still. It's one thing to be at my muse's mercy, it's another to sense something isn't flowing.

I should've learned this by now. What I finally realized was I was forcing situations on my characters. I had one direction I wanted the plot to follow, but my poor character was having none of it.

I've attended several years of the National Book Festival down in D.C. I've heard the likes of Sue Grafton, Nevada Barr, Mary Higgins Clark, John Sandford, and Clive Cussler talke about their characters as if they're real. As if they run the show. They'd say things like, "I got to Chapter 3 and my character wouldn't do what I wanted." I remember looking at these authors with skepticism. They sounded insane. Um, excuse me, but aren't you the author of these fictional characters?

Yeah, well, that was before I had characters of my own to wrangle. Now I know what they mean. It's all about the human condition, I suppose. If you have a character with this personality put into this situation, then 9 times out of 10 they're going to respond thus. And I was trying to force a round peg into a square hole.

So I gave up and let my character do what she wanted.

Lo and behold, I got unstuck! The words flowed again. Does this mean my characters know more about the story than I do? Hmm. Scary thought.

And just in case you're wondering, this character is the lead in my third novel (working title Flesh and Blood). Her name's Brynn Taylor, and she's definitely got some issues. I look forward to watching her figure her way out of them. :)

Michael Snyder (Advice for Novelists, Part 103)

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Welcome to another edition of my Advice for Novelists series in which editors, authors, agents and publicists answer the question:

"If you could say one thing to aspiring novelists, what would you say?"

Michael Snyder shares with us today:

Remember the second half of the two great commandments: Love your neighbor as yourself.

This obviously applies to your readers, but more importantly to your characters. I believe God has endowed writers with a tremendous capacity to love the characters we create. If we don’t love our characters, our readers won’t either. I tell any writer who will listen to stop writing for markets or to please anyone but themselves. Write to amuse yourself first. Trust your instincts. Love your characters. If you do, the truth and beauty parts will take care of themselves.

--Michael Snyder, author of Return Policy and My Name is Russell Fink. Visit his website for more info.

Writing Techniques -- Character Thoughts

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I read an article in Writer’s Digest magazine years ago that I’ve never forgotten. I don't remember its title, but the article gave advice on how to portray a character's thoughts without using clunky italics or resorting to typing, “he thought” or “she thought”. All that’s needed is to describe a physical action performed by the character (usually having something to do with his/her face or eyes), and then simply write the character’s thought after that line of description. Readers will instantly know whose thoughts they are.

An example. Say I have a character named Joe. He's tracking someone. He gets out of his jeep, crouches down in the middle of a dirt road, and maybe fingers some dirt. My sentence: “Joe scanned the horizon. They were getting away, and he was completely powerless to do anything about it.” There’s no doubt here who’s doing the thinking.

This is a technique we've all no doubt read in novels before (and now that I'm further along in my writing I employ it without thinking), but when the article spelled it out for me those many years ago, I remember having a Eureka moment.