May 2017 Round Robin Blog Fest

Welcome back to the Round Robin Blog Fest!

After a brief hiatus for some family events and crazy work schedule, I'm back and ready to blog!

This month's topic is:

How do you go about developing your characters for a story?
How much time do you spend or does it just happen in the writing process?
What inspires it?

I'm a pantser. For the uninitiated, I write from the top of my head, flying by the seat of my pants so to speak. My words and my characters flow from my head and heart through my hand and pen.

Aside from the romanticism of creating my own characters, I observe people. I glean mannerisms from customers I serve, people I know, and from people watching in general. Once I have a basic character, I begin to work on backstory and finer details. For the most part, all of the bits and pieces fall into place during the writing process.

Anything can inspire a new character - a dream, someone on television, a voice on the radio, even just a "what if."  What if a woman met the man of her dreams and he was far from dreamy? What if the homeless man on the corner had a dark secret? What if the beauty queen wanted to win so bad she killed her competition one by one?

By asking the what ifs, I created a character from either the inside-out or the outside-in. Sometimes the heart and soul are more apparent than the outer shell at first. But there are also times a character just appears. Larger than life and in so much detail that I can't write fast enough to capture them.

Leo Blue from my Wild Blue Mysteries series was one of these. He pushed his way into the story without prompting - or being invited for that matter! He will be making a reappearance in the fourth book in the series called The Painted Lady.

As an example of one of my characters, this is what I wrote for his brief description:

Leo Blue: One of Danny’s partners at the Wild Blue Detective Agency. Leo’s background as a boxer and martial artist made it impossible for anyone to get the jump on him. He is also a veteran severely wounded in Afghanistan.

He has muscular arms, broad chest and scars everywhere. He has long copper hair and cat-like gold eyes. He looks like he could bench press a bus. Leo is “two-parts Rambo and one-part Einstein.” He would never turn his back when his friends needed his help.

While Leo first appears in The Bookstore Lady, he takes the spotlight in The Bakery Lady with the lovely Christina Davidson who takes over Daisy's Bakery and turns the confirmed bachelor's head.

You can buy any or all of my books on Amazon at Diane Bator.


I hope you all enjoy the rest of the blog fest! Stop by to check out how my fellow authors develop their characters!

Fiona McGier http://www.fionamcgier.com/

Skye Taylor http://www.skye-writer.com/blogging_by_the_sea
Margaret Fieland http://margaretfieland.wordpress.com
A.J. Maguire  http://ajmaguire.wordpress.com/
Victoria Chatham http://victoriachatham.blogspot.ca
Marci Baun  http://www.marcibaun.com/blog/
Judith Copek http://lynx-sis.blogspot.com/
Rachael Kosinski http://rachaelkosinski.weebly.com/
Diane Bator http://dbator.blogspot.ca/
Dr. Bob Rich http://wp.me/p3Xihq-YV
Beverley Bateman http://beverleybateman.blogspot.ca/
Anne Stenhouse  http://annestenhousenovelist.wordpress.com/
Helena Fairfax http://www.helenafairfax.com
Marie Laval http://marielaval.blogspot.co.uk/
Rhobin Courtright http://www.rhobinleecourtright.com

Hearing Voices

I haven't had a lot of time to write anything over the past week. My job in the real world has a bad habit of caging the little voices that compel me to write and stifling them. I have to force myself to think in a linear fashion, not in my usual whirlwind of creativity. The job I currently have, however, introduces me to characters that even I could not make up. When my friends say those "characters" are stereotypes, I beg to argue. I've met them! They're real.



Do I really hear voices? Technically, no. But I do get whole scenes, lines and even stories flashing through my head. Some are gone before I can write them down, but others haunt me until I do and insist they be given their own life.



Remember way back when to a show called "The Facts of Life"? Mindy Cohn's character Natalie Green was a writer and insisted that she needed to work a variety of jobs in order to get to meet people and gain experience in the "real world". The one that comes to mind is when she drove a hearse. I can't say I have ever driven a hearse, but I have held a variety of jobs and met a variety of people.

Watching and talking to people is one of the best ways to find characters. Or to make composites of characters. It's like mixing paint. You take one part of Aunt Minnie, two parts of your good friend Sandy and a dab of Uncle Sal and get my wonderful character named Mimsy Lexington. Okay, just and example. I really don't know who Mimsy is a composite of, but she's a fun character to get to play with!

Characters appear everywhere and in everyone. Your boss, your spouse, your kids, the old lady who lives across the back alley and keeps rabbits in her garage . . . even parts of yourself that you would rather no one know about. The one who hears the voices.