Dealing With Characters

If you read my other blog (MacOnFireball.blogspot.com), you may have seen my facebook post a couple weeks ago that I couldn’t post that week’s episode because Bugalu was being a jerk, and I had to do a major rewrite. As I did the rewrite, Mac was hostile and everybody started explaining everything! (As you know, Bob, Earth’s moon orbits around Earth, and it takes about 28 days to do it.) The only thing worse than an info dump is a completely unnecessary info dump!

I used to say that I start with a character, and they tell me their story. Well, kinda sorta. Sometimes, I start with a scene (a battleground after the battle) or an experience (being tossed off a cliff like a piece of garbage). Then I start wondering, “Who would be in this situation? How did they get here? Or, if it’s more interesting, what will they do now?”

No matter how tight-lipped a character starts out, by the time I’ve written 3-4 thousand words about him/her, they have layers of likes, dislikes, memories, experiences, hang-ups and maybe even dreams. They are no longer 2-dimensional (an apprentice wizard), they are developing some depth (Her teacher has gotten frail during her apprenticeship, so she feels she should stay and take care of him).

I get to know my characters pretty well. You’d think that would be a good thing, but... it has its drawbacks.

When they start telling me their story, they might not give all the details. We don’t know each other very well, and they don’t think their life is that interesting, usually, so I can’t blame them for editing what they give me. And I don’t usually question much while I’m getting the rough draft down. But when I start going through the next draft, I start asking for details.

“Smitty, I’m not sure I understand. Mac just came on board, and you’re already out of sorts with her. Did she do something to irritate you?”

“She stared at me from the moment her transpod opened!”

That hadn’t been mentioned before. Obviously, that scene needed expanding so the reader would know he was not - normally - an old sour-puss.

“He’s passed over plenty of hopeful subordinates who would say he is.”

“He decided they wouldn’t fit his team. Part of being an officer. Hold your peace, Drake. She’s talking to Smitty.”

Okay. Maybe I should say here that I’ve been working on Mac’s adventures on the Fireball for about 40 years. That’s a long time to have the same people living in your head. Yes, we’ve taken breaks - some of them pretty long - and they’ve had to share my head with plenty of other characters during those decades. But I think it’s safe to say that I REALLY know Mac, and the rest of the crew.

How well do you know your siblings or spouse? If you’re having a bad day, do they know it? Or do you still hide that away?

When I confronted Bugalu about being a jerk in the soon-to-be-posted episode, he responded with, “I was trying to make Mac get her temper under control. It’s not like I haven’t talked to her about that before.”

Sure enough, Mac was verging on a rampage, until Bugalu had shocked her by being a jerk. I put on my ‘director’/counselor hats, and we worked to get their moods more... settled in the story.

Oh, and the un-necessary explaining? It happens from time to time, mostly in a rough draft. I just pull my editor hat on tight and remove the unnecessary bits. In this case, 2 pages of ‘splainin’ became 6 lines. 5.5 lines. Somewhere in there.

I don’t want my characters to edit their story. That’s part of my job.

Fighting between characters? Maybe, because siblings fight. Spouses fight. After 40 years, you have to expect an occasional disagreement. But if it becomes part of the story, it needs a reason. Something other than, “I was having a bad day.”

Rumors of My Death…

 …if you’ve heard any, have been premature and greatly exaggerated. I am alive, and (relatively) well, but life has been… complicated.

It all started getting messed up when my husband came home one day and said, “I’m going to retire.” Well, yes, eventually I expected he would, possibly even this year, so I didn’t think it was anything to worry about, because his 62^nd birthday was still 5 months away. And then, a few days later, he added, “I can apply for social security 3 months before I turn 62. Let’s get the house ready to go on the market.”

In a nutshell, that pretty much turned our world upside down.

We knew we had to remove a lot of the personal stuff from our home, so we packed our book collection, our art collection, our video collection… We hired some young helpers to put these heavy boxes in our storage unit. He packed up everything in his office except his computer. I packed or threw out a lot of stuff from my office until I ran out of time.

We had a vacation scheduled for most of May. The paperwork for retiring was signed, and the day husband flew down to Orlando for that vacation was his last day of work. We spent a couple days in the parks and visiting friends while he tried to get his head around his new status. We checked out a few houses that were for sale while we were down there, and started the process of getting pre-approved for a mortgage.

And then… that infamous ‘hurry up and wait’ segment settled in. For the past 3 weeks (and probably for at least another week), the 2 of us have been living in 1 room while all the rest of the house gets fixed up and painted. While we are in that room, the only computer we have access to is the laptop we had in Florida, which I perch on a folding chair while I sit in an easy chair. Is it any wonder my neck, shoulders and back almost constantly ache?

It doesn’t help that I was surprised by a rush editing job just before leaving Florida; the 4^th manuscript in a 5-book series. I got that one done and back to the publisher, but I’m wondering when #5 will appear in my mailbox.

At first, we spent a lot of time in that room, watching various tv shows. By now, we have opted to spend our mornings at dospace (If you live in Omaha and haven’t checked out dospace at 72^nd & Dodge, you should – dospace.com); several afternoons of the week we go to the gym and work out; and at least once a week, we go see a movie – or 3.

Being confined to 1 room is mind-numbing. Most of the time, I just can’t concentrate. Oh, and if you are waiting impatiently for me to add another episode to MacOnFireball.blogspot.com, don’t hold your breath. I will get back to it, but guess what? The notebook holding the original story got packed when I wasn’t looking. Actually, I found the notebook, but the 10-20 pages I had out, next to my desk-top computer, to be typed in and tweaked… also got packed, and has proven to be elusive.

Eventually, the work on the house will be done. Eventually, our Omaha house will sell. Eventually, we will buy a new house in central Florida (we’ve been told it takes a minimum of 6 weeks from bid acceptance to document signing/closing) and can get the household belongings shipped down there. But right now, as the days grind by at a snail’s pace, ‘eventually’ seems a terribly long time from now.

Best Made Plans

Have you ever made plans that just didn’t live up to your expectations? Even vacations have bumps when things don’t go your way. Our last vacation ...

In Florida, every time I lay down, my sinuses immediately plugged up and I was soon mouth breathing. My cpap mask only covers my nose, so it was no help.

John had signed up to march in Disney’s StarWars weekend parades. He was up at 6 AM that first Friday in severe pain and unable to bend one knee. I took him to ‘urgent care’... which didn’t open until 8. He had to scoot in and out of the back, with the leg stretched along the seat. It was gout; they prescribed steroids and ice packs. (He did get to march the next day, and for the rest of the parades while we were there.)

To see the parade, I had to be at the gate by 7:30 (one never knew what time they were going to let people in), rush to one of the (2) benches along the parade route and park myself. The parade happened at 11. The humid heat did nothing for my stuffy sinuses.

I got a page written for my ‘Mac’ serial, but Open Office kept crashing and finally refused to open my ‘Mac’ file again. Unable to think, having no OO specialist to consult, I gave up. John, however, got his 2nd novel rewritten (2nd draft).

I finally let John take me to ‘urgent care’, and I waited 3 hours to see a doc. Then the pharmacy didn’t have the medicine! Augmentin was on back-order? The doc changed the prescription. To sulfur pills. My brother has to take sulfur pills. They work, but not quickly. Another week before I started feeling almost decent.

Friends spent weekends with us. On the last parade day, as everyone was getting ready, the wife fell and struck her head. The husband took her to urgent care, so John went alone to do the parade. Long story short, it was much more than a bump on the head; she ended up in the hospital for 2 nights before they could go home.

Wednesday, I started home, stopping to call my mother-in-law to say I was on my way. She had been taken to the hospital that morning. Frantic phone calls and text messages dogged me all the way home.

Thursday, the radio talked about severe rain and some flooding ‘in Missouri and along the Mississippi.’ I was in Illinois, about to turn west to St Louis. I called my son and asked him to research this, in case I needed to continue north and go through Des Moines. He said it was located south of I70 (the road I would travel).

East St Louis, Friday morning, heavy rain. Happily, the worst was over by the time I left St Louis. But EVERY river and creek I crossed was definitely over its banks! Like I wasn’t nervous enough.

NOT a good vacation. It wasn’t a bump, it was a series of steep cliffs the entire time. I suppose there’s bound to be a bad one every so often, right? But I haven’t given up; we plan to head for Washington (state) and an Alaska cruise in August. Hmm. Maybe it’s good we got this ‘bad luck’ over during this vacation.

Happy Birthday, Mac!

It dawned on me that book characters have birthdays, too. In Mac on Fireball, the soap opera I'm putting out as a blog, Lt Bugalu's birthday is August 2. He was born on Earth, so he knows that.

People born on a colony - whether planet, space station or even space-faring ship - don't necessarily have the same calendar to work with. Gaelund, which is where Mac was born, not only has slightly more gravity, but a slightly longer year. She reached legal age (of 18 Earth years) to sign up to join the Fleet when she was 16.5 Gaelund years old.

On Gaelund, she knew when her birthday was. But when she reached the Academy, which works on the Earth calendar, she was informed that Sept 17 was her Earth birth date. So at the Academy, and on any Fleet ship she works on, her birthday is on that date.

But she is a Gaelunder, and sometimes she feels affronted to be 'aging' faster than everybody else from her home world. When she first reached the Fireball, she was 27.75 Earth years old, but only 25.6 Gaelund years. Maybe it is this too-speedy aging that makes her somewhat reluctant to celebrate her 'birthday' by this time.

Or possibly - since she won't talk about her earlier assignments, this is pure speculation on Bugalu's part - her birthday offered an obligation to accept gifts from crew members - and officers - that she didn't want to accept.

Whatever her feelings about her birthday, while she is in the Fleet, Mac celebrates on a date that has no noticeable correspondence to the date she was born on the Gaelund calendar. At the Academy, the early fall date didn't feel anything like the early spring date she knew as her 'real' birthdate. It may be easier on a ship, where there are no seasons. Or maybe not, since the calendar is not the one she grew up with.

What about you? If you were suddenly told your birthdate was now Korbalco 33rd, and you were a few years older than you thought you were, would you be inclined to celebrate that date or not?

Hearing Voices

I hear voices in my head.

No, they aren't telling me to kill the neighbors or set the cat on fire. They aren't even telling me I'm stupid, won't amount to anything or other negative things. These voices don't belong to demons, or angels, or even deceased family members.

The voices are characters, who tell me the stories that I write. If I don't pay attention to what they say and I take the story in a different direction, they stop talking to me, and I find myself in writer's block... for that story.

For me, characters start as little more than a shadowy form. Maybe I know right away what their hair color or eye color is, maybe that comes later. Sometimes I know where their story occurs, maybe even that isn't clear. So I could start with as little as a shadow standing in a fog. How can I possibly write anything about that? (Hmm, that could be an interesting opening. I'll have to think about that.)

So, each character lurks in the dark recesses of my mind at first, and they begin to whisper things about themselves to me. I don't consciously hear the whispers, but they lodge in my subconscious, and slowly, the picture begins to clear.

"Hi! I'm Colleen MacDowell, call me Mac. Yeah, you've given me red hair, but mine's more fire engine red than carroty or auburn, so fix that, would you? I'm short, but extremely strong, because I'm from a heavy world. If a guy gets fresh, I'm likely to deck him. And that's landed me in the brig a few times. Bugalu was my brother's roommate at the Academy, and he adopted me as a little sister in order to help my real brother keep me out of trouble. Believe me, getting myself assigned to the same ship as Bugalu was NOT easy!"

"People call me Kandi, although my name is Kandaranna. I was raised by a family of Sioux in South Dakota. I had black hair, but my white skin and blue eyes said I didn't belong. Pa sent me to Chihuahua, to an Amerind school to learn the old ways, which didn't make sense to me. Eventually, I joined the Space Fleet. On my first assignment, our crew was investigating an abandoned derelict of alien design. That ship kidnapped me, claimed I was the child of its original crew. We've been looking for my parents ever since. Oh, yeah. My hair stayed black while I was trying to pass as human, but I've learned it can also go white... or any shade of purple in between."

So, once I know that much about a character, they stop whispering and we start their story. Occasionally, they surprise me with a tidbit they hadn't revealed before. For instance, Mac took ballet lessons!

The way I see it, if I didn't hear voices in my head, I wouldn't be able to write stories. And sometimes, my characters are the only company I need.

Do you hear voices?

Holidays - Turkey Day

I'm writing this on Thanksgiving. It's a holiday we enjoy in the States every November, to commemorate the Pilgrim's survival of their first year in the new world. And, as usual, I wonder if any of my various universes would have a similar holiday.

Let's concentrate on Thanksgiving; it is an autumn holiday with lots of food and reflection on all the things we are thankful we have. Before the Pilgrims, a lot of cultures had a harvest feast. The hard work of raising crops was done, and (some) people could now 'coast' through the winter until spring, when it was time to plant and hope for a good crop. But keeping a bountiful crop stored all winter was hard; mice and mold and who knew what else could claim a good portion of it, so feasting might continue well into the winter, until most of the food had become a layer of fat on the people, which would help them survive those last few weeks until they could get their hands on fresh food again.

Mac (MacOnFireball.blogspot.com) definitely does have a Thanksgiving, because the Fleet follows the majority of the Earth traditions, but whether it is called Thanksgiving, Harvest Day or something else, I haven't decided.

In my Atlan universe, a 'god' (alien) brought 3 infants to live on a remote island, and stayed with them until they could take care of themselves. This island did not have seasons, so there would have not been any harvest time to celebrate. Later, after the home island was destroyed, and a few Atlans were scattered about the planet to establish tribes, each tribe might have a day of celebration. Some might celebrate the day they made landfall, or others - who now experience seasons - might celebrate a successful harvest.

In my Tunad universe, I think they might have 2 holidays that resemble Thanksgiving. Their colony is established in early spring, and they celebrate the anniversary of that day. They would also celebrate the first fall harvest, which proved they could raise food on a planet that was much colder than their home world. But the Tunads were very careful choosing holidays as they set up their calendar. They did not hang on to any holidays from their home planet, as they have set out to escape from that culture. Still, they recognize that holidays are important, a way to say, 'Our hard work has paid off,' and 'See how far we've gotten.'

Hope you had a great Turkey Day.

Defragging a Story

Have you ever had your computer defrag its files?

I've done it many times. I used to get a kick out of watching little squares disappear from one place on the grid and reappear in a different place, but the defragging  program no longer has that entertainment possibility. But I digress...

On Tuesdays, I post a new scene from 'Mac', a story I've been working on for - oh - about 35 years. Back then, I didn't have a computer. Heck, I didn't even have a typewriter. I wrote my stories in longhand, probably with a pencil, on anything resembling paper; scratch pads, used paper, partially used notebooks, paper grocery sacks, even unused tissues (although those required I use a pen).

When I did get a typewriter, parts of this story got typed up. When I got a computer, parts of this story got typed into that. Over the years, I've had several computers, and almost all of them had some Mac scenes as files.

At one point, I had the foresight to print out what Mac scenes I had in that computer, and boy, am I happy now that I did that. But I'm getting ahead of myself...

Technology changes, and when you use a computer until it just won't go anymore, you don't always get to save what you absolutely want from the hard drive. How many times have I had to rewrite important Mac scenes because I couldn't retrieve them? I forget...

I thought I was really being smart about 2 computers ago, when I started saving Mac scenes on external drives. When I had to replace that computer, I made sure the one I got could still read those external files. But when I replaced THAT computer last year, it just wasn't possible to get a slot that would read 3 1/4 inch floppies anymore. So all those dozens of disks holding Mac scenes (and many other stories I've worked on) got thrown out when I was cleaning up from moving my office.

But something else happened when I was cleaning up from that move. I kept finding hand-written versions of Mac scenes; a couple scenes in this notebook, half a scene on a scratch pad, a scene in a steno pad... Lots of scenes, with no clue whether they were included in what I had printed out or not. I already have a 2-inch stack of these bits and pieces to go through, and I've still got a couple boxes of old papers and notebooks to clean out.

So now, I get to defrag this story. I get to type all these scenes into my computer, and then try to arrange the scenes in their correct sequence. That should keep me busy for a while!