by
Janis Patterson
I’m having a problem. I’m 60,000
words into A KILLING AT EL KAB (and loving it!), just at the point where my
sleuth should start to pin down who the villain is. Only thing is, my villain
has so far proved himself much smarter than I. There are clues (breadcrumbs, if
you will) pointing to him, but there are more pointing to just about everyone
else. At this particular point, I could probably make any one of half a dozen
people the killer with equal ease.
I know who the killer is. I know
why, and where, and how he killed. He is a very smart man – so smart that he
hasn’t made a mistake yet. I know I have to find some flaw in his behavior,
some crack where his villainy becomes obvious, but as of yet I haven’t. He has
covered his tracks brilliantly, made no mistakes, and my semi-psychic but
denying it sleuth is totally clueless as to how to handle a crime.
Okay, during a totally unrelated
meeting this morning a thought of how to expose him hit me (good thing) but it
means there is a lot of tweaking to be done in the stuff I've already written.
I'll do it, though, if only to ensure my triumph over him. He's an arrogant,
condescending so and so, and besting him will make me feel very good.
So I can hear y'all asking, why did
I create him like that? Believe me, I didn't!
Every so often one local writing
group or another will offer a workshop on creating characters, and for many
years I attended every one. Some were pretty basic – physical description,
work/hobby/whatever, dark secret in their past (and they all had to have a dark
secret in their past) etc. Others were detailed to a ridiculous degree – all
the above plus things like their favorite flavor of Jello, favorite movie star,
who were they closest to in their family, their favorite teacher in elementary
school, who would they be if they were a figure in history, what would they be
if they were a food... Things I'm not even sure of even in myself! I remember
one character interview that went on for seven single-spaced pages
All these workshops did was instill
in me a great sense of envy for those who could follow whatever recipe was
being taught. Oh, I followed every step with alacrity, made everything just as
it should be... and bored myself to tears. After making up so much stuff about
a character I found they had all the life and reality of a cheap paper doll. I
feel the same way about detailed outlines. Ho-hum. No surprises for the writer,
no surprises for the reader.
In case you haven't twigged to it
yet, I'm a pantser. When I start a book I have a shadowy idea of the storyline
and a couple of stick-figure characters that are more archetypal placeholders
than anything else. The rest is done on the fly, and it often surprises even
me. My characters walk in almost fully fledged (though they do change and
expand and sometimes surprise the heck out of me as I write) and tell me what
I'm to do, and if I dare to change what they have decided, they often get huffy
and refuse to talk to me sometimes for days.
I tried to explain this to The
Husband (a science rather than a word person) without much success. He listened
politely, then asked a question or two, then shook his head, murmuring that writing sounded more like possession than it did creation.
He might be right. But I did figure
out how to defeat my villain... and please don't tell anyone. Word does get
around, and I do want to surprise him!
