Your Character's Voice

Many authors have trouble separating their own writing voices from those of their characters. This often happens, I think, when writers don't have a clear picture of each character: not just what they look like, but their mannerisms, likes and dislikes, motivations and--of course--what they sound like.

At the more mundane level, a writer can give a character a pet phrase or a dialect or the kind of jargon typical of people in a certain profession or hobby. In The Sun Singer, my protagonist Robert Adams often uses the phrase "For Pete's sake," while the fiery young woman named Cinnabar frequently says, "Holy bear puke."

That's a start, though Robert and Cinnabar can hardly use those phrases in every sentence. A character's voice is more complex than a few pet phrases and idoms.

Some people move their hands a lot while talking. Some look your straight in the eye. Others lean in close or look at the ceiling or sky when trying to think of something or scratch their heads or fiddle with their hair or check their watches every few minutes or grin or squint or look around constantly to see who else might be listening.

Characters are Three Dimensional

Getting past, phrases, posture, and mannerisms, requires that the writer knows his characters very well and then is able to step out of the way while they speak. Cinnabar, for example, is gruff, suspicious, defensive, pragmatic and protective of her mother. How might somebody like that talk in certain situations?

Once you have a clear picture of your character and his/her motivations, attitudes, and history, the next step is allowing all that information to fade into the woodwork and to become instinctual for you while that character is talking. We do much of what we do on automatic pilot, so to speak. We don't think about how to shift gears in our car while driving, or how to balance ourselves on a bike while riding, or where the letters are on a keyboard while we're typing. Likewise, when we're allowing a character to speak, if we know them well, we don't have to keep looking at a list of their traits, mannerisms, and goals. We simply write.

Male Protagonists

So far, my protagonists have all been men. I felt confident as I got to know Robert Adams, Jock Stewart and David Ward, that I could step out of the way sufficiently to let not only their authentic voices come through, but everything else about them that makes them who they are.

While considering Sarabande, the sequel to The Sun Singer, I began to worry whether I would be able to write from a female point of view for an entire novel rather than simply shifting into it momentarily for Cinnabar in The Sun Singer, Siobhan in Garden of Heaven, and Monique in Jock Stewart and the Missing Sea of Fire. When I write in third person restricted, there's more than the character's thoughts and voice to consider. It's everything: all the other characters, the settings and the action as they come to the reader are filtered through the protagonist's eyes.


Perhaps you approach point of view differently. Even so, if you tend to write for female protagonists or male protagonists, then how would you suddenly switch gears for book-length fiction?  If you're a man writing about men or a woman writing about women, you have a built-in edge. That "edge" disappears for me when I think about 50,000 or 100,000 words flowing through Sarabande's consciousness.

I know her well, for she has been there from the first draft of The Sun Singer many years ago. She was well defined in my mind when I wrote The Sun Singer and her motivations and hopes as she begins her lunar journey in Sarabande are clear to me now. Yet, I have worried about writing completely from a feminine perspective for an entire novel.

NaNoWriMo

I'm tired of worrying about it. I hope that in signing up for National Novel Writing Month, my goal of reaching 50,000 words by November 30 will make impossible to sit around wondering whether Sarabande's voice is coming through or not. The rush to simply write will force me out of the way, Time will tell.

--Malcolm

Humor Contest at Humor Press

I scan C. Hope Clark's Funds of Writers and Small Markets newsletters each week for information about upcoming grants, markets and contests. Her latest Funds for Writers mentioned Humor Press and its bi-monthly humor-writing contest with a $10 entry fee. The top five entries will receive prizes between $100 to $20 and--along with other top entries--are published online.

Entries of up to 750 words are submitted via an online form with the fee to be paid via PayPal. The good news is, the material can have already appeared elsewhere. The October/November 2010 contest is now underway and includes an entry I uploaded a few minutes ago.

Writing in Clark's newsletter, author Jill Pertler said she enters this contest in spite of the fee for a variety of reasons, including the fact that the contest features "winners, finalists, semi-finalists and honorable mention entries on its website. Contest entrants are directed to the site to read the winning articles. I can post my article on my own website, but I'm willing to bet a nickel that I get a lot more hits by having my piece grouped together with a bunch of other really great humor pieces (on a well-frequented, well-known website). Every reader gained is a potential fan. I'll take all the exposure I can get."

That seemed reasonable, though I can't afford to enter a lot of contests and pay a lot of entry fees. So, I gave it a shot.

BookTour.Com

The page on my publisher's website with links to its author's pages on BookTour.com is getting a lot of hits. That prompted me to set up a BookTour.com page. Basically, you enter your name, bio, books and internet links and then use the page as a means of promoting upcoming events, virtual or otherwise. This is a good place for upcoming signings, talks and presentations as well as guest-post appearances on blogs and sites. It's easy to set up and it's free.

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Preparing for NaNoWriMo on Writer's Notebook

Have a great Hallowe'en weekend.

--Malcolm

Smoky interviews me while I'm interviewing Lauren

It just happened.

While I was reading author L. E. Harvey's new novel Imperfect, Smoky Trudeau was reading my novel The Sun Singer. While the reading was, in part, for pleasure, it was also homework since neither Smoky nor I like to do blog interviews with authors based on generic questions.

I enjoyed reading about the strong female characters in Imperfect, and that set the stage for an interesting conversation with Lauren about her novels and her protagonists. My interview appeared this morning on Malcolm's Round Table. I hope you enjoy it.

When Smoky finished reading The Sun Singer, she asked for some background about the book and why I wrote it. They were good questions. She posted her review and interview this afternoon on Smoky on Books. I hope you enjoy this interview, too.

I had a good time asking the questions for one post and answering them for another.

Meanwhile, I like seeing the opposite sides of every coin. That includes taking long-time folk wisdom proverbs and turning them around. When I do this, "cut to the chase" becomes "chase to the cut." I like the way this shakes people up, including myself. Toss in a dash of free association, and you've got your creativity on Tabasco sauce! I posted these thoughts on Writer's Notebook this afternoon.

Changing streams in mid-horse, I love taking old songs and re-writing them in the form of dark and/or friendly parodies. Consequently, "St. James Infirmary" becomes the "Hack Writer's Blues." I invite you to sing it, especially if there are days when 11 p.m. rolls around and you don't know where your muse is.

Have a pleasant weekend and take time to smell the coffee and/or the roses.

Malcolm

Does another author's journey make a good spiritual self-help book?

“A journey is a person in itself; no two are alike. And all plans, safeguards, policing, and coercion are fruitless. We find that after years of struggle that we do not take a trip; a trip takes us.” -- John Steinbeck

When I was in grade school and middle school, the school libraries were filled with biographies of famous men and women. I read them all. Years later, when my wife and I first met, I learned that she also read them all. On the mundane level, some people ask us how we happen to know such a wide variety of trivia. That's where it began.

Ah, the inspiration of great biographies

More importantly, I was inspired by those journeys. It helped me to read about them. I saw Edison who, in spite of the failures of one prospective light bulb filament after another, never gave up. I saw Helen Keller who couldn't see at all, yet her perceptions of the world were often more accurate than those with 20/20 vision. Perhaps, as so many cartoons and comic strips have shown, such people had light bulbs flashing inside their heads, presenting them with ideas the rest of us were too distracted by the five senses to see. Yet, being inspired by the journey of another man or woman doesn't mean I should walk the same path. I do not want somebody to ask, "do you see what I see?" for that is not relevant to what my journey intends for me to see.


For one thing, as Joseph Campbell suggests, I should be blazing my own path. If I follow another too closely, perhaps I'm simply copying what s/he doesI rather than internalizing the true inner journey itself. Then, too, if I allow my expectations to be confined by the self-help author's experience, I am seeing nothing new, only what I have been told might be there. What a developmental limitation that is!


Coaches and other gurus who go bump in the night

These are the days of coaches, empowerment, and people talking about these current times being the moment of great spiritual changes. I cannot speak to that, though I take note of the fads. This morning, I read the review of a spiritual self-help book that was also a chronicle of the author's personal journey. The journey itself was inspiring, the reviewer said, but the spirituality was lacking.


The lack, so obvious to a reviewer reading without desperation, is common to many books about the journeys of other people that also purport to be spiritual textbooks for the rest of us. Often, the dream material and personal symbolism of the author has no world-wide usage or validation. While it makes sense within the context of one individual's spiritual and psychological life, it isn't universal.


Therein lies the problem of overly personal spiritual books. The authors often speak out of context of the whole, seldom including comparative references to religion, other spiritual "systems," mythology, archetypal dream work, or other sources that allow readers to compare and contrast the suggestions with those made by other spiritual authors. When the reader sees an affirmation using symbols and images that only have great meaning to the self-help book's author, what is s/he to do with them?


At some point, the reader must be able to say: this poetic language has no effect on my life, no matter how meaningful it was to the author; or, all I'm seeing here are platitudes rather than spiritual techniques. 
 
Spiritual self-help books are often beautifully written and illustrated, and then blurbed and reviewed by other spiritually inclined authors. This sells books, yet with false validation. The positive blurb on the back of a book does not mean that Spiritual Author ABC actually tried the techniques of Spiritual Author XYZ and found them to actually work, much less to be more effective than widely known techniques that have been practiced for millions of people for years.


My own approach to spirituality belongs to me. Yes, you will find hints about it in my novels, but not prescriptions or recipes. I can't speak for you. No other spiritual author can speak for me, no matter how nice his or her book looks on the shelf at the local bookstore. The more I read, meditate and practice, the more my intuition tells me whether the book I'm tempted to buy really fits my journey. If not, I'll read it for the inspiration alone, which is fine as long as it doesn't become a manual.


--Malcolm

Only $4.69 on Kindle

New Book Review Blog: Smoky on Books

Author Smoky Trudeau (The Cabin, Redeeming Grace) launched a new book review blog called Smoky on Books on Sunday. Her first post takes a look at Steinbeck's The Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights.

Here's an excerpt:: "When you think of John Steinbeck characters, who comes to mind? Lenny and George from Of Mice and Men? The Joad family from The Grapes of Wrath? Doc from Cannery Row? Or, perhaps, young Jody Tiflin and Billy Buck from The Red Pony? How about Arthur, Merlyn, Lancelot, and Morgan le Fay of Camelot fame? No?"

Coming Soon: The blog will feature upcoming titles, new titles, old classics and other books on Smoky's favorites shelf. Upcoming titles include The Sun Singer (me),  Forest Song, Little Mother (Vila Spiderhawk) and Mandala (Pearl S. Buck).

Like me, Smoky is an author at Vanilla Heart Publishing. She's also a writing coach, editor and Earth Mage. I'm looking forward to seeing her new blog unfold this winter while the weather becomes too cold for her to spend much time hiking in the Sierras or exploring tidal pools along the Pacific Coast.

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--Malcolm

The e-book versions of The Sun Singer, Jock Stewart and the Missing Sea of Fire, Garden of Heaven: an Odyssey and other VHP books are now available for only $4.99 in Vanilla Heart's Seasonal Specials page.

Jeopardy Around the Dinner Table

As any avid aficionado can tell you in 30 seconds, Art Flemming hosted the first episode of the original Jeopardy quiz show in 1964. The show ran until 1975.

Years before that, my father was hosting his own trivia game show around our family's dinner table. Well-versed in a wide variety of subjects, Dad could pose questions for my two brothers and I for a meal-time hour without running out of things to ask.

Who won the world series in 1955? The Brooklyn Dodgers. (I knew that because I was a Dodgers fan. My brother Barry, who had apparently memorized all baseball stats since the game began, usually knew all the other baseball answers.)

What's the capital of Montana? Helena. (Mother, who seldom answered unless my brothers and I were stumped, knew all the capitals.)

Rembrandt painted a picture of a ship at sea in a storm? Any idea what it was? "The Storm on the Sea of Galilee." (My brother Doug, who would ultimately become a college art professor answered most of the artist questions except for the most obvious.)

Does anyone want more mashed potatoes? Yes. (Mother had to remind us to take time to eat.)

What's the French word for "three."  Trois. (All of us knew that since Dad was teaching us to count to ten--whether we were angry or not--in multiple languages. Mother, who took French courses in school, had to remind us that "Trois" was NOT  (and still isn't) pronounced "Troyce.")

We called our game "Questions" and there were no prizes except for Dad's smile when we answered questions correctly. Being first by shouting out "Troyce" or "The Brooklyn Dodgers" was half the fun of the game. We had one handicap that the contestants on Art Flemming's and Alex Trebek's versions of the TV show didn't have to contend with. We were eating and we weren't permitted to talk with our mouths full.

"Questions" was aired randomly at the family dinner table from the mid-1950s until I left home for grad school in 1967. We tended to play the game at Sunday dinner since the meal was more relaxed and there were fewer homework assignments and other chores pending. As we grew older, the scope and complexity of the questions increased and was often mysteriously linked to courses we were taking in school.

When there was a lull in the official questions, my brothers an I tended to lighten things up with fake questions like:

What year did the Seneca Squids join the National Football League?
What famous artist painted Mars on the Half Shell?
Is Kim Novak married to William Holden or Jimmy Stewart?

The answers, of course, are "never," "no such painting," and "neither." While Dad couldn't be easily fooled by our trick questions, his questions constantly made us want to learn more, to be better prepared, to be--as such people used to be called--"Renaissance Men" when it came to having a sound general knowledge of a wide variety of subjects.

"Questions" was part of our on-going liberal arts education long before Jeopardy and Trivial Pursuit were a gleam in anyone's eye. I grew up in a household full of books, homemade games and wide-ranging dinner table competitions and discussions. I remember those days well even though such household pastimes and a liberal arts approach to lifelong learning are essentially gone with the wind.

Who played Ashley Wilkes in that movie about Scarlett what's her name? Leslie Howard (Dad then followed up the question with "What role did he play in 'The Scarlet Pimpernel?'" My brothers and I didn't have a clue, prompting the moderator of "Questions" to start clearing the dishes, suggesting that anyone who thought Leslie Howard was no more than Ashley Wilkes could just take a turn cleaning up the kitchen.)

We learned quickly that Dad wasn't a fan of "Gone with the Wind" and judged our responses to Leslie Howard and  Olivia de Havilland kinds of questions with due care.

-

Malcolm R. Campbell's novels from Vanilla Heart Publishing include "The Sun Singer."  When we gave books as gifts to each other in our family, we always inscribed them. My mother passed away in 1986 and my father died in 1987, many years before "The Sun Singer" was published. Fortunately, both of them read the book in manuscript form. I inscribed the typewritten copy, a Christmas gift in 1982, "To Dad - A seeker of wisdom on the path who, in walking it, enriched it." A journalist and textbook author by career, he was a Renaissance man by avocation, thereby giving me a role model that is still a strong one in spite of the fact that I really do like "Gone With The Wind."

The Two Years My Muse got Drunk in Hawai'i

There was a war on.

In October 1968, when my ship reached Pearl Harbor we were listening to Donovan's "Universal Soldier" on a large reel-to-reel tape deck in the USS Ranger's Public Affairs Office on the 03 level because it pissed off the chiefs and first class petty officers walking down the passageway to nearby berthing areas and the hatch to the flight deck.

Typical for a carrier on a Western Pacific cruise, we spent most of the time between our home port in Alameda, California and Pearl Harbor at General Quarters preparing for the necessary Operational Readiness Inspection.

That night, while I was leaning against a skid of bombs stowed outside the hatch to my birthing area, my muse whispered, "I am out of here. I'm heading to one of those nasty bars on Hotel Street for a case or two of booze. Don't try to find me."

"Why?"

"These bombs, for one thing."

"What about them?"

"Do you ever wonder whose names are on them?"

"I do."

"And that doesn't give you pause?"

"Yes. But unlike you, I can't avoid military service unless I run to Sweden or Canada."

"You should have run. Now you can't. Now you're here, wearing dungarees, a denim work shirt, and a round hat. So, you're off to Yankee Station. By then, it will be too late for the names on these bombs. I won't be part of it. See you around, loser."

I don't know how muses move. Perhaps they astral travel from place to place. Perhaps they transport like Captain Kirk did when he left his starship. Maybe it's all smoke and mirrors and they exist in a quantum state, entangled with whoever or whatever catches their fancy. How she left doesn't matter. What matters is the hint of jasmine from her old-fashioned L'Air du Temps perfume that hung in the air in the bomb assembly area.

Busy installing fins, boosters and lugs on each bomb, the men of G Division were oblivious to the jasmine. The scent was exceptionally strong near the long-handled, two-wheeled, yellow bobsleds of MK82s waiting for an elevator ride to the flight deck. She must have lingered there watching me, possibly trying to erase the names she could see on the bombs, names invisible to me, possibly inscribing a prayer for the not-yet dead or even a curse that might cause the bomb to end up being ditched at sea.

In spite of the shouting and clattering frenzy of the of the assembly area, I felt alone in some silent place where writers who have lost their voices are consigned for the duration. The duration referred to a multitude of eons, eras, periods, epochs and ages slated to end when...the Vietnam War was over...the USS Ranger returned to Alameda the following spring...the people of Sweden sent me a one-way plane ticket to Goteburg...or when the now muse-less writer came to his senses.

Suffice it to say, I was without a muse for many months, a year, actually, having--as people said--joined the Navy to let the world see me, in the Gulf of Tonkin, on the Star Ferry to Kowloon, on the beach at Kailua, in the shadow of the Great Buddha of Kamakura and on the mess decks, hanger deck, flight deck and other assorted compartments and spaces of the ship while the officers on the bridge wrote "steaming as before" in the deck log.

In one post, there is neither the time nor the space to record how many bottles of Scotch my muse consumed in Hawai'i for "the duration" any more than there's time and space to record how many Kirin and San Miguel beers I consumed in various liberty ports. I have said all I want to say about that, in a fictionalized way, in my novel Garden of Heaven.

It goes without saying that I didn't declare myself as a conscientious objector just to get my muse back. That, my fellow writers, was the least of my concerns. I was concerned about the bombs and the names and whether just being there on that ship made me into a co-conspirator of the war. Perhaps my muse sat on my shoulder while I wrote out my formal application for the chain of command. She refuses to tell me.

I finally left the Navy in October of 1970. My friends told me that's when I woke up and smelled the coffee. True enough. I remember the day I was handed my discharge papers and informed that short of a nuclear war, I would never be allowed in the Navy again. Up to that moment, I had been on my own recognizance, a Journalist Third Class Petty Officer with plenty of grit but no muse.

On that chilly October day, puffy white clouds rushed eastward across the blue sky with the incoming front and, as the afternoon wore on, there was a noticeable hint of jasmine in the air.

--Malcolm

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National Novel Writing Month

I know this is a dangerous move: I'm now an official participant in this year's National Novel Writing Month craziness which begins November 1st beneath a waning crescent moon.

As the moon becomes new, I'll make a fresh start on my "lunar journey" novel Sarabande. The story is a sequel to The Sun Singer, my "solar journey" novel from Vanilla Heart Publishing.

There are a lot of reasons why I am fighting with my work in progress:

• I'm feeling a fair amount of burn out after seventeen years of off-and-on work on my other solar journey novel Garden of Heaven.
• Writing from my female protagonist's point of view (third person, restricted) is impacting the way I normally think "for" my characters. Sustaining a feminine view point is proving difficult.
• This has been a year of challenges and many emotional ups and downs, including the unexpected death of my wife's mother a little over a month ago.
• I know Sarabande's story very well, but I've kept wondering (honestly and as a form of procrastination) "do I really want to go through this again?"

Perhaps NaNoWriMo will help me get the story written within a short time frame, the intention of the exercise being to write quickly without the kind of editing and pondering that can get a story mired in real and figurative swamps.

At the end of the month, I may have a rough block of stone out of which I can finally sculpt a living story.

--Malcolm

The Danger of Writer's Critique Groups

Anyone who has been in a properly run therapy group understands that members are not sitting within the sacred circle to impose their views of right and wrong on the experiences and dreams shared by other members. To do so would stifle the speaker's search for his or her truth as well as the best means of communicating it.

It is my nature to distrust writers critique groups because the frame of reference from which those in the group may view each writing sample they see is the world of "shoulds" and "oughts" of daily conversation. While it may be fun to converse over the backyard fence about the probable insanity of the mayor or the stupidity of those who made the latest popular movie, such opinions are just as detrimental to the writer and his/her work in progress as judgemental comments in a therapy setting.

I do not intend to put an overly dramatic spin on the art and craft of a writer and his/her muse bringing something new (the story, novel, or poem) into existence. However, the process, like alchemy, is that of birth or rebirth. It must proceed forward without unnatural interruptions (i.e. judgemental comments) or the work may be stillborn.

In "Garden of Heaven," my novel about the spiritual journey of protagonist David Ward, the alchemical dictum that "By fire is nature renewed whole" (Igne Natura Renovatur Integra)is one of my primary themes. Whether one is creating himself or creating a work of art (or doing both simultaneously) putting out the fire of passion and renewal stops everything.

It is difficult for me to find any separation between an alchemist and the material on which s/he works; likewise, I see little separation between a writer and what s/he writes. Dream and dreamer are one, so to speak. Neither is fulfilled or renewed unless the passions involved are allowed to naturally burn themselves out.

One doesn't even have to be an arrogant know-it-all to innocently extinguish the fire of creation within a fellow writer by innocently saying, "I really think your protagonist needs to be a man instead of a woman" or "No realistic person would react to the stress of a death in the family the way your main character reacts."

The objective truth or falsity of such statements is irrelevant within the context of a creation (writer + work) underway. In fact, the statements aren't (or don't belong) within the same sacred space as the act of creation. They don't compute.

Even a well-made soufflé will fall if it's disturbed while it's cooking in the oven. Likewise, a novel, story or poem. Staying with my alchemical theme here, you may have heard it said that the philosopher's stone is made in hell. Or, in one kind of fiery oven or another. That's how all that doesn't belong is burnt away.

In the world of a critique group, those who know how therapy works might actually be able to facilitate the process. Personally, I don't trust this to happen, so I never show my work to anyone until I consider it done (except for the editing process). This is my idiosyncratic view of going to others for help in creating something: you've heard the expression "too many cooks spoil the broth." 

That's the danger, I think, of offering up one's work in progress for discussion too soon--that is, before it's complete.

--Malcolm 

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Hero's Path - the inner journey

"In Ho'ala Huna, God is a word used to point to the universal and interconnected Reality that comprises ALL THAT IS." -- Lono Ho'ala Kahuna Kupua A'o

In book and movie reviews, the plot and characters get most of the attention. While it's difficult to discuss such hero's journey films as The Matrix and Star Wars without mentioning non-ordinary reality and "the force," the outer story gets the headlines and the buzz. However, in a story about a hero on the path, that outer journey is the tip of the iceberg.

Like an iceberg, the inner journey lies beneath the surface of a very deep ocean often described as the unconscious by Jungian analysts and the 90% of creation that's inaccessible to the five senses by Kabbalists.

Likewise, when I talk about my hero's journey novels The Sun Singer and Garden of Heaven: an Odyssey, I usually mention that in one, a young man named Robert Adams goes on a mission into a dangerous alternate universe, and in the other a middle-aged man named David Ward is trying to put his shattered life back together while searching for the person who's trying to ruin him.

Such descriptions are often called "elevator pitches." They are what I might say if somebody (in or out of an elevator) suddenly asked me what my novels are about. In a brief conversation, I seldom mention the inner journey at all. In part, I don't know how to mention it quickly and/or without setting down a foundation first. I'm also worried that people may step out of the elevator thinking that I write "religious books" as mainstream society views the subject.

The Sun Singer and Garden of Heaven have a very strong spiritual focus yet, in many ways, this focus remains all but hidden until the reader discovers it and experiences it. Perhaps that's as it should be. Perhaps that's the nature of fiction, the inner journey, the true meaning of the hero's path, and personal transformation.
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You may also like a new page added to my website: Novels of Personal Transformation.

--Malcolm

Vanilla Heart Publishing's Author's Spotlight

My publisher posted an interview with me today on its Xanga blog. After reading through what I said, I think it's reasonably safe to post a link to it here.

Here's a sample:

Vanilla Heart: Do you have any pets? If so, introduce us to them

Malcolm: My four cats are named Orange Kitty, Duncan, Katy, and Marlo. “O.K.” is a poofy 15 year old orange cat. We adopted the other three several years ago. Katy, a very large calico, is my “guard kitty,” for she monitors whoever or whatever dares to come in my den.

Katy!

Here's a photo of Katy posted next to the file cabinet looking down the hall toward the front door of the house.

And yes, here eyes actually glow like that. I think she's probably gotten into some Kryptonite or some very strange tuna.

Have a great weekend, and thanks for stopping by.

--Malcolm