Most writers are more comfortable delineating one sex (or gender) over another, which often dictates their main characters and the genre a writer chooses.   You can still be a male and write fantasy romances, or a female skilled at describing war scenes, but whatever your strength, play to it. 

​Very few writers do everything well.  The best write about what they know, and their characters evoke passion, empathy or curiosity in a reader.   

It’s great to surprise a reader with the unexpected, helping give a twist to the plot and the character, but whatever transpires, it must have credibility.   Unless she’s a prodigy, a twelve year old girl is not going to solve the murder of her parents that happened ten years earlier.  A surgeon who graduated from Harvard is not likely to leave a sponge behind in his patient’s abdomen.  If you go for low probability events, or extreme twists, you have to back them up with plausible explanations.  The “willing suspension of disbelief” only goes so far.  Once a reader becomes skeptical that the writer doesn’t know what he or she is talking about, it’s tough to win them back.  

Great characters, to enhance their arc, should have a fourth or fifth gear that seems to come out of nowhere.  For example, villains can turn into heroes with an act of kindness that we would never have anticipated, yet when we read the novel closely, we realize that the seed of kindness was planted by the writer from the beginning.  Similarly, characters we start off admiring suddenly disappoint us when they hurt someone they love.  If they don’t realize what they’ve done, figuring out the “why” makes them even more interesting.  Well-conceived characters can help with plot troubles, too, if the writer wakes one morning and isn’t sure where his or her  story is going (happens to most of us).  Instead of robbing a bank, for example, your destitute character decides to give away his last fifty dollars to a stranger.  The wife who has been cheated on, instead of taking revenge on her husband, is filled with insights about her father.  A deeply-felt, richly-imagined character is your writing buddy, your co-conspirator, and their importance to the final product can’t be overstated.      

There may be a thousand and one books on how to write a novel, filled with sound observations, but when it comes to creating and developing characters, many emphasize the mechanical over the intuitive.  Over decades, here’s what I’ve painstakingly learned about making your characters authentic, original and memorable.

Stay tuned for the next post!
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Most writers begin the writing process by working on plot.  While plot is obviously important, I also like to know everything possible about my main characters, even if I never use many of their details in the novels.  Whether you take voluminous notes about them, or talk out loud to them  (and they talk back to you), it’s rarely enough.  You need to imagine what they would do off the page, i.e., if they had to attend your Uncle George’s July fourth barbecue, or somehow landed in another novel altogether.  Make them your best friends or worst enemies.  Whether they come from your imagination or real life (or a combination thereof), you should be inside your characters a few hours every day—before you write a single word.  Think of method acting.  Characters aren’t simply pawns in a plot—they transcend it.  They are what you remember long after the plot is often forgotten. 

On the eve of your inauguration to the highest office in the land, I wanted to pass along the thoughts of someone you’ll likely never know or meet.   I don’t mean to be a scolding parent.  I’m just Joe Citizen, living in a great country.  

If you want me to like you, I hope you can start by being more civil.  Be respectful of people whose politics you don’t agree with or whose words have hurt you.     Show that open mindedness is preferable to reflex partisanship. Erase “loser,” “garbage” and other name-calling from your vocabulary.  Think of all of us  Joe Citizens as your extended family. We don’t expect to be invited to  Thanksgiving or Christmas at the White House,  but look us in the eye and tell us the truth whenever possible.

If you want me to respect you, study and read the appropriate material before you speak on any serious subject.  Shooting from the hip is for people who don’t know the importance of consequences.  Refrain from thinking of world leaders as a battle of  the superheroes or clash of the titans, but if you must, know that winning is not a zero-sum game.  Don’t keep secrets that you wouldn’t abide in others.  Refrain from rumors.  To paraphrase a song of your generation and mine, love and tolerance are a temple, love and tolerance are the highest thing.

If you want me to have faith in your presidency, never do anything that I’d be ashamed of if I did it,  because sooner or later the word gets out.   Everything you’ve done in the past, I forgive you.  Everything you do in the future, our lives depend on it.  So do our children’s and grandchildren’s.  Trust the judgment and wisdom of people around you who do their jobs well.   That’s about it.
​
Michael R. French
Santa Fe, New Mexico

Michael sits down to chat with host Dan Mayfield about his characters social media. You can "friend" Alex Baten and Jaleel Robeson here:

The second wave of Once Upon A Lie book blog tours starts today.

This April tour will feature three types of "blog stops": Reviews, spotlights, and interviews.

Stop by these blogs to check them out! 

April 1st  My name is Sage ~ REVIEW
April 2nd Indy Book Fairy ~ BOOK SPOTLIGHT
April 4th Freda Hansburg ~ INTERVIEW
April 6th Celtic Lady's Book Reviews ~ BOOK SPOTLIGHT
April 7th Mello and June, It's a Book Thang! ~ BOOK SPOTLIGHT
April 7th The Book Adventures of Emily ~ REVIEW
April 8th Literary Lunes ~ INTERVIEW
April 9th Back Porchervations ~ REVIEW
April 11th Books are Love ~ BOOK SPOTLIGHT
April 13th Hogwash ~ REVIEW
April 14th Reecaspieces ~ BOOK SPOTLIGHT

I try to challenge myself as a novelist by communicating what I understand the world to be.  I like reading other writers who storytell a different vision than mine, as their narrative is as unique to them as mine is to me.  Everything is about a point of view, realized through  three-dimensional characters embedded, hopefully, in a compelling and memorable plot.  

In Once Upon a Lie, a story of the Eighties, my two principal characters seem as different as the Americas they live in—one in a white and privileged enclave in Los Angeles, the other a Texas town with walls to climb if you’re poor and black and have the ambition and talent to escape.  Their paths cross and a relationship as complex as their differences begins to bloom.   Jaleel and Alexandra (“Alex”) deal with societal problem as well as the personal ones they make for themselves. I hope readers of the novel can relate to their struggles and impulsive judgments, even when we react by thinking,  “no, please don’t do that!”  Their lives twist and turn like ours, and realistically not everything ends up tied in ribbons.  But life lessons are real.  Jaleel and Alex even have their own Facebook pages, their interweaving stories continuing in the present, picking up where the book leaves off. 

I would like to thank the book bloggers who graciously choose to host and feature Once Upon A Lie on their blogs. It is greatly appreciated and I will enjoy browsing them all.

​Please note that some pages will not be visible until the morning of March 15, 2016.

_1: Laurie's Thoughts and Reviews
2: The Avid Reader
3: Full Moon Dreaming
4: Room With Books
5: StarAngels Reviews
6: Blood Red Shadows
7: T's Stuff
8: Around the World in Books
9: Hope. Dreams. Life... Lovel
10: Independent Authors
11: Stormy Nights Reviewing and Bloggin' INCLUDES REVIEW
12: Queen of All She Reads
13: Deal Sharing Aunt
14: Mythical Books
15: CBY Book Club
16: Ali - The Dragon Slayer
17: Edgar's Books
18: Readeropolis
19: Liz Gavin's Blog
20: Tina Donahue Books - Heat with Heart
21: Author C.A.Milson
22: Our Families Adventure INCLUDES REVIEW
23: Kit 'N Kabookle
24: Harlie's Books
25: LibriAmoriMiei
26: Am Kinda Busy Reading! INCLUDES REVIEW
27: Dina Rae's Write Stuff
28: Books Are Love
29: Natural Bri 
30: The Crafty Cauldron 
31: Welcome to My World of Dreams
32: It's Raining Books
33: Straight from the Library
34: Long and Short Reviews
35: Lilly's Book World