Category: Heroes

Posted in Book Reivew, Heroes, Quiet Books, Uncategorized

Stella Montgomery, Wormwood Mire’s Brave Hero

Posted on by beckylevine

So I just finished reading Judith Rossell’s Wormwood Mire for the second time in a few weeks. Wormwood Mire is the sequel to Rossell’s Withering-by-Sea, and there is apparently a third book–Wakestone Hall–coming soon, maybe at the end of the year. (Yay!) I really enjoyed Withering-by-Sea, but I absolutely loved Wormwood Mire. It is quiet and lovely and sweet and very much the page-turner (in a non-stressful way!). I love quiet books, but I often wonder how the author manages to keep the pages turning and still keep the book quiet. Plus, I’ve been struggling with a more character-driven plot in my current WIP.

So I decided to re-read Stella’s second book and take notes about what plot actions happen, who does them, why they do them, and how those actions move the plot forward. Now, I didn’t remember Stella being super active, but I thought I’d find out differently when I took a closer look.

Nope.

Stella does things. She explores the strange house she’s found herself living in. She asks questions about the mystery surrounding her mother and her (perhaps) twin sister, neither of whom she can actually remember. She climbs a tall tree, and she ventures near the lake she has been warned to stay away from. She discovers a secret room and enters it. All in a world of gossipy whispers that speak of monsters and witches’ familiars.

But, other than finding the secret room, she does pretty much none of these adventurous things by herself. And she doesn’t instigate them either. Almost all the impetus for exploring and putting herself in dangerous situations comes from her energetic, inquisitive, and absolutely wonderful cousin Strideforth. Strideforth is a scientist and an engineer, and he doesn’t believe in spooky things. The house is filled with heating pipes, some of which are hot to the touch and some of which are cold, and Strideforth’s actions are driven by his curiosity–his absolute need to know–about where the heat is going. The house is freezing cold, except in the kitchen, and that is a problem Strideforth is determined to solve. So he explores and he questions and he draws Stella and his sister, Hortense, along with him.

So why is Stella a hero?

  • Stella is brave. We learn this about her in the first book, and we see it again in this sequel. Stella is a timid girl. She has reason to be–she has led an at-once very sheltered and very neglected/abusted life with her three horrible aunts. (No, you’re not wrong, you do sense a hint of Roald Dahlness!) And, yet, whenever a moment comes–and many of them do–where she has the choice of going forward or going backward, Stella goes forward. She has to take some deep breaths, she has to get encouragement from the sister she is imagining, and she has to push away the frightening story from the nasty going-away book of morals that her aunts gave her when she left. But she goes forward. Every time.
  • Stella is curious. Like Strideforth, she wants to know and  understand, but she is much more open than he is to the unexplained and magical. Things that she agrees, as Strideforth says, not possible, and yet…she sees them happen and accepts them as facts. Stella also reads whenever she can–even the horrible gift from her aunts, but more importantly the travel diary of her ancestor that she discovers in the secret room.
  • Stella’s actions move the story forward. Exploring with Strideforth and Hortense, Stella comes across pieces of her past that bring back memories–frightening and scary memories. She doesn’t push the memories away; instead, she actively stops (ha! Is that the secret to a quiet page-turner?) whatever she is doing and lets the memory come.  Each memory brings with it another piece of the mystery, and Stella is the one who puts those pieces together, along with the information she gleans from the travel diary.  Stella is the one to solve the puzzles of the book–that of the whispered about monster as well as the truth about her mother and sister.

Stella is Mary Lennox without the temper, without the force of action and power that temper gives Mary. She is Matilda without the magic. She is quiet, polite, well-behaved, and withdrawing. Opportunities for decisions and actions present themselves to her, and she has to push herself to take them. But she does take them, with us rooting for her every time.

And I’m pretty sure that is what makes her a hero.

 

 

 

Posted in Character, Heroes

Coulda, Shoulda, Woulda…

Posted on by beckylevine

Okay, let’s talk characterization. Or, more specifically, hero-ization.

At any given moment, what does your hero do? You’ve opened a scene file, you’re stuck her in a setting, with a few other characters around, and you’ve presented her–via story–with a choice. She’s facing a path with two or three forks in it. Which way does she go?

If you’re lucky, she tells you herself. She looks down that road, sees that one route offers her exactly what she wants (or what she thinks she wants), and she takes off. Your only job is to follow along, get it all down, then take a look later–during revision–to see if she really had a clue about what was best for your story. Or whether she didn’t but has taught you something you needed to know anyway.

What do you do, though, if she stops at the divergent ways, studies the options, then turns back to you and shrugs with that “Huh?” expression you hate so much. FYI, it’ll look a lot like the raccoons who wander around my house (or into it) and wonder why I’m yelling at them.

What do you do if your hero expects you, at the moment, to make a decision?

Try going back to these questions:

  • What could she do?
  • What should she do?
  • What would she do?

Could pretty much reflects the story you’re telling (so far) and the parameters set by the world you’re reflecting or creating. My hero cannot, in 1913, jump into a space shuttle and take off into the stratosphere. Okay, I guess she could, but this is (so far) realistic historical fiction I’m writing. She also cannot get a job without her parents permission.

Or can she? This is the power of could.  You don’t actually want your hero to always be doing something that’s easy for her, that you know she could, without even having to work for it. You want her, a lot of the times, to do the things that–at first–seem impossible, but that, with a bit of creativity, imagination, manipulation, or direct confrontation–she can make happen. In other words, what would my hero have to do so that she could get that job? 

Should is just fun. In real life, I’m not a big fan of should–loaded as it usually is with way too much social judgment and way too much power to make me worry and fret. In writing, though…oh, yeah. Because a should for your hero is pretty much an invitation to conflict. (Okay, maybe it’s that for us, too, but there’s the whole manners thing…) So when you ask what your hero should do, make sure you’re asking it from the perspectives of all the characters around her. What does she want to do, but only to make them all happy? And then dig deep and find out what she can do that goes against those shoulds–that make life harder for everybody else and for her, as well.

Would is the hardest. Because this one’s all about how well you know your hero. This is where you (I think!) strip away all the things around her, even if they’ve helped make her who she is, and concentrate on who she is, in and of herself. What are her goals? What are her strengths and weaknesses? Does she move slowly toward what she wants or explosively? Is she likely to succeed or trip herself up? When she’s presented with a choice, which is she–with detail of her personality that you can learn–most likely to choose. Will my hero go along with what her parents wants, will she compromise, or will she out-and-out lie to go her own way.

Yep. You guessed it. That’s what I’m thinking about today.

Because it’s most likely when you don’t know the answer to these questions, or your version anyway, that your hero is going to turn and greet you with that shrug. And this is the time when you may need to step away from the writing, even from the plotting, and spend some more time getting acquainted with this person.

This person who called you to write the story in the first place.

What do you still need to learn about your hero?

Posted in Character, Heroes, Plot, Scenes

What Would Caro Do?

Posted on by beckylevine

Today, I will get closer to Caro, the hero of my YA WIP.

Well, that’s the plan.

I’m still plotting into the middle. I’d say “through” the middle, but not yet feeling that optimistic. And I’m realizing that part of the problem I’m having with the current mish-mash of scenes is that I haven’t honed in enough on my hero’s active goal. I know her emotional goals, but those don’t really drive her choices and actions–not with her knowledge, anyway. When I was plotting my mystery, I could always ask, “What would my hero do to…solve the mystery?” (And then, of course, I’d ask, what someone else could do to PREVENT his solving it!). That MC had a very concrete, active goal to work toward.

I am not going to sit and stare at my computer or out the window until I come up with the equivalent, active goal for Caro. Because, yes, I could do that until the cows came home and, frankly, had a good laugh at my expense. Instead, I’m going to take it scene by scene for a while. And I’ll look at these elements:

  • What did Caro do in the previous scene or few scenes?
  • What were the consequences of those recent actions?
  • How does she feel about what she did and about what happened?
  • Who did she set up a conflict with?
  • What other character has a strong goal at this time?
  • What story element have I not dealt with in, perhaps, too long?

And out of that, I’m going to give myself a kinder, gentler question to answer.  That question will be, “What would Caro do to…solve some problem.”

This problem may not be the one she actually needs to work on at the time. It may turn out to be a problem that, in the end, I (and Caro) decide to throw away completely. It almost certainly won’t, yet, be the problem that is her equivalent of solving a mystery.  Hopefully, though, it’ll be a problem that lets Caro and I move her plot forward and grow a deeper understanding of what it is she truly wants.

What does YOUR hero want? And what step could she (possibly!) take today to achieve that goal?

Posted in Character, First Drafts, Heroes

Keeping My Hero’s Story HER Story

Posted on by beckylevine

So I’ve been doing a lot of research this week. Finding out more about the world my MC lives in–the places she’ll go and the things, and people, that she’ll see. It’s helping, I think, as I hone in on problems she’ll face and scenes she’ll act out & through.

It does, however, keep bringing up the biggest challenge I think I face with this book–and that is how to keep my MC’s story at the fore, with the history playing an important background to her choices and paths. This is very important to me, because one of the frustrating things to me about some historical fiction is when the hero’s story is secondary, or worse, lost.

What’s happening, at least at this point in the draft, is that my MC is taking the first steps that will, I think, turn her into a true hero—the rescuing kind, not just the protagonist kind. She is going to have to make some big choices for herself, but along the way, she’s going to make some big choices for others. Which is good. She needs to do that. But it can’t be ALL for everybody else. The choices she does make for her own path have to, in the most important way, be for HER–her growth, her change, her life. Otherwise, I don’t see it as her story.

So what I’m trying to keep in mind is:

  • What mistakes/negative choices my MC could make that risk hurting/do hurt those others around her
  • What selfish choices my hero can make for herself, before the big choice and–maybe–mixed in with that big choice
  • How to show those choices–as truly wrong, bad–not just accidental or innocent
  • How to have her recovery from those bad choices not be simple or perfect or completely redeeming. How to have that recovery be part of the true, flawed person she has to be

I swear, at this point, my MC goes back and forth between being just a selfish teenager and being too good to be true. First draft, I keep telling myself. First draft.

Posted in Character, Heroes, Somebody Else Says, Writing Books

Somebody Else Says: Nathan Bransford (and Me) on Redeemability

Posted on by beckylevine

Okay, I know it’s starting to feel like this is a bit of a cheating week for me. First, I the WONDERFUL and BRILLIANT Shrinking Violets guest post for me. (I know how much you all loved that, though, so no guilt here!). Then I resort to a visual image, no words, about my workday, and I didn’t even find that image myself–Nastassja Mills did! And now, I’m sending you over to read Nathan Bransford’s blog.

Still, no guilt. Because Nathan is always worth listening to, and also because I am going to throw my own two cents into the pot here. Nathan’s basically talking about how to make it work that your hero does something horrible or has a pretty nasty flaw. And his basic idea–although he says it much better and in more detail, so you MUST go read the post–is that you do this by redeeming your hero.

What I started thinking about, though, as I read the post is that this implies another need, perhaps. And that would be the need to have our hero do something “bad” to start with. Yes, I’m still buried in Donald Maass’ workbook and theories, but this seems to me to fall under that big umbrella of pushing our heroes past our their limits.

I am having the sense as I think about my fiction WIP and draft out a few early scenes that I’m making my hero pretty darned, well…heroic. That’s okay. In fact, that’s good. Some pretty nasty things happen to her, and she’s going to have to be strong, or to repeat the highest praise I’ve ever heard about any heroine from literaticat—kick-ass. But…

She can’t be Wonder Woman. (For one thing, the story is set in Chicago, 1913–in MARCH, and that outfit would be completely inappropriate.)

One of my goal for this character is to find out what she does wrong. It has to, I think, be a necessary wrong and one that is ultimately a critical part of her quest and growth, but it does have to be bad.

What about your heroes? Do they wear cloaks because they’re hiding something? What’s really under that mask? How bad can you make them? And how will you, as Nathan says, redeem them?