What do you
do when your muse delivers characters that require you to stretch beyond your
comfort zone? Don’t panic. Open yourself to the possibilities.
I write
fantasy romance. One would think that’s challenge enough, creating worlds from
literally the soil upward. But I can handle that. All it takes is imagination
fused with relevant life experiences.
For
instance, I’ve never lived as a cursed warrior in a land populated by
beast-men, but I have experienced a high mountain meadow in spring, ridden
horses, and learned about panning for gems from my father’s Alaskan experience.
I’ve never fended off danger with swords, but I’ve travelled the UK, hefted
swords to learn about balance, and explored tumble-down castles.
None of that,
however, made writing these three characters from BLOODSTONE any less challenging.
#1: The
Shadow Man
Mirianna and
her father fell into place, but my hero, the Shadow Man, refused to tell me his
real name. I wrote a third of the book before he reluctantly revealed it. That
resistance was clue to his character. Being an ‘into-the-mist’ writer, I had to
keep writing to discover the truth.
The Shadow
Man wants to be left alone. But beneath this stated goal is a deeper need: he’s
lonely. When the opportunity comes to relieve his loneliness with a blind boy
servant, he impulsively acts against his stated goal. Conflict ensues. His
neatly ordered life, miserable as it has been, falls apart despite repeated
attempts to maintain his solitude. What he thinks he wants and what he needs
are at odds, and that’s just his internal conflict.
Add a woman
so determined to protect her aging father she embarks on a dangerous journey,
an old enemy seeking power, and a—possibly—magical lion shadowing his every
step, and my hero has more than enough conflict. By first draft’s end, he had dug
up and faced every ugly truth preventing him from being the man he ought to be,
the man he’d chosen to bury (that real
name).
Whew!
#2: The lion
I’ve never
lived with a mountain lion, but I’ve lived with cats. However, even I didn’t
know when I started writing who or what this lion would be. (Remember that seat-of-the-pants
thing?) She appeared with various characters at critical moments, and I had to
let her gradually reveal how she was connected. Additional challenge: she has
no point of view, so I couldn’t get into her head like I could my hero. (He was
just stubborn; she was downright enigmatic.) So, write a mountain lion-like cat
into a fantasy when you have no idea why she’s there, except she was in the
very first scene from which this book sprang, and you have the idea of this challenge.
#3: Gareth
I’ve worn
corrective lenses since childhood, but I’m in no way as severely visually
limited as Gareth. Thinking of sensations, sounds, and smells as his primary
means of interpreting the world forced me to expand my means of description. I
also had to remember he was 13, not an adult. Writing him was a definite
challenge, but also extremely satisfying.
Conclusion: Don’t
be afraid to write what you don’t
know. Fuse a bit of imagination with a fragment of authentic experience and
even the seemingly impossible can become satisfying and convincing fiction…if
you’re up to the challenge. You just might be on your way to your best book
ever.
