One perk of writing historical mysteries is that I (Donis) get to live in a time and place that no longer exists, and believe things that no one believes any more. I think sometimes that there is something of acting in writing fiction. Actors and novelists both have to dig deep to inhabit our characters and make them real. Sometimes it takes research into people and ways of life one would never come across in her ordinary life, such as a former computer programmer-turned novelist like Vicki Delany inviting a police friend over to her house to teach her Close Quarters Combat, or actor William Hurt spending a couple of weeks in Angola Prison in Louisiana for a movie roll.
Author or actor, if you want your character to come alive, something inside you has to live her life with her.
I just wrote a scene in which one of my characters does something that he absolutely believes is right, and in the context of the story, he is right. But I, Donis Ann Casey, would NEVER consider justified. One of the joys and perhaps one of the great challenges of writing is that you can explore lives, places, times, people, attitudes that are entirely different from your own. The book I’m writing now features a protagonist who leads a life that couldn’t be less like mine, nor does she believe the things I do And yet I know her intimately. I grew up around her world and loved a lot of people who were just like her.
I wonder sometimes if readers think I have the same values and ideas as my protagonists. I always wondered how like their characters other authors are until I actually started writing fiction myself. Now I think the answer often is, “not even close.” I read an interview with Salmon Rushdie in which he said he didn’t have to be religious himself in order to understand quite well how a religious person thinks, and not only to understand him, but have great admiration for him.
That's how I feel about those who lived their lives in a world that no longer exists.
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