Revealing Character - or You Are What You Eat

 I've loved the recent discussions about how much character backstory to include in a novel. This is something I have to think about quite a bit. Backstory is incredibly important for Bianca LaBelle, the protagonist in my second series. Why is she such a private, even secretive person about her past? The entire first book in the series is her backstory, but how much should the author refer back to that, especially if you want your books to be able to stand alone? 

What I like is subtle hints about your characters' character, unfolded slowly through their conversations, how they dress, what they drive, and one of my favorite telling details, what they eat.

Sylvester Stallone once said that he ate lots of protein before filming Rocky, because lots of protein builds your muscles and slows your thinking, and lots of carbs before filming the movie Assassins* because carbs give you a shot of energy and help you think fast. When you saw Rocky Balboa slug down a glassful of raw eggs, did that tell you anything about his character?

Just as a character’s surroundings, clothing, dialect and vocabulary, or choice of friends and activities show you a lot about what kind of a person she is without the author having to tell you, I’ve been noticing that what the character eats and how, and his attitude toward food, can do the same.

I mentioned this to my husband, and he told me that a particular passage in Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises has stuck with him for years since it set such a scene for him. He read about a group of men traveling through Spain together who take time out to eat lunch, and, forty years later he still remembers the menu : They drank red wine out of a goatskin bag and ate tuna, boiled eggs, and lettuce with a little vinegar on it. Can you see it? The camaraderie, the Spanish countryside, the young men roughing it with a makeshift meal.

To test this theory, I closed my eyes and pulled three random mysteries off my shelf and leafed through to see if I could find a place where the author used food to set a scene or gave us insight into a character.

1. Bailey Ruth may be a ghost, but that doesn’t mean she’s not interested in food. This is a scene from Merry Merry Ghost, by Carolyn Hart : “On a sideboard stretched an array of tantalizing holiday treats: cheese, fruity, crackers, brownies, and what might be the remnants of a birthday cake.

I was ravenously hungry. Being on the earth, even when not visible, I needed food and sleep. I found that interesting. I zoomed to the sideboard, eyeing the Brie."

2. Does Ellie Foreman feel comfortable with her wealthy and privileged lunch companions? What do you think? From An Image of Death, by Libby Fischer Hellmann: “...I shoveled salad into my mouth feeling just a bit overwhelmed.

The waiters cleared our plates, then brought out brandy snifters filled with sorbet. As I smiled up my thanks, I caught the waiter staring at my chest. I looked down. A dark, oily stain was spreading across my blouse ...I propped an elbow o the table, in an effort to hide the offending spot. Resting my chin on my hand, I tried to appear thoughtful."

3. I think we know just what Jessie’s ex-cop dad and dad’s old partner were like, now. Taken from Liars Anonymous, by Louise Ure : “After five eight-hour shifts a week, they fished Pena Blanca Lake together for stipers, smallies, and wahoo, and practiced their fire-extinguishing skills every weekend barbecuing ribs and beer-soaked chicken in the backyard."

I was three for three.

Time for Nice Girls to Be Bad

Donis here. After spending more than a decade writing about a family in Oklahoma in the 1910s, I've started a new series set in Hollywood in the 1920s, featuring a glamorous, young, up-to-date woman named Bianca LaBelle. I'm in a whole new world, and in trying to portray a realistic picture of what Bianca's life is like, I find myself doing research on the strangest and most interesting things.

Bianca is a silent movie actress, so I had to learn about movie makeup as well as the daily makeup routine of a modern young twenties-era woman. In the age of the Flapper, even nice girls wore makeup on the street, and young women were very much influenced by the glamorous ladies in the movies – pale complexions, dark red “bee stung” lips, and a ton of kohl eyeshadow.

There was a reason that movie queens sported that particular look, and it had more to do with lighting and film quality in the early silents than any particular idea of female pulchritude. In the 1910s and early part of the 1920s, film was orthochromatic, or blue-sensitive. Red appeared to be black and light blue filmed as white. In fact, blue-eyed actors had trouble finding work because their eyes basically disappeared. Imagine a movie full of characters as blank-eyed as Little Orphan Annie. Actors’ skin would appear dark gray, and their facial features tended to disappear and look fuzzy. Flaws were magnified tenfold. Studio lighting was harsh. Special makeup was necessary to make actors look like real people with eyes and mouths.

In the 1920s, makeup artists like Helena Rubinstein and Max Factor began creating different tones of greasepaint and powders especially designed for film, making it easier for actors to look natural. White chalk was sometimes added to hands to match the whitened faces. Eyes were nearly always lined with kohl and darkened with grey or purple eyeshadow to help them stand out.

By 1923, the movie industry started using better studio lighting and panchromatic film, which registered colors more naturally. Actors could cultivate a much more natural look on film. But by that time, all the smart young things were sporting mascara and bow lips.
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The Wrong Girl: The Adventures of Bianca Dangereuse, Episode 1, now available for pre-order on Amazon

My First Reader

 I have been fascinated with a thread that has been running on this blog for the past week, beginning with guest poster Annie Hogsett's entry of last weekend, concerning who we envision as our reader when we sit down to write. Do you have an audience in mind, or do you write to please yourself?

When I am writing, especially a first draft, I do have an audience of one - me. I write a story that I would like to read. I did not always do this. I used to try very hard to write for The General Reading Public. But I began to have some publishing success when I forgot that notion. I write about what interests me.

Then, when the editing and rewriting process begins, I listen to suggestions from my pre-publication readers (sometimes) and from my editor (always), and tweak the story as per instructions in order to broaden its appeal.

My audience, therefore, is probably people like me. Sadly for the scope of my appeal, I am not a teenage boy or a romance-starved young woman. I’m not judging hero tales or romance novels, here. I think they are great, but my interests run in other directions these days. I tried to write a romance novel once.I had a wonderful idea, and I really think it would have been a good story, but I couldn’t sustain my own interest, and the book petered out before it was finished. I’m sorry to say this, because a popular romance novel will sell ten times as many copies as a popular mystery.

Having made the statement that I strictly write what I like and to hell with the audience, I now have to admit that I’m lying. I do construct my current series to please myself, but there are many things I’d love to write about, yet am not brave enough to attempt.

Even that is not true. I do write them, but am not brave enough to try to have them published. I fear that if I did, someone would send men in white coats to chase me around with butterfly nets.

And so I haven’t thus far tried to sell Kafkaesque expositions on the nature of reality. Instead, for publication I write something else that entertains me - historical mysteries.

I wonder how much can we tell about an author from what he writes? I know that when I read book reviews, I can often tell more about the reviewer than the book. Does an author reveal himself in his novels? Are authors like the characters they write about? Do they have the same fears and anxieties? Are they as intrepid, grieving, hapless, innocent, weary, or clever?

I’m an Oklahoman who has, until recently, written about Oklahoma.Am I like my protagonist, Alafair? In some ways, I wish I were, but I don’t think so.I live a hundred years later, I’m twenty years older, and childless, to begin with. Neither am I brave, intuitive, or nearly so sure of myself. Am I like my upcoming protagonist, Bianca LaBelle. Hardly. She's a willful, 21 year old adventuress who is as lucky as she is beautiful. I create a being with the qualities I wish I had, and live vicariously through her. I also indulge some of my more evil inclinations when I write, and not always through the villains. Do you do the same, Dear Fellow Author?

P.S. I’m building up my courage, so never fear, someday you’ll be able to read my Kafkaesque exposition on the nature of reality. While I’m writing it, I’ll laugh, I’ll cry, I’ll break my heart. And if I’m good enough at it, maybe you will too.