The art of the interview

By Rick Blechta

      

I’m currently involved in a non-fiction book project. No, I’m not writing the book, although I’m on tap to either do an introduction or a closing. The project is the biography of a little-known but highly influential guitarist who sadly died far too young. I won’t go into details here since it’s not cogent for this post, but it’s a story I’ve wanted to tell for a long time. Somehow I never found the time/energy needed to get the job done myself. Now out of the blue, a publisher in Florida has taken on the task. I got involved because I have a number of hours of interviews with those who knew the guitarist best: the people who played with him.

So I’ve dug out my cassette tapes of those interviews. They are somewhat disappointing because I didn't know then what I do now. I’d made a very fundamental mistake: I interjected myself too much. What I was doing was not a conversation. I should have given these people as much opportunity to speak as possible. My comments didn’t help the interviews along much at all. Yes, I did make some good observations, but I could have done that by myself afterwards. Too often I cut off my interviewees with my own thoughts.

Wrong, wrong, WRONG!

Now why am I bringing this up here?

It’s pretty hard to get through a crime fiction novel without needing some expert help. For instance, unless you’re actually involved in law enforcement, it’s impossible to know everything you’d need to make a police procedural real and believable.

I’m sure everyone who has written fiction has needed questions answered at one time or another. And that leads us to interviews. What I've learned along the way is that you want to get the experts you’re consulting to open up. They may go far beyond the answers to the specific questions you have. They may also give you insights you don’t expect but that can make your novel even better.

In order to do that, you need to ask your questions and then get out of the way.

I learned this key technique in Vienna during the mid-’90s doing research for a novel that became Cemetery of the Nameless. I put it that way because when I first arrived in Vienna, the novel had a very different, dare I say bland title.

During the course of my research I needed specific information on how Viennese law enforcement operated. I knew it was very different than what I was used to.

We were staying a pension west of the main part of town. Our host knew the local policemen, so off we went to the local police shop. First thing I learned is that local police work out of shops. This one had a store selling security items, locks, alarms, etc. in the front with the police offices in the back (a good detail to have in my pocket).

My biggest question was about the ranks of the various officers and how murders would be investigated. I had my trusty cassette player and recorded the whole interview. Problem was they spoke German, so our host translated my questions for the two police officers. It was impossible for me to do much talking since the language barrier added a whole layer of difficulty.

So I’d ask my questions and they’d talk. Sometimes what their answers went on for a long time when I had been expecting a sentence or two. It was obvious they were going off on tangents all over the place. I didn’t find how far until later when the conversation was translated for me. What I got a ton of extra information that could add much to the plot of my novel.

I also unexpectedly got a new title for it.

The story began with a body floating in the Danube River. Who would investigate something like that? My two police officers began talking excitedly about a backwater where floating bodies sometimes washed up. When these poor souls can't be identified, they're buried in a small cemetery nearby called the Friedhof Der Namenlosen (Cemetery of the Nameless).

Later, when I was told what they'd said, I realized my story had a new title. I could never have come up with that good — better yet, it was a real place!

I learned my lesson about interviews that day.

I wish I could go back now and redo those interviews with the musicians. Ask them questions and then get the hell out of their way. I’m sure I would have learned a lot more. Sad thing is, several of them are now no longer with us.

Next time you’re requesting inside information from someone for your books, don’t be like Blechta — well, the old Blechta — by all means ask the questions for which you need answers, but give your experts as much latitude as possible in their answers. I expect you’ll be very surprised with all the extra things you learn.
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Note: The above cover of my novel is a (highly doctored) photo I took at the Friedhof Der Namenlosen (minus the overlay of Beethoven). Pretty evocative place, isn't it?

Falling in love with characters

by Rick Blechta

It’s a fact of life that we writers must find a connection with our characters in order to write effectively. Basically, if we don’t feel something about them, how can we expect anyone else to care, and care they must, or they won’t continue reading.

The second favourite child of my novel output, Cemetery of the Nameless, started life as a completely different story. I wrote nearly 70 pages with a totally different protagonist. After working for nearly two months on the manuscript, I crashed into a hard stone wall that would not budge.

The reason? I really disliked my protagonist. No matter what I did, he complained. He whined. He whinged. And I couldn’t stop him. Lord knows I tried! To borrow a somewhat rude British term, David was a total wanker. I knew wouldn’t be able to restrain myself and would likely bump him off before reaching the end of my story. Not a good situation when the narration is first person!

I’ve documented this several years ago in a post here, so I won’t belabour the point, but the solution was to keep the main idea of the story (a lost Beethoven manuscript) but change out the protagonist to one with whom I was more simpatico, one whom I liked better.

While this is the opposite end of what the title of this post indicates, I felt my personal story about a writer’s relationship with main characters in a work would illustrate why it’s important to have some kind of feeling for the people who populate our plots. Let’s look at two of the crime fictions more notable citizens.

It’s well known that Dorothy L. Sayers was more than a little in love with her creation, Lord Peter Wimsey. Read a few of these (excellent) novels and you can’t fail to see it.

Agatha Christie on the other hand came to hate Hercule Poirot — even though she wrote 33 novels and 50+ short stories about his exploits. In a matter of 10 years, she found her creation to be a “detestable, bombastic, tiresome, ego-centric little creep”. Even so — probably with one eye on her bank account — she continued to write about the “insufferable” detective for another 45 years!

Why were both these series so enjoyed by readers even though one writer clearly loved her character and the other hated hers?

Because these talented writers made their readers feel something compelling about them, despite how they personally interacted with their creations.

And aren’t love and hate opposite sides of the same coin?

Walking the fine line between “flawed” and “annoying”

By Rick Blechta

If you haven’t read Tom’s excellent post from yesterday, you might want to drop down below this post to check it out. It brings up some important points in basic character development.

His post, as often happens here on Type M, inspired mine for this week. As all writers do, I’m always concerned that people can relate to my characters. They can be good or bad and readers can respond to that, but the last response I want from them is indifference, or maybe incredulity. So far I’ve never been called for the latter, but have swung and missed on the former.

I totally agree with Tom that characters need some sort of flaws to remain interesting over the course of a novel, much less through a whole series. Adding flaws to characters is something that’s not all that difficult. The big questions are: How far does one take it? And how far is too far?

I can’t remember the title of the novel, and besides it was written by a friend so I wouldn’t tell you, but I sadly could barely finish the book because the character had flaws that I found completely irritating to the point where I wouldn’t have minded if he’d come to a quick and gruesome end. Not a good thing in the first novel in a projected series.

Way back in the dawn of time here on Type M 2006, I wrote a post about a situation that arose in writing my fourth novel, Cemetery of the Nameless. I was well into the novel (probably around page 70) when I realized I did not like my protagonist one little bit. He was irritating, to be honest. I didn’t set out to make him that way, he sort of took on that mantle all on his own. And no matter how I tried to change him, he kept whining. Not good.
I did consider killing him off early on and then letting someone else take over as the protagonist. That might have even been an interesting writing exercise. Problem was, I only felt comfortable writing in first person at that point, and the difficulties to get my novel out of this mess using this plot device seemed, well, strained and a heck of a lot of work.

I eventually decided to “recycle” a character from my second novel, The Lark Ascending, and even though she tended to be “difficult” too, at least I didn’t find her annoying and her addition to the cast really allowed me to take the story to another level.

The problem is, what if a writer doesn’t recognize that they’ve made the most important character in their story annoying? And worse yet, what if the book’s editor has the same issue?

I suspect this is what happened with my friend’s novel. I do know he would describe his protagonist as “crusty, opinionated and irritable but endearing” and my response was he’s also dead annoying. Needless to say, I didn’t read any more of the series.

I’m sure a lot of us ink-stained wretches spend the dark hours of the night worrying about stuff like this. I know I do.

Where is your favourite place to read/write in summer?

by Rick Blechta

The weather here in Toronto is slowly turning nice. We’ve had/endured/enjoyed what I have been calling a “slow spring” in Ontario this year. The end of our winter was well above seasonal norms, but then at the end of March, the cold, wet weather decided it wanted another go-round. It’s been lovely for all the spring bulbs and flowering trees, but I was beginning to feel like “Come on! Let’s get things moving here.”

Anyway, when the weather turns fine and temperatures finally warm up, I begin thinking of reading and writing al fresco. For me that’s a lovely thing to do.

Beethoven sketching while walking with Heiligenstadt
in the background (and yes, it did look like this at the time).

Beethoven’s bucolic Symphony No. 6 in F Major (The Pastoral) was composed over a summer holiday in the countryside near Vienna, Heiligenstadt to be particular. (To show how things have changed since Beethoven, the city of Vienna swallowed up Heiligenstadt many years ago, although the area surrounding it still has a rural feel.

Having visited Heiligenstadt while in Vienna researching Cemetery of the Nameless back in the ’90s, I could easily see why the Symphony No. 6 turned out the way it did. The great composer would head out in the morning with his sketch book, walk through the woods and eventually find a lovely spot to sit and contemplate nature while laying out his melodic and harmonic ideas. It was only natural that his surroundings would leak into the music he envisioned. If you haven’t listened to it lately, it’s worth a replay.

We have a lovely, though small backyard with two small trees which are pruned to provide shade for our patio. When I can’t go out to my own personal Heiligenstadt to write or read, you’ll find me in a comfortable chair with my laptop or current book, enjoying the breeze, the garden flowers, the birdsong and the sound of the waterfall in our small water garden (which helps to distract one from the car noises and far-from-occasional sirens of a nearby thoroughfare.) It’s a small slice of heaven.

But my favourite places to indulge in al fresco reading and writing is somewhere out in the country. We have a very generous friend who owns an 1830s log house in the eastern part of Ontario (which I used as a location for the opening of The Fallen One). I have written goodly parts of several novels while sitting on the screened porch or living room of this lovely old building with the windows opened wide. (The birdsong is spectacular.)

I don’t know what it is, but the words just flow for me in surroundings like that. When I tire of writing, or just need to step away and let an idea “mature”, I pull out whatever book I have on the go and enjoy myself that way. (I should also confess that I find it a great place to practise for a few hours. Since that usually means trumpet, I’m sure the birds, not to mention any neighbours within hearing don’t appreciate my presence!)

So, your turn to confess, where is your favourite place to read or write (or both!) in the warmer weather?

The joys of research

I’m at sixes and sevens over what to write today for my weekly posting.

When I wrote that first sentence, I realized that this was a phrase I've heard numerous times over the years and yet I had no clear meaning about what it actually means (“the dictionary definition”, as it were) nor from where it came. Time for the Internet to come to my rescue.

I'll leave it to you to look up if you wish (start with Chaucer), but the process is called research, and for me, it one of the joys of doing anything of an intellectual nature.

It's also an absolutely perfect day here in southern Ontario, coolish, bit of a breeze, nice blue sky, the picture postcard of a lovely summer day.

Put together, I thought of some of my past research trips for the novels I’ve written. Being in a storytelling mood, maybe a good post would be to describe one of the more memorable ones.

This took place in March 1996 in Vienna. My wife, assistant, travel companion and translator Vicki and I were visiting the Schönbrunn Palace which was the Habsburg’s quaint, little “summer residence” – all 1441 rooms of it.

Yeah, we were there partly to do a bit of sightseeing, because its rococo splendour is really something to behold. But it was also part of my research for Cemetery of the Nameless — a title that was “given” to me by a Viennese gendarme (but that’s another story for another post). What I was looking for was a location for the novel's climatic scene. Before traveling to Vienna, I had been thinking of using the Vienna Phil’s concert hall in the Musikverein. A quick visit there showed me it wasn’t suitable.

What to do?

Time to pull out our Baedeker Guide and find something more suitable. (Never travel without Baedeker, I always say.) I remember being immediately intrigued by the fact the emperor of Austria's cottage boasted 1441 rooms.

The palace — let's call it what it is, okay? — is truly spectacular. As we traveled through it, our jaws on the floor, I noticed a security guard coming out of a door hidden in a wall. What’s back there? I thought.

So I asked a guard (with Vicki’s help since her German is pretty decent) and he told us, “The servant’s hallways and rooms.” Of course the Emperor, his family and guests wouldn't want to see such mundane things as linen closets, kitchens and storage rooms, so they built these things out of sight in the centre of the building or between the “official rooms”.

“How do we get back there?”

“It is closed to the public.”

“Who could I speak to about it?”

“Herr Direktor, I suppose,” the guard answered, “but he will not allow you entry.”

With directions how to find the Direktor's offices in the basement, off we headed. You see, traveling through the Empress Elisabeth’s private bedroom, I’d spotted something intriguing, something where you might hide a great treasure and where you could be assured no one would look. And this was just what the ending of my novel revolved around. It was just (possibly) too perfect.

If I could only get back into the servant’s area. The way I had it figured, the worst I could be told was to get out. It wouldn't hurt to at least try.

We got to the Direktor’s office and I gave his secretary my calling card — something quite distinct from the usual business card, and something I'd been told to carry, so I'd made up a couple of dozen before leaving home. I explained to her what I would like permission to do. She disappeared into the Direktor’s office with my card, and came out a few moments later. “Sit here. Herr Direktor will see you in a few minutes.”

Maybe I was in? Ten minutes later, we were seated in his office again explaining that I was writing a crime novel set in Vienna and the climax of it might well be behind the walls of the Schönbrunn. I was flipping my calling card in his fingers while I spoke. Finally, he jumped to his feet, retrieved a huge ring of keys from a closet, and said, “Off we go!”

For the next hour we got a personal, literally behind-the-scenes look at this huge building. He was a delightful tour guide with an encyclopedic knowledge of the building and its history.

And miraculously, that is how I got exactly what I needed to build a really amazing climactic scene for Cemetery.

I can’t tell you what it was. You’ll just have to read the novel.

One way to have some fun with character names

by Rick Blechta

I’m one of those fiction writers who struggles with coming up with good character names, or should I say, I used to be one of those people.

The answer to my dilemma came to me “like a cold fist at the end of a wet kiss.” (Wish I could take credit for that bit of descriptive text but it comes from an old Firesign Theatre sketch.) I have perfectly useable names right at my fingertips: my friends!

It started back a number of novels ago in Cemetery of the Nameless. At first I didn’t want to throw actual people I knew into the mix as characters. I mean, what if they didn’t like who I made them? So in Cemetery, I used them for my sort of “Greek chorus” idea at the beginning of each chapter where various people make comments on the action going on in the story. It was a fun project, and the names of reporters, reviewers, and other musicians were all various people I knew. It worked out well for me, and the friends whose names I used loved it.

As further books were written and I got more comfortable with the idea, I began to name minor characters after people I knew. With my current novel release, Roses for a Diva, I jumped all the way into the pool. Nearly every one of the supporting characters are friends and people with whom I grew up.

If you’ve read that book, you’ll remember Leonardo Tallevi, the general manager of the Canadian Opera Company (a real entity). Lenny is a friend from way back and a great tenor sax player. I left off that last bit, but I did use something of the real person in my character. A Roman cop is another old friend, Steve Pucci. Drummer Tommy Giorgi turned up as the conductor for the Rome Opera, and Eddie Furci saved the day in Tosca.

Back in Toronto, the two detectives from the Toronto Police Services are former colleagues from my band teaching days and very good friends. I don’t even know if they’re aware I “borrowed” them. Somehow I don’t want to be the first to break the news.

Minor characters are fine, but I don’t think it would be fair to use a real person’s name – at least, real to me – for a main character in that it would be too restricting. Walk-ons are one thing, but protagonists and antagonists need depth (warts and all) to be believable, and I know what I’d wind up doing to a real person would probably lead to hurt feelings — if not law suits.

As for main characters, I rely on my wife to tell me what their names are.

So…problem solved for moi. And it’s a hoot to do. Does anyone else use a dodge like this?

More thoughts on “backstory”

If you haven’t read Frankie’s post from this past Friday (Finding the Backstory), I suggest you do so now. It very clearly lays out why this is important when you’re writing any sort of fiction.

I have to admit that I am almost obsessed with who my characters are. To my mind, the greatest compliment I can receive from someone who has read my scribblings is “the characters seem so real”. Readers may not always like all my characters (and I’m not referring only to the bad guys), but often my characters have “bad attributes” because, well, everybody has some of those, don’t they? Bad attributes and weaknesses can also inform readers much more and make characters all the more richer and “true”.

It’s my feeling that in order to really understand a character’s responses to stress and what their motivations for doing things are, you must know where they came from. These details are often not meant to be in the book. The backstory about a character might warrant merely a passing mention, or maybe no mention at all, but knowing the backstory can be of the utmost importance to the storyteller. These details are the building blocks of creating real and believable characters.

Whenever I get stalled in a book and quite often before even beginning it, I think about my main characters and often write out little scenes from their lives outside the parameters of my plot requirement. In some cases this has proven to be the salvation of a novel that’s going south on me.

This was especially true with the character of Victoria Morgan in both the novels I wrote about her, oddly more in the second one than the first. For whatever reason (probably because she’s a redhead), I couldn’t get a handle on why she would do certain things and not others. I was stalled for nearly three weeks in the writing of Cemetery of the Nameless for just this reason. I needed Tory to do something for plot reasons, and no matter how I wrote this critical scene, the results felt uncomfortable, unbelievable and awkward. The problem was, I really needed her to do what I was asking. It was as if she was refusing my requests. (Redheads do tend to have very strong opinions and vast amounts of stubbornness.)

Not being able to write is an uncomfortable feeling for an ink-stained wretch like me. So, approaching the end of the third week of writing stasis, I began working on a story of her at the age of eight, having one of her weekly violin lessons. To this day, I can’t tell you why I did that, but as this little vignette took shape, I suddenly realized something about Tory’s make-up as an adult, and that had its genesis in this rather turbulent lesson. Because of what transpired between her and her teacher, the first seeds of doubt about her ability on violin were sown and wormed their way down into Tory’s psyche. It forced her to respond certain ways even though I doubted if she would barely remember what had happened so many years earlier.

All I had to do was tap into that doubt some two decades on in her life and Tory (reluctantly) would do what my story needed her to do. It was suddenly right and believable that she would do something like this. The logjam was broken and the words flowed out.

I now go through this process quite regularly, usually with my protagonists and often my antagonists, but sometimes with minor characters. I may or may not write it down, but I at least think it through. The series I am currently (and sporadically) working on has gone through this process quite extensively. If I’m going to turn out a series of novels about these people, I have to understand them as completely as I can.

It also opens up a a huge source of possibilities for further novels. What happened between this character and his wife to cause their separation and eventual divorce? And more importantly, how does my protagonist feel about this now? It will have nothing to do with the first novel, and probably won’t even be mentioned, but I’m sure it will come up eventually and may even form the basis of a story further down the line. Who knows?

And that’s one of the wonderful things about writing fiction. The act of creation is so much more intense than any other kind of writing. We get to play god as it were. But with awesome power comes awesome responsibility, and the fact that our characters are merely figments of our imaginations doesn’t absolve us from the fact that we must nurture and take care of them, look out for their interests. Backstory is one of the best ways to help us in our quest to write natural and believable characters, and to my mind, that’s the most important thing in what we do in our writing.

There’s too much cardboard in this world as it is. We don’t need to add to it!