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.

Rewriting history

by Rick Blechta

In reading Aline’s post yesterday, she made a comment (the second in a week on Type M) about reading one’s earlier books. I’d like to take that one up. You see I have recently re-read The Lark Ascending, one of my earliest novels.

Now I’m not one of those glasses half-empty sort of chaps, but it was a pretty sobering experience. It’s not a bad book, but it certainly isn’t something of which I can be overly proud at this point in time.

The writing is okay, not horrible, but not all that memorable, either. Plot wise, I made a number of poor choices. Seen through the lens of an additional nine books, I would certainly not make some of the choices I did.

That’s the bad part.

The good part is that the characters are very acceptable and the basic premise of the story really stands up. My two protagonists were well-thought out (and turned out to be good enough to use in a additional novel, Cemetery of the Nameless). I was not embarrassed by what I did in this regard.

The really good part is that the novel was self-published so I own all the rights. Copies are very scarce since only 5000 were printed (my first sell out). Now I’m beginning to think it may be worthwhile re-releasing my “second literary child,” probably as an e-book. Thing is, though, I would definitely want to rewrite the entire book to bring it up to a standard of which I can be proud. Not many authors take up that particular task — even if they can. If they don’t own the rights, tough luck unless they can talk the publisher into it, which is doubtful.

So the question is: should I do it? I would not re-release this novel without considering fixing anything I don’t like — some of them pretty major — and that’s not normally done when book’s are occasionally rewritten. Sure, fix the wonky writing, make it stronger. Maybe remove a scene or two that don’t really add anything to the story. But to actually change the plot? Hmmm…

I don’t expect the second coming of The Lark Ascending would be greeted with record sales and a Hollywood film offer, but it is a worthy enough story to be retold and shared with more readers. I own the rights and the only investment would be my time.

So what are your thoughts, Type M readers? Should I rewrite a bit of my authorial history?

The Lark Ascending

by Rick Blechta

This is where we encountered the lark (before the dog arrived).

This past Saturday, CBC radio had a special Remembrance Day show mostly featuring music composed during the First World War. One of the pieces played was “The Lark Ascending” by Ralph Vaughan Williams, arguably the most famous of all of them, and an especial favourite of mine and coincidentally the title of my second novel.

Listening to it brought back a lot of memories, both of our several visits to the UK and also to writing my novel. I’d like to share one memory that joins both.

First, though, a story — but be warned: it may be apocryphal.

“The Lark Ascending” was originally a poem by George Meredith which in turn provided the inspiration for Vaughan Williams’ composition for solo violin and orchestra. In fact Vaughan Williams quotes some of the poem on the flyleaf of the published version.

The composer began the composition on the eve of the war, although it wouldn’t make its debut until 1921.

“What is known, however, is that Vaughan Williams was holidaying on the coast in Margate in Kent on the day Britain entered the first world war (4 August 1914). The resort was not an embarkation point, but ships were engaging in fleet exercises. The composer later told the story that the tune came into his head as he walked the cliff, at which point he jotted down the notes. A young scout then made a citizen's arrest, assuming he was scribbling details of the coastline for the enemy.” (From The Guardian)

Another musician suffering for his art. (But fear not! Vaughan Williams was immediately released by the authorities once they realized he was writing music and not secret code — although I suppose it could have been both.)

Being from this side of the pond, I had no familiarity with the bird in question, and since the internet was in its early days, it wasn’t easy to find out information, so everything I knew about (British) larks came from Meredith’s poem. On one of our visits, we were walking on Hathersage Moor in Derbyshire when someone with a dog approached us.

A small bird shot up maybe 100 feet in the air and began singing a mellifluous song filled with trills and utterly lovely. My wife and I knew immediately what it was and stopped, completely enchanted. Vaughan Williams had captured the song amazingly well. (We were also amazed at the bird’s ability to hover in the air.) Not only was the dog distracted, but we were too. I wish I’d had that experience before my novel was published because it would have made a difference. However, I was certainly satisfied by how well I’d chosen my title.

The Vaughan Williams composition was a huge part of my novel on a plot level since the protagonist plays it at the climax of the story, but in my mind, she'd also become the lark, so its tendrils weave deep in the book.

Several people, including a bookseller went out to buy my recommended recording (The Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields with Iona Brown playing the solo violin) so that they could more fully enjoy the story.

And that is the nicest compliment I have ever gotten for one of my novels.

___________________
Sidebar: That’s my wife the flutist on the cover. She’s the only one I could think of who’d be perfect to stand in for Victoria Morgan, the novel’s protagonist. We had a violinist-friend off-camera who would set her up to look like she knew what she was doing and then step back as the photo was taken. While she looked great and very convincing as a concert virtuoso, the sound she made on the violin was pretty horrendous!

Setting a crime novel in a school

by Rick Blechta

You know there's a lot of synchronicity among the posting crew here on Type M. Many times in the past, I've sat down to write my weekly offering only to find that someone in the past week (or coming week since I have access to all the posts) is planning to write on exactly or at least nearly the same topic as I.

Now if this is something that's “trending” as we now tend to say for current news topics, it's understandable that someone else might wish to write on said topic. But when it's something out of the mainstream or even on something rather arcane, then it gets a little creepy.

Such is the case with my post today. I had planned on writing about mysteries set in a school, because that topic came up at a panel I moderated two weekends ago in Brantford, Ontario.

Lo and behold, John wrote about it last week, then Aline wrote about nearly the same thing in her post yesterday! Sort of creepy isn't it? As a matter of fact, I just had a security expert in to sweep my office and computer for hidden listening devices and cameras.

Anyway, on the panel, the topic of setting a crime fiction novel in a school came up. One panelist (a former school teacher) was totally against doing something like this, even though she put forward a terrific plot idea for the murder which would drive the story. To her it somehow seemed wrong, I guess because this sort of thing would take place on what was to her sacred ground.

Another panelist (a retired teacher and school principal) stated that she would have no problems doing something like that.

For my part, I told the story of how in my earliest novels (when I was still teaching), I would often imagine some particularly troublesome student projected, say, thirty years into the future and then use the resulting character as the victim in a particularly gruesome death.

I found it very therapeutic. As a matter of fact, my second novel, The Lark Ascending, was reviewed on CBC in part as having “a body count of positively Shakespearean proportions”. For the record, the novel was written during a year in which I had a large number of particularly odious students.

Coincidence? I think not!