In praise of authenticity

I am sitting in a hotel room near the Calgary airport, waiting for my flight home to Ottawa in the morning. It's the last day of my two-week Alberta research trip, and as they say, "the best laid plans..." I had intended to spend most of the day at the Calgary Public Library, doing some last minute digging into topics that came up on my road trip, but Calgary has been hit by an unseasonal record snowfall and the roads are nearly impassible. Plus I have no winter boots to manage the snow on the ground, which is currently about ten inches but still falling.

So the library research is not to be. The joys of being a writer.

A couple of recent posts have alluded to the need for greater authenticity in modern crime writing. I have always been a fan of realism. At the core, of course, our stories are made up. Murders that didn't happen, characters that don't exist... But the trick, at least in my type of writing, is to take the reader on a trip that feels real, that has enough touchstones in their real experience that they can believe they are immersed in something that could happen to them. So although I create fictional characters, they are often amalgams of people I know, with traits and background experiences that can ring true. I borrow from friends, colleagues, and family shamelessly, although I always hope the resulting fiction is unrecognizable.

I believe the greatest authenticity has to be in the realm of character. Writers can develop entire fictional towns or indeed universes, with geography and climate that is utterly unfamiliar. But if the character doesn't seem real or relatable, if the writer hasn't fashioned him to be at once complex and yet consistent with what he's been through, if he doesn't do things that follow from who he is, then readers will just bail on the story. That's why I work so hard to ground my characters in the place that has fashioned them. That's one of the reasons I always try to visit and absorb the settings I write about. The flat, empty prairie fields are indeed different from the teeming streets of Toronto. The wide-open, sparsely travelled rural highways of Alberta are an entirely different experience than the white-knuckle kamikaze trips along Canada's busiest highway, the 401. The pace of life is slower and more peaceful, the chance to reflect and enjoy is far greater.

As a writer, I need to feel those differences to help create the characters. And then of course, there is the landscape itself. It becomes a character that I hope will seduce readers and take them on a journey far from home. Canada is a country of extraordinary diversity in geography as well as culture and history, and I want readers to experience that as vividly as I did. Neither photos nor my imagination could never do justice to the vivid textures of the reality, from the weathered grey of the abandoned homesteads to the rich gold of the wheat fields and the Mars-like hills and hoodoos of the badlands. I only hope the words I ultimately find will do them justice.

So authenticity is not just about avoiding the errors that yank readers out of the story or cause them to roll their eyes in protest. It's about drawing the reader deeper into a rich and believable story that will keep them nodding their heads as if they were right there at the character's' side.

That said, I don't plan to put this record snow storm into my next Amanda Doucette book about the Alberta badlands. In THE ANCIENT DEAD, it will be hot and sunny, with the brilliant, open blue sky for which the province is famous. But who knows? It's nice to know that Alberta's weather is unpredictable enough that if I need a snowfall– to hide a body or impede a rescue, say– I can put it in.

The trouble with quirks and flaws

Can you take one more post about characters with flaws? It's a fascinating topic, but one that risks becoming a cliche. How many reviews and blurbs begin with the phrase "a flawed but likeable hero"? It seems as if nowadays the main character MUST have flaws in order to be weighty enough to carry a story or a series (not to mention land an agent or publisher). Those flaws are supposed to give them a uniqueness and humanity that sets them apart from the million other heroes striving to solve mysteries and save the world on the shelves of fiction. Sometimes in addition to flaws, the characters have "quirks" bestowed upon them by authors hoping to make them even more unique. Some quirks are endearing, such as feeding homeless cats, whereas others are more serious, like giving a character OCD or autism, for example, which somehow gives them special powers.

A relatable character with depth and flaws that give them humanity and create a quiver of tension –as in, "Oh no, is he going to screw this up again?"– is the centre point of a good story. If the reader doesn't engage with the hero, they will not engage with the book. But there's a risk that writers are using flaws and quirks as a substitute for real depth. Making the character an alcoholic or an abuse victim allows the writer to push certain well-worn buttons that create an instant, but superficial connection. Moreover, many of these standard flaws have themselves become cliches. In fact, the alcoholic, divorced, embittered cop is one of the most overused cliches in the business. It takes a very skilled writer like Rankin to get beyond the cliche. Unfortunately as standard flaws become cliches, writers are forced to forage farther afield in search of bigger and better flaws.

Real depth means layers of ambivalence and past experiences that inform how the character reacts on the page, even if the writer never tells us about those underlying influences. It means knowing your characters as well as you know your family; knowing how they will react, knowing how they feel in every situation you put them in, however mundane, and then allowing them to surprise you by doing something unexpected from time to time. Real people are often but not always consistent, so characters need that freedom too.

Some writers achieve this by creating detailed backstories and character sketches before they begin. Others get to know their characters along the way and then add depth and nuance in later drafts. I suspect most good writers do a combination. The experiences the character goes through at the beginning of the book will change them and affect how they react in later scenes. That's one reason I have trouble with outlining ahead of time. When I write a scene, I try to slip into that character's skin so that I feel, see, and experience that scene as they would. That's why I always try to walk in my character's shoes and experience the things I'll put them through, including subjecting myself to winter camping in order to write THE TRICKSTER'S LULLABY.

This "walking in their shoes" feeling doesn't occur during outlining, at least to the same depth. Only once I'm in that character's skin can I truly imagine how they will react, and that will inform how the scene unfolds. I may end up the scene in a very different place than I had planned (in that hypothetical outline), but if I've done it right, it should feel real, credible, and human to the reader.

My characters end up being flawed – Amanda Doucette can be reckless and infuriating, and Michael Green is always forgetting his family obligations  – but those traits grew out of my constantly asking "what would they do next?" as I am writing. It allows me the most delightful surprises along the way and helps the characters to evolve and grow. Michael Green in NONE SO BLIND (tenth in the series) is a very different person from DO OR DIE. Amanda is also growing. I think this evolution is one of the strengths of a series. Readers want to engage with an interesting character, and they want to follow along in their life and watch not only what happens to them, but also how they change.

Inching towards perfection, but never attaining it. That would be the end of the series, not to mention boring.

Hearing voices

Barbara here. Last week, John Corrigan wrote a thoughtful blog about empathy, and specifically about the challenge of slipping into the shoes of his protagonist who differs from him in outlook and gender. Being surrounded by a wife, daughters, female colleagues and students (as well as a female dog) helps him to hear the female voice. I find it interesting to read books by close friends and to hear their own voice in the voices of their same-sexed protagonists. For fifteen years I have written from the point of view of a middle-aged male cop with a phobia for nature and a stubborn, impatient streak. When asked how I slipped into his shoes, I gave an answer similar to John's, although in many ways Green and I are more alike than surface traits would suggest, and I can tap into that vein inside myself to get into his head.

Since I've embarked on my new Amanda Doucette series, I am now writing from the POV of a thirty-something woman who (despite our age differences) is a lot more like me in terms of values, interests, and spirit than Green is. I thought this would be an easy switch for me; in fact I was concerned about my own personality bleeding into hers. But instead, I find it difficult to capture her voice. There are two male 'co-stars' or sidekicks in the series who also have their own POV scenes, and I have found it much easier to slip into their thoughts and reactions than those of Amanda.

Initially I thought it was because she was a new character and I didn't know her very well yet. There is some truth to that, but I have already completed one novel about her and am well into the first draft of my second. And I find myself effortlessly slipping into the shoes of the two male sidekicks.

There are two aspects to capturing the essence of a character on the page. First is getting her behaviour right. How would this character react, what would they do next, what would they say? The character guides the direction and evolution of the scene by their actions in it. I have found I can do this with Amanda. I DO know her. I know when she's outraged, afraid, amused...

The second part, however, is getting the inner monologue right. Our characters react to things not just overtly but by their private observations, judgments, and thoughts. Through these little snippets, the character draws the reader in and takes them along on the journey. It is this inner monologue I am having trouble hearing. She doesn't talk to me naturally as I write. I always have to stop and ask her, puzzle over what she is saying to herself.

Is it because after all these years, I am more at home creating a man's voice (my Rapid Reads series also has a male protagonist)? Is it because I am more concerned with getting her "just right" because she carries the weight of the series on her shoulders? Am I second-guessing the thoughts she has, trying to make sure she's not me? Trying to make sure she has enough complexity and appeal? Trying to make sure she is unique and compelling?

When I creating Green, I stumbled upon him and created him bit by bit as the series developed. I didn't know I was creating a series character and luckily hadn't read all the advice about how to make him unique and memorable. I hadn't read countless reviews reducing main characters to a string of cliches. Men were gritty, women were feisty, everyone was flawed. So perhaps now I am too aware of these pitfalls, and my inner editor is shutting Amanda off before she can really get into full swing.

This is not to say that she is an empty shell. She's a great character. From the very beginning, I have been very excited about who she is and what she is trying to do, and I think she's a unique character worth spending time with. But she has been through a life-changing ordeal, and she is guarded. She doesn't let people in easily, and it's fascinating to me that that includes me!

My books are written in third-person. It is infinitely easier to find a character's voice when writing in first person. The moment you write the word "I", you are in their head. Because my books are multiple POV, I can't do that, but as an exercise and writing aide, I'm going to write a few Amanda scenes in first person to see if I can hear her more clearly. That's my task for the next few days. Stay tuned! And if any of you have experience with this dilemma, I'd love to hear it.