Building Character

An AI-generated image of a person made from pencils.

Readers frequently ask me a version 'How do you come up with everything?' They often get hung up on how seemingly minor details or conversations turn out later to be very important to the outcome of the novel. I always say something like I just got lucky or its magic, not wanting to give away trade secrets, but since this is a blog about storytelling, I'm finally ready to come clean.

It is magic.

I know writers who meticulously outline every chapter of their book before they 'write' a single line. That's not me. I'm more like the guy on the high wire without a net, or maybe a BASE jumper. It should work, but...

I've said before that I start a novel with a single image in my head. It's never the beginning--or the end--of the narrative, but it is something I want to explore. When I wrote Love: a novel of grief & desire, I knew a handful of things. I knew the title was going to be Love (writer's note: adding the subtitle was a suggestion from my publisher.) I knew there were three characters: Andie Love, Ed, and his dead wife, Lisa. I knew that Lisa was still alive for Ed in some very important ways, still talking to him every day, still using her cutting sarcasm to call him out when he needed it. And I had an image of Ed and Andie in a hospital, Andie using a wheelchair, and she told a joke that made Ed suddenly realize that he could like her. That image is nowhere in the book, nor does it happen off page, but it was a catalyst to explore the idea of discovering that the person that killed your spouse is not the monster you imagined them to be.

What was missing? Any idea of how I would bring Ed and Andie together. Who would spend an instant with the drunk driver who killed their wife, outside of a courtroom? Also missing were all the people necessary to bring this novel to life. The people who move Love forward, and who make the title suddenly mean so much more than just the name of a character. Bobbi Love--Andie's 15-year-old daughter came first came first. Bobbi is the catalyst who sets everything in motion. Then, I discovered Ed's daughter's, Becca and Sandy, living through two very different experiences of their mother's death. And then a coming out story. And then Ed's reawaking.

As a storyteller, each character that forced their way into the narrative required extensive rewrites to ensure they have the appropriate glide path through the novel, so their moments are authentic and meaningful. One way I do that is to pull, character by character, each narrative out of the novel to read and revise as a single story. I did the sisters, Becca and Sandy together, in part so I could ensure there were common shared family traits, but that each of them shone separately as an authentic, individual person. All of that work required fifteen drafts before my agent accepted the novel.

I am a slow writer. I try not to be formulaic; I don't write series or use characters over and over. I'd love to be the person who has a ten-book series and makes a ton of money from readers who want the same experience again and again, but I am not interested in writing the same stories again and again. Someone asked me what was similar throughout all my novels. I was stumped at first, but as I've thought about it over time I've come up with two things. All of my novels are love stories in one way or another. And all of them are tales of reconciliation. That's good enough for me.

We cannot abide cruelty. The overt racism in many states response to the Supreme Court gutting the Voting Rights Act sets America back sixty years. This July we should celebrate 190 years of freedom rather than 250.

To learn more about my writing please visit www.jeffersonblackburnsmith.com .

Win a free Kindle edition of Love: a novel of grief and desire: I work with Reader's Favorite on the Kindle book giveaway. Go to https://readersfavorite.com/book-giveaway/love/1 to sign up for the monthly giveaway. You can scroll through the list of giveaways (over 500 each month) or sort the list by title or author to find Love: a novel of grief and desire and put your name in for this month's drawing. Good luck!