CRIMINAL INTENTIONS

Okay, time for another writing question for our four authors. If you're new to this part of the blog, it all started last year when the four were on a panel at a Capital Crime Writing event. When their time was up, there were still plenty of questions left unasked. So, I've been working through them, one per month. We're almost at the end of the pile so, maybe I'll open it up to questions from the readers. Does that sounds like a good idea? You can respond on my Facebook page because I know it's sometimes hard to comment on this blog.

Here's the question this time around: How do sidekicks enhance a hero's character?

Barbara Fradkin:

The best characters are studies in contrast. Contrasting looks, style, interests, and personality all serve to make an interaction more vivid and dramatic, and increase the tension and impact of a scene. The most effective sidekicks provide an ongoing contrast and backdrop against which the character of the hero can stand out, and contribute to the push-pull of the scenes they share. Where the hero is whimsical, the sidekick is practical, where the hero is brilliant, the sidekick is befuddled, and so on… Sidekicks shouldn’t overshadow the hero, but serve as a foil against which the strength, bravery, or intelligence of the hero can shine.

Sidekicks enhance the hero’s character in other ways as well; by showing how they cope with friendship, closeness, loyalty in a relationship, and by acting as a sounding board for the hero’s doubts, ruminations, and deductive efforts throughout the story.

Mary Jane Maffini:

The right sidekick can complement the hero's character, speaking about him or her in a way the hero couldn't speak about her or himself. Sidekicks are great at getting the hero to engage in passionate conversation, revealing character with every sentence. Also (if picked with care) the sidekick can take care of some of the more mundane daily activities, leaving the hero free to be heroic. A sidekick can also do things necessary to solve the dire situation that the hero might not be willing to. Blow things up, for instance, or steal cars. I am speaking of my own wicked sidekicks here, not of my blushingly well-behaved heroes.

R.J. HARLICK:

Sidekicks are fun. They add dimension to the main protagonist. They can also be a counterbalance. While sidekicks don’t usually share the same personality traits as the main protagonist, their personality will compliment that of the main protagonist. When writing with more than one POV, a sidekick can also provide another perspective of the story not shared by the main protagonist. They can also be used to convey information not known by the main protagonist. Often in a series with an amateur sleuth, the sidekick is a policeman or woman in order to provide the police procedural aspects in the solving of the murder. I think every good crime story needs an engaging sidekick or two.

Linda Wiken/Erika Chase:

You've heard the old adage about knowing a person by the friends they keep -- well, that's one big reason for choosing sidekicks with care. He/she or they can either enhance the protagonist's image or make a reader question whether or not they like this person enough to read on. They can be used to draw out the hero's ideas and views, to add contrast to scenes where the hero might need to be serious while the sidekick can add some humour, and to say things your hero really shouldn't be saying. These are secondary characters so that's the role they should always be playing. But the main thing is, everyone needs a friend, even our characters. Especially our characters.

CRIMINAL TENDENCIES

It's question time again and here's what our three mystery authors are answering today: Are female victims over-represented in fiction and if so, why?

MARY JANE MAFFINI:

I haven't done the math on this! However, I think it's possible because I think we may be more outraged by violence against women than men. Kids and animals are verboten. But a bigger concern is the graphic description of torture or sexual violence, quite aptly called 'torture porn'. It ratchets up our outrage. but is it serving another purpose and one which should make us think twice.

LINDA WIKEN:

My own feeling is that they are not over-represented. I think the fiction is mirroring what we read about and view in the media every day. Females are, generally speaking, more vulnerable in society. They therefore are prime candidates for the role of victim in fiction, as in life. I agree with MJ about the taboos surrounding children and animals, even though not all authors adhere to these. So, next in line are women. Members of minority groups are also on that continuum but are not as frequently portrayed as the victims in fiction.

R.J. HARLICK:

I can’t say I have ever noticed if too many victims are women. I might even suspect that more men get killed in crime novels, because they are the ones more likely be involved in violent situations.

Normally I don’t pay attention to gender distribution. But not long ago I found myself having to read a lot of mysteries, more so than usual. As I’m reading one book after another, it suddenly struck me that in many of them there was a much higher proportion of men in positions of authority or power than women. Most of the female characters were in supporting roles as wives, girlfriends, sidekicks, etc., with few taking on any significant role in the stories. Even the bad guys were more likely to be male than female. Now I did notice that this tendency seemed to be more apparent in books written by men than by women, but still many of the female writers were just as guilty.

So I asked myself why this would be the case and I’m afraid the only answer I could come up with was that the stories being written are essentially reflecting the real world. It also explains my inattention to gender distribution. I am just reading what I see happening around me on a day-to-day basis.

So my fellow writers maybe it is time we did something about it and add a little more gender equality into our writing. But you know what, even as I write this I am realizing that the majority of characters in my current book are male. Sheesh, you can’t win.

CRIMINAL TENDENCIES

If you are continuing this journey with us, you'll know what today's blog is all about. If not, it started after the four of us -- Mary Jane Maffini, R.J. Harlick (Robin to us), Barbara Fradkin, and me (also known as Erika Chase)-- were on a Capital Crime Writers panel together. There were still bunches of questions for us to answer, so I decided we continue that discussion on Mystery Maven Canada.

Today's question is: "Do your characters reveal your values? How?"



MARY JANE MAFFINI:

I think they do in ways I might not even recognize. For the book collector mysteries (as I am half of Victoria Abbott) I'm re-reading books from the Golden Age of Detection, I notice in Sayers, Christie and Marsh,the characters reflect the class politics and racism of the times (20's, 30's, 40's) unrecognized by the authors, but somewhat surprising to us today. Who knows what biases and prejudices are buried in my own work that will be clear to a later generation?

But never mind all that, I do think that our writing reveals our feelings about relationships, family and friends and pets (ahem). Most mystery writers value justice and the quest for it, but how many of us value our crooked uncles? Just saying.

Seriously though, cozy fiction which I enjoy writing and reading presents and genre in which fairly ordinary people consistently step up to the plate in an emergency and that women (often but not always middle-aged) can be brave, tenacious, cunning and funny. But we knew that.



R.J. (ROBIN) HARLICK:

I imagine most authors project some of their values through their characters. It is hard not to, particularly with a character with whom you spend a lot of time, such as a series character. My series character, Meg Harris’s love of nature and the great outdoors is no different than my own. I gave her the kind of cottage I have always wanted, a rambling Victorian timber cottage perched high on a granite point overlooking the sparkling waters of a northern lake.

She spends a lot of time in her screened-in porch contemplating the view and life’s ups and downs. And while I too like to sit in my screened-in porch contemplating the nature around me, my mind is usually caught up in creating Meg’s world. I mustn’t forget her love of dogs, which mirrors my own and funny thing, we both have standard poodles sharing our lives.

Sometimes our characters become our voices. Meg’s sense of fairness and the need to right injustice could be my own, except she is prepared to do something about it. I don’t always have the luxury. Perhaps that is my reason for creating Meg.



LINDA WIKEN/ERIKA CHASE:

It's hard to write a novel without some bits and pieces of the author being integrated. Everyone will probably have an opinion as to whether that's good or bad. So, it's hard not to have them reflect our values, to some degree.

Writing as Erika Chase, I have the Ashton Corners Book Club Mysteries with Lizzie Turner as my main protagonist. We share the same values about family and friends and even beyond that, the various communities we are a part of. They are very important to her and they influence how she deals with issues. She is very protective of them. That's the excuse, anyway, for her sticking her nose in to all investigations revolving murder -- when they impact on those she cares about.

She also wants to see justice prevail and the bad guys caught. She is a reading specialist and Literacy teacher, so helping to ensure that students have the skills to take advantage of their full potential is also important to her.

Of course, there's a bit of me in Lizzie. But I'm not even sure where the line is placed any more, after living with her through five books (one leaves for the publisher this weekend!). Of course, maybe it's not a line.


BARBARA FRADKIN:


As a child of the sixties, I was raised with a passion for social justice and social equity, and am naturally on the side of the underdog. What better outlet for this passion than crime fiction? In my books, I explore the social and personal struggles that drive people to desperate ends. My sleuth, Inspector Green, is the only child of Holocaust survivors, which gives him a passion to pursue justice on behalf of the victimized and to be a voice for the marginalized and powerless. But most of my books inhabit that gray world where no one, neither victim nor villain, is all good and evil, and where justice is as imperfect as those, like Green, who strive for it.

CRIMINAL TENDENCIES

We're back! And if you're following the Criminal Tendencies thread, you'll know that once a month, we four writers (although it's only three this month)answer a question about writing that was "left over" from a day-long workshop held by Capital Crime Writers in the spring. We had so many questions at the ready and so little time, the Mystery Maven blog seemed the ideal way to deal with the remainder. So, we, today being Mary Jane Maffini, Barbara Fradkin and Linda Wiken, aka Erika Chase, continue.....

Today's question: What is the main challenge of writing a series character and how do you handle it?

Mary Jane Maffini:

There seems to be a trio of main challenges with writing a series character: first is keeping the characters and setting fresh and not writing the same conflicts and same behaviours over and over again, Secondly, the main character has to change and grow as a result of what has happened in previous books and yet, still be the same person that readers care about. The third challenge is providing enough back story about pre-book history and what has happened in the series without giving away any plot 'secrets' or smothering the reader in an info dump.

Never mind! It's all fun.

Barbara Fradkin:

The main challenge is to avoid tilling old soil and boring both your readers and yourself. If you feel you are telling the same old story, it’s time to throw a spanner into the works. Shake up your sleuth’s personal life, change the supporting cast, or change the setting. I’ve done all these over the course of the Inspector Green series. A new baby, an aging parent, or a divorce are all challenges that add to stress and reveal different facets of your sleuth’s character, as well as adding to his humanity. Adding a new boss or sidekick, killing one off, or giving the supporting characters their own crises also greatly enriches the series. As writers we become as attached to our supporting cast as readers do, so give us reasons to care and worry about them. Changing the setting is very freeing; it provides new challenges and alters the type of story you are telling. My Nahanni story is not a police procedural with Green as the master of deduction; it is about Green the desperate father coping with unfamiliar and terrifying wilderness.

Linda Wiken/Erika Chase

The main concern is trying to keep the series fresh so that the reader, and the writer, don't turn off and get bored. However, I think it might be even a bigger challenge keeping the writer excited. One way is to develop the main character into someone who is real. And, as a real person encounters difficulties in day to day life, and hopefully grows from working these out, so too the main character in the series will. To me, Lizzie Turner, my main gal and one of the instigators of the book club, has become real. When having a cup of espresso in the morning, I'll often think about what she might be doing at that point. When a friend is trying to work through a problem, it affects me. And so, I worry about Lizzie and hope she'll find a solution when she's faced with the same. But of course, here I get to step in and solve it for her. If I keep Lizzie alive and fresh and evolving, I'll stay interested, and hopefully, so will the reader.

CRIMINAL TENDENCIES

Thanks for all the feedack about the first Criminal Tendencies blog. In it, four Ottawa crime writers, Barbara Fradkin, R.J. Harlick, Mary Jane Maffini, and Linda Wiken/Erika Chase answered a question about writing, and in effect, we had a writing tips blog!

These questions were "left over" from a panel we appeared on earlier in May. We thought they were such good questions, we're writing them up for Mystery Maven Canada, one a month. Here's today's question:


Which character (protaganist, villain or victim) has more freedom?

MARY JANE MAFFINI:

When I grow up I want to a villain! What? Oh. You're right, of course. I'm a good guy. But the villains can do anything. They can not only kill and mame, but they can be rude, forget to walk their dogs, break all the rules and not show up for Christmas. Try any of that if you're a protagonist. And really? A victim is dead. Not so much freedom there, unless they arranged their own funeral.

As a writer, I can have fun with villains. Of course, I feel for the victim and am fond of the protag. Sometimes it's good to be bad.

R.J. HARLICK:

A tough question. I would like to think that the protagonist has the most freedom in a crime novel, but he or she doesn’t, particularly if they are a series character. To be credible as a person, they have to operate within the boundaries of the personality that the writer has developed for them. He or she can’t suddenly do something that isn’t in keeping with this personality. For example a shy protagonist can’t become the life of the party unless a credible reason is provided for this dramatic change in behaviour.

Similarly the villain is also bound by the character that the writer has developed for them. Though I think he or she has a bit more freedom, since often the character of this person isn’t as well developed as that of the protagonist. Still you can’t have a villain who has been portrayed as anti-social suddenly becoming Mr. Nice Guy whom everyone loves.

Perhaps the individual who has the most freedom is the victim, primarily because often his or her character is the least developed. Though it seems counter intuitive to say a dead person has more freedom. Usually though during the course of the murder investigation aspects of the victim’s character are revealed to help flesh out the motivation behind his or her murder. But again like the protagonist and the villain, anything the victim did before they were killed must be within the boundaries of their character.

ERIKA CHASE

I would have to go with the villains. We don't have to like them, in fact it's better if we don't. Therefore, they don't have to play by the rules, they don't have to be fair, they don't have to be nice. What freedom!

In fact, the meaner and nastier they are, the more we cheer for the protagonist, who does have to play by the rules. Go get 'em!

And while the good guys use mainly their wits along with the possible backup of a weapon, the villains can concoct methods to torture and kill that make the reader shudder. Now, understand that by villain I don't necessarily mean the "bad" guy. Who doesn't love Bernie Rhodenbarr, the "bad" book thief in the burglar series by Lawrence Block. Yes, sometimes we do root for the person breaking the law. But they're not villains. They're not Hannibal Lector. Three cheers for that!

Barbara Fradkin

The villain, of course! The protagonist has a specific job to do, and everything he or she does has to drive the story forward towards the solution. Even a moment of play or fun had better serve the story. He or she also has to live up to certain standards that we as readers expect from our heroes. Flaws are okay, but if the hero does something really stupid, illegal, or even nasty, the reader may well toss the book aside. The victim has no freedom of action within the book. They may have done all kinds of wild and crazy things to stir things up and get themselves killed, but once they are dead, they are silenced.

With the villain, however, the possibilities are endless. They can be any sort of person, motivated by the vast range of human conflicts and needs. They can be desperate, frightened, vengeful, clever, bumbling… They are a blank canvas on which the writer can play. In a good whodunit, the reader meets the villain early on but doesn't know their guilt and their motive until the end. That's 300 pages of freedom for the villain. Freedom to lie, manipulate, create red herrings, or to panic, despair, self-destruct, and wreak more havoc as they try to stay one step ahead of capture. Every character in a book should be textured and human, but none more so than a good villain.

CRIMINAL TENDENCIES

Something new in Mystery Maven land!

Today, I'm adding a new feature to the blog. One I hope you'll enjoy and also find to be useful in your writing endeavours. It began earlier this month when Capital Crime Writers, the Ottawa mystery writers association, held a day long session called Capital Mayhem. It included a wonderful interview with Peter Robinson followed by three panels.

The first panel, Kick-Ass Characters, featured local mystery authors Barbara Fradkin, Robin Harlick, Mary Jane Maffini and Linda Wiken (me, as Erika Chase). What a great topic! We decided to have some fun with it and rather than have a moderator, we each came up with some questions, stuck them in a super creepy glass skull mug, and took turns selecting one and answering it. Now, you know this group of writers really likes to talk and have fun, so we only got part-way through all those tantalizing questions. So, I've tasked each of them with answering one of the leftover (but equally important) questions which will appear on Mystery Maven Canada every few weeks. The answers appear in alpha-order, that's as in alphabetical not the others so known to dog lovers. So, stay tuned. And enjoy!

Today's question is:
How do you keep all your characters from becoming one big blur in the mind of the reader?

BF –
There is nothing worse than reading a book in which all the characters are bland and generic, all talking, looking and behaving the same. The more characters there are in a book, particularly of the “walk-on” variety, the more difficult it is to keep them distinct.

The key to creating distinctive characters is to make sure you use only as many characters as you have to, and to make them vivid, unique and contrasting. Vary appearances, names, speech, and backstory. Rather than a bland (and forgettable) description of height, weight and hair colour, give the reader a single vivid image that speaks to the character’s personality as well as looks. E.g. His new wife was a pampered poodle, complete with shiny curls and big pink bow.

Choose each character’s name with care, not only to avoid similar sounding names, but also to match the character’s age, ethnicity, and the image you wish to create. Ethel and Mabel conjure up very different pictures from Candy or Lolita. But beware of stereotypes. Going against stereotype, such as naming a flirtatious sixteen year-old girl Ethel, can make the character even more memorable. And create some built-in tensions.

In the end, however, the best guarantee that your characters will stand out is to make each a fully rounded, real person with specific fears, yearnings, conflicts, and dreams. Each character should have a hope and a fear, however small.

RJH -
Become your characters.

Sometimes a myriad of characters can become one big blur in the mind of the writer too. The best way I know to keep characters manageable is to keep them to an optimum number. If a secondary character doesn’t help move the story along, I remove him or her no matter how much I’ve grown to like them. I also try to give each character a distinctive name and not have any names starting with the same first letter. Too often I’ve become confused myself when reading a book where the characters’ names are too similar. But I suppose how I endeavour to make each character a distinctive person in my readers’ minds is by becoming the characters myself as I write them into the story. This way I can give them a distinctive voice, a distinctive way of moving, of thinking, of speaking, each with their own unique motivations. These secondary characters have to not only look different, but they need to act and speak differently, just like real people.

MJM- This is one of the tricky bits in series writing.

A few tips: every character in a book should have a unique purpose. Don't have two characters do the job of one. Having said that I suffer from a surplus of sidekicks and work hard to make them seem different. For instance, Mrs. Parnell, eightysomething WWII vet and technical whiz, is often found chainsmoking Bensen & Hedges and swilling Harvey's Bristol Cream in contrast to Alvin, the world's worst office assistant with nine visible earrings, leather and bad attitudes.

Dialogue is a good way to distinguish: each main character should have some words that are unique to that character. For example, Mrs. Parnell likes to use military jargon. "We shall fight them on the beaches..." No one else in the book ever does. Alvin prefers to 'Lord thunderin' Jesus, conveying his Eastern roots.

By using the behaviours, clothing, etc and the unique words, you can cut down on a lot of tags and people should know who is speaking or acting.

LW –
Right off the bat, give your characters individual traits, whether it be physical, like whether they gesture a lot while speaking, or maybe it’s a tilt of the head when thinking, or the habit of twiddling one’s thumbs while listening. And then remember to use them. An easy way to achieve this is by picturing each character as they’re speaking, visualising whatever trait you’ve assigned that person, and being sure to add it as you picture it in your mind.

Having each main character speak a bit differently is also effective. It can be as simple as ending each statement with an ‘eh’, or perhaps this person starts each question by saying, “Hmm’. Maybe, because of your character’s background, you decide to add a local saying or colloquialism in his or her speech patterns. Some may even end each statement with a question mark simply because the manner of speaking ends with a high note.

These are all easy cues to the reader and will eliminate the need for endless tags of who is speaking at that moment. Whichever one you choose, visualize it each time you think of your character so that it becomes second nature when writing dialogue.