Showing posts with label heroines. Show all posts
Showing posts with label heroines. Show all posts

Saturday, February 17, 2024

Developing Characters by Janet Lane Walters #BWLAuthor ##MFRWAuthor #writing #characters #development

 


Janet Lane Walters is visiting and talking about characters #BWLAuthor #MFRWAuthor #writing #characters #heroes #heroines #villains

 . Heroes, Heroines, Villains. Which are your favorite to write?

My favorites to write are the villains. I think this is because I want my villains to be on the wrong sideof life but not too far. I rather like those villains who with different events in their lives could be heroes.

 

3. Heroes. How do you find them? Do pictures, real life or plain imagination create the man you want every reader to love? Do they come before the plot or after you have the idea for the story?

Since I usuallyuse astrology to create my characters. I hit my books on the subject and look at the Sun, Moon and Rising signs and toss together bitsd from both. Naming my characters is as much a part of creating a character as their physical, emotional and nature are. Theyalways com after I have the idea for a book. The idea is always first when I write.

 

4. Heroines. How do you find them? Do pictures, real life or imagination create the woman you want the reader to root for? Do they appear before the plot or after you have the idea for the story?

Heroines are created the same as heros. They also come after the idea and the plot.

 

5. Villains or villainesses or an antagonist, since they don’t always have to be the bad guy or girl. They can be a person opposed to the hero’s or heroine’s obtaining their goal. How do you choose one? How do you make them human?

Love villains. Sometimes they aren't really bad butsomethign they stand inopposition to the hero or heroine in a story. Giving themsomething that makes them seem good helps set them up. My favorite villain loves his mother, and is helpful to others. Unfortunately some of his good traits become obsessive.

 

6. What is your latest release? Who is the hero, heroine and or the villain?

My latest release is Iced Tea and other short stories. The characters are a mixture of people rather than singletons.

 

7. What are you working on now?

I'm currently working on Keltoi a romantasy and the sixth book of a series. Have no idea what i'll do with it when done. an researching the start of a new mystery series. The Horror Writer's Demise.

9. Who are your favorite authors?

There are probably too many to mention. I am a reader with 2000 plus books in my Kindle library, not to mention the books that surround me in almost every room of my house.

 

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Tuesday, September 14, 2021

Finding a story...by Sheila Claydon



I'm often asked about writing a book. Do I plan it chapter by chapter? How do I develop my characters? Do I ever use real people? Do I ever suffer from writers block? Do I suffer from deadline stress? Yet strangely, the one thing I am rarely asked is what triggers a story? Yet to me that is the most interesting part of writing.

I can pinpoint the taking off point for every story I write, and it can sometimes be something that happened months or even years before that has been quietly sitting and waiting for its chance to shine. At other times it is almost instant. Take Reluctant Date for example. It is set mainly in an (anonymised) place where I had such a wonderful holiday that much of its geography and ambience is lifted directly from that experience. It didn't take me long to decide to find a heroine either. She more or less leapt at me from a magazine article about dating websites. I find that once I am focused on a story everything else seems to fall into place. I'm not sure if it's because I am looking or whether the characters are just out there waiting until I decide to tell their story!!

In Kissing Maggie Silver it was the photo of an interesting looking girl in an advertisement that started it. That, and yet another holiday where a countryside ranger took us on a trek. I just put them together.  Whereas  Mending Jodie's Heart was triggered by a house, a horse, and a bridle path!

As they say, every picture tells a story. And I can remember why I wrote every single one of my books just by looking at the cover. A sepia photo for Remembering Rose, a cruise from NewZealand to Australia for Cabin Fever, a magazine article for Finding Bella Blue, and so on and so on. 

Now, however, it is time to write a new book but one that is part of a trilogy, a follow-on from Remembering Rose and Loving Ellen. This makes it a little more difficult as part of the story is already there so whatever my trigger is, it has to fit with the previous two books. And that's where old ideas come in. The ones I've had on the back burner waiting until I'm ready. And this time the trigger is another photo, but not of a person. It is of an old and derelict watermill. 


The mill is at least 600 years old. I came upon it unexpectedly a few years ago when I was walking my dog in woodland, and I was so intrigued by the fact that none of the local people seemed to know anything about its history, that I took several photos and stored them away for future use. And now seems to be the right time for it to take its place in my next book. Those who have read the first two books in the trilogy will already know quite a lot about the village of Mapleby. What they won't know, however, is how times are changing for the villagers, and the old mill has quite a lot to do with that.

It's half written. It hasn't got a title yet, and it won't be published until June next year, but without the old mill it might not have happened at all. So here's to story triggers and to the writers who recognise them and store them until the time is right. In the meantime, I have to get back to my writing.




Friday, May 14, 2021

My Hobby Is People Watching...by Sheila Claydon



Click here for my BWL page

Three very different books with three very different heroines, and written over a period of several years. Why is this interesting? Well I've just read an interesting blog by one of my fellow BWL writers, Roseanne Dowell, where she talks about creating characters. In it she says that characters are all around us from elderly relatives to friends and loved ones, or from just observing people in restaurants, or at the airport, or anywhere else where we can watch the world go by.

It got me thinking about how I create the very different characters that inhabit my books and I realised that each one is made up of a mix of people I have either met or read about. Take Mel in Double Fault for example. Hardworking, determined, prepared to do almost anything to protect her children, she is very much like someone I know. Emotionally, however, she is very different. She has shut herself off from love because she never wants to be hurt again.  I've taken that from an entirely different person. Then there are the opposing characters of her twin children, one ebullient and one much more reserved and shy. I love writing about children because although they all have very different characters, there is a universality about them from cuteness to tantrums that tugs at the heartstrings. 

There is also a universality about all my heroines. Every one of them is feisty and determined, Arabella in Miss Locatelli particularly so as she battles to save her family business. And in Cabin Fever, Ellie faces up to her own work challenge with an obstinacy that borders on the impossible...until she pulls it off of course! 

And then there are the heroes, all of whom have problems and idiosyncrasies of their own, the same as my heroines, because none of them are close to being perfect. After all, who is in real life?

Something else apart from Roseanne's blog has has triggered this introspection about creating characters, however. It's what has been happening in my own life in the past few weeks. I live right opposite a nature reserve. It's an idyllic spot comprising miles of woodland, sand dunes and wild beach. For much of the year it is relatively quiet and much enjoyed by local residents. Unfortunately, thanks to social media and TV,  it has now been discovered by the wider world.  I use the word unfortunately, not because local residents don't want to share our lovely beach and countryside, but because the nature reserve and the village don't have the necessary infrastructure to cope. There isn't enough parking. Toilet facilities are minimal. The routes down to the beach are almost inaccessible for families with small children in strollers as it's a long haul up and over the sand dunes carrying picnics and blankets. When someone has travelled 2 hours in a car for a day out, however, such difficulties are not going to deter them. Consequently, on a sunny day there are cars everywhere. They are parked across resident's private driveways, on grass verges and pavements, on corners, and across double yellow lines and, worst of all, when these very frustrated tourists drive around in search of that elusive/non-existent parking space they cause such terrible traffic congestion on narrow roads that residents are confined to their homes, unable to get out. In recent months an elderly woman was knocked down, an emergency vehicle was unable to reach a house where a man had had a heart attack, and nurses and carers haven't been able to get to their elderly and/or chronically ill patients. 

So how does all of this feed into the characterisation of the people who inhabit my books. Well for a start I have a front seat view of how people behave in what is often very stressful situation, and how they resolve their individual problems. This includes the reaction of residents as well as the day trippers. And now, because the whole situation is becoming untenable, a group of householders have come together to petition both the local council and the organisation that runs the nature reserve. We are asking for better traffic controls in residential areas and more parking and toilet facilities much closer to the beach. To do this we have had to knock on doors to invite people to sign our petition, and although I can't speak for my fellow petitioners, what fun it has been for a writer. 

At last I've had a legitimate reason to ring doorbells and engage strangers in conversation, and the old adage is perfectly true, everyone does have a story and it takes very little encouragement to get them to share it. Being interested is enough. I have learned about family histories, the successes or otherwise of children, details of local business people, ditto local villains (that surprised me!) plus, most fascinatingly, the hidden history of the village where I have lived for so long. How, for example, many years ago, the field opposite my house used to flood sufficiently in the winter for the locals to ice-skate on it. Now it doesn't flood at all. Is that a small window into local climate change? Also how, in the summer, the same field used to host the village fair, an event that has now moved much closer to the village centre. 

I've also been able to peep into houses, either from the doorstep or through a window as I approached the door, and seen how very differently people live. There are the pristine, beautifully curated homes with floral displays and shining floors. There are the homes bursting with children where trainers and boots are scattered across the porch and toys litter the hall. There are dogs of every shape and size, and everyone of them aware that, as a dog owner, I probably have dog treats in my pocket. Then there are the very elderly who, because of the exigencies of Coronavirus, rarely have visitors. These were some of the most interesting because their memories of local events go back a long, long way. And in almost every case  they were pragmatic about their situation and determined to make the best of it. So all in all my experience of watching and engaging with people has been very interesting indeed. I now have plenty of material for many more books. All I need is the time to write them!

Thursday, January 14, 2021

The story behind the photo...by Sheila Claydon







Remembering Rose is very special to me because it is my take on a family history. Not my family (although I might get to that eventually) but that of another family. 

It all started when I found a sepia photo in a box of jumbled mementos. The young woman at the centre  was mesmerising, not because of her looks, although they were striking, but because of her vivacity. And it was obvious from the faces of those around her, that they were equally entranced. Of course I will never know what she was saying any more than I will ever know why she was standing while the people around her were sitting on the ground watching her. Were they playing a game like charades? Had she just jumped up and suggested they all stop lolling around and go for a walk? Was she reacting to something the blonde curly-haired child next to her had done? The only thing I do know is that it was taken in the summer because some of the men were wearing striped blazers and straw boater hats, and the women's dresses seemed to be styled from light, summery materials. 

Like all photos taken in the days before the ubiquitous cell phone camera, there had to be a story behind it. In the late 1800s it wouldn't have been taken on a whim, so maybe the group had been posing and the photographer had grabbed a final photo just as the woman jumped up ready to do something else. I was intrigued enough to store the image in my head but not quite intrigued enough to write about it until, many years later, I was shown a photo of the same woman as an old lady. The contrast was both shocking and heartbreaking. What was it that had changed that vibrant young woman into somebody so thin and melancholy.  What had life done to her? And her husband too. In the sepia photo he had been handsome and dashing with luxuriant whiskers and his straw hat tilted at a jocular angle. Now he looked old and tired and his hands were swollen with arthritis.

The writer in me kicked in and I began to ask questions. The result is Remembering Rose. A fiction of course, but with enough of their real story woven into it to ensure they are never forgotten. Because their's is a story of love...real love, not the fleeting kind that runs as soon as it encounters problems...and consequently the love experienced by all the other people in the book is the same. The blurb on the back sums it up:

Rachel has a husband who adores her, a beautiful baby daughter, and an extended family she can rely on, so why isn't she happy? She doesn't know and nor do the people who love her. Only Rose understands but she is trapped in another century. To help Rachel she has to breach the boundaries of time itself as well as risk exposing the truth of her own past. When echoes from that past begin to affect other people in the village of Mapleby, things suddenly become a lot more complicated. Can Rachel put things right without giving away Rose's secret?

Because I needed a background for Rose's story I invented the village of Mapleby and the cottage where she lived as a child, and when I did that, Mapleby itself pulled back the curtain that separates us from the past and the future and told me Rose's story. And because it told me the story of so many of the others who live there too I soon found myself embarking upon a Mapleby Memories series. Remembering Rose is Book 1 and Book 2: Loving Ellen will be published in February. Although it's part of a series, it is still a stand alone book, but to really understand the village and the people who live there, you need to listen to Rose.

And if you do read Remembering Rose you might be able to guess who the heroine of the next story is going to be. A clue. It's not Ellen because there isn't an Ellen in Book 1. Have I intrigued you enough?

Even better is the fact that BWL has just updated the cover for Remembering Rose, ready for a relaunch alongside Loving Ellen, and the new image really does look like Rachel, who is the other heroine of the story. The cover for Loving Ellen is even better and I'll be showcasing that next month.

Monday, September 14, 2015

Life really does imitate Art by Sheila Claydon


Life imitates Art far more than Art imitates Life . . . Life holds the mirror up to Art, and either reproduces some strange type imagined by a painter or sculptor, or realises in fact what has been dreamed in fiction. Oscar Wilde

Oscar Wilde isn't the only writer who said so but his quote is possibly the best known.Until recently I shrugged and laughed whenever I heard it because hey, it's just a cliche isn't it? Well actually, no it's not. Why do I say that? Well in a very small but personal way, I've just experienced it.

In 2013 my book Mending Jodie's Heart was published. It's set partly in London but mainly in the North West of England, which is where I live. The idea for the story came when I took my dog for his daily walk and discovered we could no longer use the local bridleway. This narrow sandy path that wound its way through tangled woodland and past a derelict, boarded-up farmhouse had been closed. The untidy briars and bushes that partially hid the entrance had been cut down and in their place was a shiny new gate complete with padlock and a 'Trespassers will be Prosecuted' sign.

Someone very wealthy had bought the old farmhouse and the adjoining fields and woodland and then discovered that a public bridleway skirted his estate. Anxious about the effect this would have on the safety of his young family his decision to close it off was understandable. What he didn't do, however, was consider the locals...walkers and riders alike.  It had been a shortcut to the beach ever since anyone could remember and they campaigned to have it reopened. Eventually the wealthy new owner capitulated. He re-opened the bridle path and protected his privacy instead with wire security fences which were eventually hidden by a thick laurel hedge.

Why am I telling you this? Well the writer in me was already intrigued. Why would someone, however wealthy, close off a well used footpath without considering the effect it would have on local people. Did he have something to hide?  And what was he doing building a swimming pool before knocking down the old farmhouse and building a new house of his own? And what about the trailer that had been erected. Did he live in it or was it just a temporary estate office?  There were a lot of common-sense answers to all those questions but I didn't want to hear them because Marcus, the imaginary hero of my book, had begun to inhabit the house. Not long after that he met Jodie and her horse, and thus Mending Jodie's Heart was born.

By the time it was published the new house had been built and the wealthy man and his family had moved in. Nobody knew what it was like though because by then, like Sleeping Beauty's castle, the estate was surrounded on all sides by high banks, expensively planted laurel, new trees, and the insidious creeping tangle of briar and seaside plants that had been there before and were determined to find their way back. Happy with my own imaginings I didn't care. I'd never wondered what the house was actually like inside because in my mind it was as I'd imagined it when I was writing the book. As far as I was concerned it belonged to Marcus and Jodie, and when several local fans of my books told me they felt the same way I was delighted.

Then the strangest thing happened. The wealthy owner put the hidden house up for sale and naturally curiosity got the better of me. I went onto the sale site on the Internet to check it out, and that's when life really did began to imitate art because it WAS Marcus' and Jodie's house. Every room I'd imagined was there, including the music room, the stage, the separate annexe for Luke, the wonderful master bedroom, the stables...everything, right down to the decor.  There was even room for Jodie's horse therapy school. To say I was astonished was to put it mildly. How could I have imagined this house down to almost the last detail when the last time it was visible to the public it was still a half built, empty shell. Or was it the other way round? Had some magic conveyed my thoughts to the wealthy owner, someone who I've never met. 

For a few days it had an unsettling effect then I began to wonder about other places in other books. Do they exist somewhere outside my imagination as well? It's an intriguing but slightly scary thought because, if they do, then what about the people who live in them...who are they?



Find all Sheila Claydon's books at:




You can also visit her blog and find her on Facebook



Sunday, June 14, 2015

A Paean to Tidiness by Sheila Claydon

http://amzn.com/B009JFL1CI


I've been thinking about the heroines in my books and discovered a very surprising thing. All of them are tidy. They have the odd moment of course...like single mum Kerry in Double Fault when she's trying to juggle childcare with setting up a new business, or Ellie in Cabin Fever when she's too busy thinking about charismatic Drew Pennington-Smith to bother to pick up her clothes, but despite these falls from grace, they are still tidy. Why? The answer is simple. Every one of my heroines is a strong, successful woman who is holding down a busy job while trying to cope with the messiness of her emotions. In Saving Katy Gray I even dedicate a whole chapter of the book to Katy's attempts to introduce some order into her elderly patient's life. Nor is it wasted when the hero visits.


So is life too short to peel a grape? Is a tidy house really a sign of a wasted life, or as the modern update says, the sign of a broken computer? Even Einstein got in on the act with his sarcastic - “If a cluttered desk is a sign of a cluttered mind, of what, then, is an empty desk a sign?”

There are many, many more and we've probably all heard most of them, laughed at them, identified with them, and even quoted some of them. Why? Because it's good to have an excuse when we're so pressured that we can't keep up with the demands of daily life. We all prefer to think of ourselves as interesting so if the accepted norm is that we can't be interesting and organised and tidy, then we'll celebrate messiness and chaos.


A great many of the people who are the successes of modern society don't buy this however. (Einstein excepted!)


Bill Gates, Richard Branson. Donald Trump, the late Steve Jobs, Angelina Jolie. Jerry Seinfield, Fashion designer Roksanda Ilincic and many, many others, all are or were notoriously tidy. To them, organisation, 'to do' lists, tidy desks are a means to an end. Without them they wouldn't have the time to be creative or, more importantly, put their creative ideas into action. 



Indeed, when I worked in the corporate world I learned very quickly that the most successful managers were, almost without exception, those with tidy desks and clean shoes! Think about it.  If someone has time to polish their shoes before work, then they are probably meticulous in every area of their lives...not a bad character trait if you want to succeed.


I prefer this quote:  'If you can organize your kitchen, you can organize your life.' Ditto your desk. That doesn't mean that you can't let things get untidy. Far from it. What it does mean though, is that you have to clean up afterwards, just like my heroines. 



If you've never faced pile of washing up from the night before at the start of a new day and not experienced a sinking feeling in the pit of your stomach then maybe you're the exception. As far as I'm concerned though, a new day is a day full of infinite possibilities, it's the day when I might just have the idea that will become a best seller, so if I have to start it by sorting out my messy from the day before, well that just ain't going to happen. I'll probably have lost the will to live before I'm halfway through. In future then I'm going to live by my new mantra:



Organize your life around your dreams - and watch them come true.



All Sheila's books and her organised and tidy heroines can be found on Amazon at http://amzn.to/ZSyLpf

She's also on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/SheilaClaydon.author or visit her website at http://sheilaclaydon.com


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