Monday 6 March 2017

The Truth About Characters by Anne Gracie



Creating Convincing Characters

Sharon asked me about the challenges of creating convincing characters from a particular time period for my historical romances.

The key to this is, I think, audience. My audience is a modern day audience, and they're the ones I have to convince. Whether my Regency-era characters would be convincing to people of that time is another matter.

Research

I don't do masses of research for every book — it depends on the setting and the circumstances in which my story is to take place. But I do read a fair bit of history. My favourite historical research comes from reading diaries and letters written during the time my books are set.

People reveal themselves so wonderfully in personal, not-for-publication writing — attitudes, mores, personality quirks, assumptions about the world — and that influences my writing. And makes my characters more historical, I hope.


from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Wellesley._1st_Duke_of_Wellington

Think Of Your Reader

But the truth is, if you make a story too historically authentic, it becomes a little inaccessible to modern-day readers. It's like speech. I studied linguistics many years ago, and we made lots of transcriptions of ordinary people speaking. If any writer used those as dialogue, readers would soon be tossing the book at the wall. Real speech is messy and disjointed and often hard to follow when written down. Dialogue in books is constructed to feel authentic, but in fact it's not. It prunes out the repetition, the meandering, the ums and the ers and the y'knows, and becomes crisp and precise. Which is part of the delight in reading good dialogue.

Historical characters and settings and stories are the same. They have to feel real to modern-day readers, but if you flood the reader with masses of authentic detail it can distract from the story. We want a taste of historical lusciousness, of that different-yet-familiar world, but not the whole confusing plunge-in sensaround experience.

from https://hartonginternational.com/

When I come to creating historical characters, I don't see them as all that different from people today — people don't change much — it's how their circumstances, their environment and their society impacts on them that matters. It's those things that help shape their characters.

So to make modern-day audience understand the particular forces that have helped shape my characters, I might show them at different moments in their lives — the moments that helped shape them. We all have those moments — our first encounter with death, or loss, various realizations in our pathway to adulthood.

When readers experience those moments through the eyes or memories of a character, they understand much more about who the characters are and how they have been shaped by their lives. It's one of the things that most fascinates me as a writer — learning why my characters are the way they are, discovering the secrets they have bottled up, and the uncomfortable or painful truths they've been trying to hide from for so much of their lives.

from www.penguinrandomhouse.com

Know Your Characters

I don't think of my characters as people I've "made up." It's more like they're people living in my head, and they're as stubborn and reclusive and difficult as real people are. It's only through putting them on the paper, tossing them into difficult situations and digging deep that I discover their secrets, and it often comes as a surprise to me — an insight like a bolt from the blue. An "Oh, that's why he won't do x or hates y," kind of thing.

It's one of the things I love about writing.

I love to love — love is what makes everything else worthwhile. I love to laugh, which is a good thing, as people and dogs are endlessly funny. I love to learn, because how exciting to know there's always something new to look forward to.

14 comments:

  1. Lovely to read your blog post, Anne. I think you've nailed the make-it-authentic-without-bogging-down-the-reader dialogue. I recently read 'Rob Roy' by Sir Walter Scott and nearly went mad with the Scottish brogue. Got to the point where I sort of coasted over it, which is a shame. Your books are fresh, beautifully romantic, and wonderfully researched. I can be confident you've got your facts right! And congratulations on scooping the pool at the recent ARRA Awards: winner of the Favourite Heroine, Favourite Couple, Favourite Historical Romance, Favourite Continuing Romance Series and Favourite Australian Romance Author! Whew! Fancy packing all those wonderful awards into your luggage to take home! Well deserved. Very much looking forward to your newie, 'Marry In Haste'.

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    1. Thanks for those very kind words, Malvina. Much appreciated. And I agree that it's a fine line between giving an impression of an accent and turning up the brogue full volume. And as a writer, I'd say it's always tricky to walk that line, because any accent at all will annoy some people. :) (And sorry for the late response -- I've spent half an hour trying to sign in and having to change passwords and all that nonsense)

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  2. I totally get this post, writing Regency myself. It's a fine line to make it sound authentic enough but still be accessible to modern readers. Really looking forward to reading the new book Anne.

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    1. Thanks, Cassandra. Yes we're kind of providing a time-travel experience

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  3. Great post, Anne, especially about your thoughts re speech, mannerisms and character having to be relevant to today's readers.

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    1. Thanks, Vonnie. I love the authentic speech etc, but it's not easy for modern readers and a lot of readers want accessibility, rather than authentic speech. So it's authentic flavour. Though I'm afraid if I'm writing Scottish characters I find myself talking and thinking and writing with a Scottish accent, courtesy of my time living in Scotland as a kid, and trying not to stand out as "the wee Australian girrrrl." :)

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  4. Hi Anne! I very much agree with you about the need to make characters in historical novels just like people today, except that they have been shaped by different historical, cultural and political forces. It's what makes those characters relevant to modern readers and reinforces the idea that the more things change, the more they stay the same. Thanks for an interesting insight into your writing process.

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    1. Thanks, Marilyn. Yes I look back at my female ancestors and wonder how I would cope with the kind of challenges they managed. Modern readers want strong female characters, and I think women have always been strong -- just in different ways.

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  5. Hi Anne, what a great post. It is always interesting to know other writers thoughts about the writing processes. How individuals go about creating their fictitious world. And of course you can never learn enough about how to create authentic and lovable characters and dialogue. Thanks for sharing.

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    1. My pleasure, Karin -- I hope you find it useful in your own writing.

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  6. Hi Anne. Thanks for sharing your insight in how to write believable characters in historical novels. Your advice is relevant to all genres. Know your time period, the setting, the way people behave and speak in the world you write about and the characters become real. Congrats on your big ARRA wins. Well deserved.

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    1. Thanks, Enisa -- the ARRA awards night was very exciting. Re creating characters (about which I could talk all day *g*) I think for me they only really come alive on the page. I've often imagined I knew all about a character, but the moment I started writing and they showed up on the page, talking and thinking and taking action, they revealed themselves to be quite a different person.

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  7. Hello Anne, thank you for sharing your methods for creating convincing characters. I loved your ideas re reading diaries and letters - what a fabulous way to capture voices of the period for which you are writing.

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    1. Hi Sharon, these days with the internet, it's so easy to do research of that sort, as so many diaries and collections of letters are available on-line. When I first started I had to request books from the rare section of the State Library and then read the books in a private carell.

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