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This is the first in a series about character development for characters in Young Adult Contemporary Fiction. In the series, we'll talk about their drive/motivators, goals, research, and more. These are simply my tips and tricks of the trade. Every writer has a different process, and I want to learn about yours!
Today, we'll talk about my first step in getting to know my characters. --- On Instagram (stephanielogue_writes), I’ve been talking about my characters in The Right Kind of Light and my current WIP a lot. A lot. So much, in fact, that I’ve had people commenting and asking questions about Ginny, Lou, Greta, and Annabella. The questions have all been fabulous (I feel so famous!), but the most thought-provoking question for me, as the author of these four women, is: how did I develop them? Friends and fellow writers: I named them first. Ginny came to me in a hazy idea at an Ed Sheeran concert in 2015. Its the last summer before college, my subconscious said. Missing her best friend. Fell in love with best friend’s ex. Works at a place like Storybook Land. Got it. Got it. Got it. Brett drove us home after I finished fangirling over Ed, and I grabbed the first notebook I found and wrote down as much as I could remember from whatever I saw during “Photograph”. Somehow, even in that moment, Ginny’s name was Ginny. My paternal grandmother’s name was Virginia, and I always knew that I wanted to name either a daughter or a character Ginny. That one was easy. The remaining three girls were…(mostly) easy too. Here’s how Lou, Greta, and Annabella came to be: Lou: As Ginny’s ex best friend, I knew they were polar opposites. The kind of people who would push each other to be their best, and maybe bring out each other’s worst when they weren’t cohesive anymore. She needed a harder name. Something with implied edge. I’m a sucker for a.) old school names and b.) names that belong in a traditional sense to a man or a woman. Louise = Lou. Bad ass, strong, take-no-shit lady. Greta: I knew she was sweet as pie and desperate to find her first love, but with a spine of steel. “Pearl of a girl” is a phrase that I heard in a song lyric a gazillion years ago. I don’t remember what song (and now its going to haunt me all night.) Turned out Greta means “pearl”. Its ALSO an old name. (Double check in the pro column: Greta is a name for a supporting character in a series of stories I wrote in junior high and high school. A tip of the hat to my…self, I guess.) Annabella: AB for short, but only her best friend Ed calls her that. Annabella is a Latina and comes from a traditional Catholic family, so I wanted something respectful but fitting that I could see her parents perhaps choosing. The name means “grace” which is a larger plot point in my WIP. Here’s the thing about characters though: They’re gonna tell you what’s actually up about everything, including their names. Lou, for instance. She’s the most delicate little sunflower I’ve ever encountered in my life, and I have a golden retriever that’s afraid of laundry baskets, empty storm sewers, and open refrigerator doors. When I was writing The Right Kind of Light, I didn’t realize how her motivators would evolve past Ginny. And Annabella: this woman has had two name changes, her direction changed more times than I can recall, stripped of her nickname only to get it back, and her girlfriend’s name changed too – when I realized their names rhymed and that was just too weird in all the “ella”. My only goal for all these four women is that I continue to channel honesty and sincerity into their hearts. Girls aren’t rainbows and butterflies. We’re eye rolls and loud voices and periods. We drink too much alcohol and coffee and we’re vain and go to sleep with toothpaste on zits. We say stupid shit to our best friends, we cheat on our boyfriends, and we hook up in backseats at parties by lakes. But we’re heart, and we’re hope, and I will be damned if I contribute to any conversation about young adult girls and women in college in any way that isn’t as truthful as I can make it. So when I write a line that seems to manufactured or trendy (or wannabe trendy), it hits the slush pile. I can usually hear her, whoever’s head I’m inside at that very second, tell me they’d never say that. And my god, as a writer, its so helpful. Yours in Devotion to Voices in Your Head, Stephanie PS – there’s SO MUCH more to character development. Another trick I like is to make playlists for each book or piece I’m working on. Head on over to my Instagram to learn more.
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I have a three-year-old, that I usually refer to as The Preschooler in social media arenas. He’s charming. He’s particular. He loves making us laugh. He has a gleam in his eye that does not quit, and he’s inherited not one, but two styles of stubbornness from his parents who thrive in their persistence that they are always right.
And he’s not a fan of sleeping alone. He never has been. It’s just the way the cookie crumbles and also – if you complain about your kid wanting cuddles in the night, does that make you a monster? Absolutely not. But it also doesn’t make my crazy for meeting him for his cuddles. It does, however, make me very, very, very doggedly tired. I’m writing this very, very, very doggedly tired. My husband and I trade off on the nighttime cuddles (for we are both greedy for time, even if its unconscious, and also both need solid sleep – it works for us) and last night, it was my night to slip into the Preschooler’s car and bus themed sheet set and hope to god sleep came easily. It did not. I knew it wouldn’t, as I was laying there at 1:30, watching Mr. Star Puppy’s tummy stars circulate on the ceiling in a glowing blue haze without my glasses. But the larger part of my problem was that I was running through my to-do list for today. Work deadlines. This blog entry (the theme of which I couldn’t even remember in my sleep deprivation so I couldn’t even mentally draft it). What are my social media posts this week, again? Wait – are we talking work social media or writing social media? Oh ya – I’m a writer. I need to start Part III of the book. Okay – think about that. MC does this, that, then this….wait, is that in the outline? Oh, crap I didn’t send out the outline for that thing at work. And on and on. And on. And now we’re here. Eight hours later, the Preschooler safely at daycare, me procrastinating putting on pants to go to the office. My head is fuzzy. I was going to write something lovely about a checklist, I think. Say something eloquent about dividing time, slicing days into perfectly reserved chunks of day to get Work, Parenting, Writing done. My god, how I wish it worked like that. But it doesn’t. At least not at this point in my life. I’m also incredibly terrible at flying by the seat of my pants. The second I'm asked to switch directions from whatever I’m thinking about, annoyance flares, and I’m distracted by the burning in my lungs and THEN by whatever took me from whatever valuable headspace I’d been cultivating. It’s a struggle right now. Maybe it’s the weather. Marketing tip: you’re supposed to leave your reader with a Call to Action at the end of a blog or a post. I do it all day, every day, in emails, in verbal discussions, on all my social media platforms. No matter my audience, it seems I’m always yelling down a real or proverbial hall a list of something that needs to be done. Maybe that’s my biggest problem. But you, dear reader – here’s what you need to do after reading this. Look up from your phone. Take a deep breath. One of those deep, life-affirming gulps of air that you can’t believe you had the lung space to house. Cherish it. Think about how fulfilling it feels, rumbling about in here. How cold it was going down, how it forced your shoulders back, how your chin may be tilted to the sky. Think about what makes you whole, even if you don’t feel it. Because as soon as you exhale, and you must for biology and because we can’t live in the divinity forever, you’ll do what I can’t today. And that’s do anything other than just yearn for a nap. Yours in exhaustion and big dreams (and appreciation of the tools to make those big dreams possible), Stephanie  I start with a quote from a guy who was wildly brilliant and cross-sector with that brilliance. So I feel like he knows something about art.
“Art is never finished, only abandoned.” Leonardo da Vinci Uplifting quote to really warm you up to writing today, right? You know that piece you just finished? The one that took up your heart, soul, and brain space for months? Time to abandon it! Okay. Abandon is a big, scary word. And for this writer, not the best fit. Perhaps…transfer its energy. Give it to the community. Time to (and I’m sorry parents) just…let it go. I struggle with this concept. Calling a writing piece done is a complicated endeavor. How do you know when its done? On the flip side, say you know it’s done – how do you leave it alone? Intellectually, I know my piece done. It’s gone through a beta reader – usually more than one, it’s spell checked (ten gazillion times) and if I’m brave enough, its even got my mother’s stamp of approval on it. And yet. I tinker. During intense quarantine last spring, I picked up a short story I hadn’t touched in literally years and rewrote the entire thing to present tense. Once the tense was switched, I had to find bits that had fallen out of sense and shove them back into formation. The word count got tighter, which is almost always a win, but seriously. Seriously? Seriously. I should have been working on my WIP. I could have been washing my hair, getting caught up on overdue tasks at work, or, like, doing dishes occasionally. Rather, I used it as a procrastination tool to skirt around what I should have been doing in that moment. So how do you stop the tinkering?
Listen, we all know that writing and publishing is never entirely done until the ink is wet. Even then – we live in a digital era. Sometimes there’s no ink at all. I promise you that once I hit post on this blog post, I have the liberty to read it again in a few hours, and if I find something I hate, I’ll change it. I’m better at letting go than I used to be. Not perfect, not at all. But who is? Yours in not-yet-abandoned-work, Stephanie Unpregnant, by Jenni Hendriks and Ted Caplan, tells the story of seventeen-year-old Veronica, who just found out she was pregnant via a test in her high school bathroom. Like, just found out. She’s still pinching the pee stick in her fingers when Bailey, her ex-best friend busts into the bathroom. Shenanigans ensue that include a flying pregnancy test, a secret kept between two girls who quit keeping each other’s secrets years ago, and the story’s off.
What attracted me to Unpregnant was the broken friendship trope. (Is it a trope? I feel like it should be, if it isn’t already. This is not to say tropes are bad. We each have our favorite. And when one is done right, its done RIGHT.) Unpregnant navigates the pitfalls and consequences of ex-best friends partnering to solve a problem, each mixing in their own motivators, to get the girls on the road by the 50 page mark. By the time they climb in Bailey’s Mom’s boyfriend’s car and set off to the clinic in Albuquerque, literally everything they leave in the dust is moot. As a reader, all I cared about was in their car. What kept me reading Unpregnant, once I was fully invested in the broken friendship, was the reality of the story, seeped in situations ranging from amusing to downright bizarre. (Example: there’s a run-in with a stripper who’s also a religious zealot. And now that I think about it, hailing from the Midwest like I do, those two things aren’t on opposite ends of the spectrum as much as I thought.) While Veronica and Bailey are on a frantic road trip to reach a clinic that can perform Veronica’s abortion, every weird thing they counter is weird, yes, but none of it distracts from the whole: Veronica is pregnant. Veronica doesn’t want to be pregnant. What can Veronica do to stop being pregnant? What I wish had been addressed explicitly within the story was Veronica’s ex- boyfriend Kevin’s actions: he poked a hole in the prophylactic without unequivocal clearance to do so from his partner. I gasped in a blind rage as I read those pages. The direct discussion of sexual assault does not come up, though I wish it did. Veronica and Bailey get revenge, yes, but the consequences should have been far more severe. While in Albuquerque, attempting to “procure a hasty abortion”, as Juno has said many, many times on my television, Veronica and Bailey separate as Bailey (a fully rounded character in her own right) had her own motivations for driving 14 hours overnight to New Mexico. Their reunion, without spoilers, is everything a reader could hope for. Just know: a friendship is restored. I was skeptical about Unpregnant pre-cracking of the spine. I was aware of HBO’s movie (of which I still have not viewed), but crazy gal pal road trips tend to veer into "Thelma and Louise" territory in a hurry and I didn’t much have desire to watch two teenagers fly off the side of a cliff. And I doubted that Kevin looked much like Brad Pitt. I need girls who are powerful and strong and sassy AF…who don’t dive into nothingness. (I haven’t watched "Thelma and Louise" since, oh, second grade. Maybe my adult eyes would see something different. I just googled the plot, and yes...I'd probably see an entirely different story. Also, let’s not talk about how I watched "Thelma and Louise" in second grade.) But I must tell you, without diving too far off the proverbial cliff into a mini-therapy session: Unpregnant hit the sweet spot for me. Yeah, the girls do dumb shit. You don’t find yourself attempting to tip a cow without wondering what in the hell you did to take you to that moment. (This South Dakota born and bred girl knows, from experience, that tipping cows is a worthless endeavor.) But Veronica and Bailey also do two huge things right: they take care of each other when it matters, and they support each other’s decisions. And in Young Adult literature? That’s insanely, crucially key for representation. +++ PS – I read on @jenniandted’s Instagram that Unpregnant was originally set in Rapid City, SD. I’m not sure which direction Jenni and Ted had the girls traveling to find a clinic, but if it was Sioux Falls, I would have met them down street, taken them cookies, and offered to let them sleep in my basement until they were ready to venture out again. Yours in pro-choice sentiments, Stephanie Post-inauguration and I’m still riding that high. I’m probably always going to ride that high. I took the morning off to watch the ceremony, and I can’t lie – when Vice President-Elect Kamala Harris walked in with Mr. Doug Emhoff I started crying immediately. Tears flew out of my eyes horizontally, I swear. My face looked like the side of a windshield when the wipers turn on and squeegeed water soars off the edge.
As our VP-Elect became our VP, my deck door was open, and it’s a miracle our neighbor Dale didn’t come running over to check on me and my howls of relief and happiness. Buddy, my beloved golden retriever, who has comforted me too many times to count, once again nestled his head in my lap and didn’t move until the sobbing stopped. (If for NO other reason than Buddy’s mental health and anxiety, can we have a calm year or ten now?) All this to say: YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAS for POWERFUL, DRIVEN, WOMEN. And ALL women. To that, and to honor my beloved Leslie Knope, Galentine’s Day is in a few weeks. Christmas can sometimes sneak up on me. Lord knows Valentine’s Day shocks me on the calendar every year. (Sorry, dear husband.) But Galentine’s? Nope. I am prepared. Name a thing that’s better than celebrating the women in your life who support you, drive you, inspire you, and lift you up? I’ll wait. You just made your list of who to celebrate, right? Me too. Because this is a blog about writing and celebrating the written word, and because I’m a proponent of forcing things I love on people I love (Leslie Knope resides deeply in me), I made a list of book suggestions to gift your Galentine. These are books I read this year that made me feel close to my friends, my mother, the girl I was in high school, and the kind of friend I want to be. 2020 stole a lot, between literally taking our family and friends away to making us feel distant from ourselves in our own hearts. 2021 is about reclaiming those pieces. This is my small way of helping the women I love. (Fun fact – I get no $$ from these links, but they do all link to bookstorelink.com that allows you to purchase these books from your locally-owned bookstore - or pick one and get mail from, say, Georgia.) FOR THE FRIEND WHO: LOVES HER YOUNG ADULT CONTEMPORARY Holding Up the Universe, Jennifer Niven. On the outside, Libby and Jack are the most unlikely duo. But are they? Your Galentine will love the equal parts of romance, self-discovery, and self-acceptance. It also might mend together a crack or two in her heart. DIGS ON RELEASTIC HEARTBREAKING ADULT ROMANCE The Dive from Clausen’s Pier, Ann Packer. Carrie is already falling out of love with her college sweetheart when tragedy strikes. Packer explores how much of yourself you must give to the people you love in your search for yourself, and what that sacrifice looks like…or doesn’t. IS YOUR PRO-CHOICE BESTIE Unpregnant, Jenni Hendriks and Ted Caplan. A roadtrip woman-focused buddy story about getting seventeen=year old Veronica to the nearest abortion clinic three states away. Shenanigans ensue, a broken friendship hangs in the balance, and the story holds fast to the truth of the terrible decisions women are forced to make, about their bodies, but also their lives. DOWN FOR A MYSTERY AND GORGEOUS PROSE We Are Okay, Nina LaCour. This book is a devastating piece of art, best for your Galentine who loves getting her.mind.blown. It’s the story of a set of best friends, one of whom lives with her grandfather, and you think its pretty cut and dried (and gorgeously written), but then wham! Third act! I wouldn’t blame you if you read it and then gifted this one. LOVES CONTEMPORARY, ACCESSIBLE POETRY Swimming Lessons, Lili Reinhart. Reinhart looks at the exquisite and untouchable joy of falling in love, and how it all just goes to shit. She doesn’t hold back but remains clear in her prose and in her respect for herself, as well as the person she was in love with. Balancing both is a feat, and I’m here for it. PS – Reinhart is a fierce fighter for mental health and body/self image initiatives. Her star is only rising. THE PARENT WHO HATES PARENTING BOOKS This is How It Always Is, Laurie Frankel. We all know (or are) that mom who’s striving to up her game and is ALSO convinced she’s not good at parenting - when you know damn well she’s the very best. Frankl’s prose is spectacular and fairy-tale-esque which is appropriate given the plot thread that pulls the entire book along as this unique family navigates the needs of their youngest kid. YEARNS FOR BEST FRIENDSHIP STORIES WITH SATISFYING ENDINGS Little Do We Know, Tamara Ireland Stone. I picked up this book because I had to do research on how a religious teen interacts with the world outside her church. I was shocked to find I loved it as much as I did. Stone interweaves two former best friends’ stories, happening concurrently, over one event, while laying the framework for why their friendship fell to pieces. By the end, I was wishing I’d written it. IS A TRUE CRIME JUNKIE Catch and Kill, Ronan Farrow. Is there a more timely and relevant true crime snapshot than Farrow’s magnificent story of how he wrote his damning and industry-changing Harvey Weinstein story that finally allowed so many survivors to be heard. (warning: parts are intense and get into Weinstein’s crimes quite explicitly. Keep in mind as you think about gifting.) KNOWS HERSELF Little Weirds, Jenny Slate. Perhaps your Galentine marches to her own beat and is mostly secure about it but wouldn’t mind a little representation. Slate structured her tale in a series of short stories and vignettes of her journey to accept that of which she cannot change, and that she has no desire to tamper down her weirdness. It’s a true, deep breath of fresh air, particularly her work on the last several pages, picturing her life near death. Grounding and simultaneously uplifting. I focused this list on books that didn’t get a TON of press coverage (save for Catch and Kill because Ronan Farrow is a household name he very well should be, and this book is a must read). I sincerely hope you and your Galentine love these recommendations. What would you add to the list? I need recommendations too! Yours in words, Stephanie PS - Down for online book shopping, curb-side pick up, or responsible in-person shopping with your mask? Hit your local indie bookstore: Indie Bookstore Finder | IndieBound.org. |