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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 Dear Reader,
How much Folklore is too much Folklore? I ask for a friend. Lies, you say. This is a self-serving request. You know me well already. I ask for me. Swaying dramatically in the driver’s seat to “I can see you staring, honey/Like he’s just your understudy/like you’d get your knuckles bloody for me” at a stoplight. Mouthing each f-bomb (of which there are a delicious, but not shocking or inappropriate amount) as I run to the coffee shop a block from my office. (BTW, remind me to tell you the story of the time a colleague asked me if I swear in my head, and what it looks like in my brain space when I do it. It was a delightfully eloquent conversation about the merits of a good swear, and the space in which it takes to get it right. The balance, she’s delicate.) But seriously: Folklore. I wrote The Right Kind of Light’s really ragged outline in my head at an Ed Sheeran concert (inspired by “Photograph”, thankyouverymuch), and spent the year drafting it to X. Reputation came out around draft 3, and the beat was too strong for my girl Gin, so we stuck with Ed’s ÷. I started querying, and now here we are. But Folklore would have DRIVEN Ginny’s story. Taylor might have taken the wheel and driven Ginny off a cliff for all I know, but I would HAVE BEEN THERE THE WHOLE TIME, in the backseat, squealing my head off that a.) Taylor took the wheel of my car and holy shit, and b.) how do you groove along to “rosé with your chosen family/and it woulda been sweet if it coulda been me” as you fly like a bird to your death with Taylor Swift and your MC? I have a problem. So the larger question, outside of my Folklore love, and my bow-down appreciation for Taylor Swift’s sister album Evermore: is it bad to let your artistic voice be driven so erratically by another artist’s voice? Once upon a time, there were plot points that were derived directly from Ed’s “Photograph” that I thought were a nod to the concert where I had my grand flash of My First Novel, but eventually all but two of them were removed. (Read my book! You’ll know! They’re very obvious!) Those pieces were removed because they ceased to make sense, they didn’t move the book along, etc. All the legitimate reasons why anything is ever cut from a novel. I sincerely hope that while people read my work, they wouldn’t be surprised to learn that I look a good mellow jam, occasionally intercepted by banging pop Or, Carole King’s entire catalog. There’s definitely a thread (an invisible string, if you will I’M SO SO SORRY I can’t stop), that pulls an album along start to finish, and if a voice is distinct enough, that same thread pulls an artist through a career. Obviously, the metaphor works for writers as well. I like to think that my portfolio pieces compliment each other, rather than fight, and they’ve all been driven by different playlists on my iPhone. What do you think? Is it bad to be so immersed in an album that even your three-year knows the words to every song? Does it inhibit your process? More so, would you miss that music if it was gone? Let me know! Love you to the moon and to Saturn, Stephanie  At the end of 2019, I started this blog and launched this website with the intent of claiming my space on the internet to market my writing career. It was great. I felt good about it, I was getting followers and clicks on Pinterest, and I opened an Instagram to grow my space. Mid-March, I was sitting in the Starbucks near my office one late afternoon. My phone blew up as I packed up: the first case of COVID-19 was in South Dakota. COVID had been in the US by that point for a period long enough to have sent my family to Sam’s Club to stock up in a frenzied way (as opposed to following a realistic shopping list), but the fear wasn’t real – not REALLY real – until I was outside under low clouds in the misty parking lot, dumbfounded and calling my mother. Her birthday had been two days before. I’d met my parents at a favorite low-key bar to celebrate. Mom and I took selfies. We had no idea it was the last time we’d go out for lunch. As I write this, I paused just now. How to explain, summarize, what happened in days after I left that Starbuck parking lot? It felt like an eternity. Doors slamming shut. Locking. Afraid to even leave our front door – how did COVID carry in the air? Did it linger? Sanitizing the mailbox before opening it. Letting my kid binge Mickey Mouse Clubhouse and run up and down the hall with flat garbage bags like he was the school mascot waving a giant flag down the sideline on homecoming – all because my brain was churning to keep up. Keep my baby safe. Keep my parents safe. I need Brett to be safe. Over and over and over. It was all I heard. But we all lived that. None of this is news to you, reader, because you suffered the same experiences, and possibly worse. At least we had toilet paper from that ill-planned Sam’s Club shopping spree. As vaccinations are now on US soil – my husband, who is a nurse, volunteers on Saturday mornings to administer the shots to his fellow medical professionals. I live in a state that’s making international news for how poorly our state government bungled this, but I’ve learned that I too must come back to life, if only from my basement. But how? I’m an introvert, so I easily settled into making our world very small. I have a lot of regrets around COVID but setting up a permanent office space in my home is not one of them. So how do I come back from this? The only answer that’s come to me repeatedly: reinvigorate my professional passions. Listen. I’m a writer. Before I was anything (a marketer, a girlfriend, fiancé, wife, mom), I was a writer. Translating that into something that I can make personally fulfilling and valuable for outside consumption has always been the struggle. I realized I started merging the two on this blog in 2019. My social planning calendar was drafted, and I was in the beginning stages of writing a business plan, all while wrapping up edits on The Right Kind of Light, being present with my family, and working a 40+ hour job. I. Was. Killing. It. Then everything happened. And I ran out of words. I posted here this summer, about how I had no words. Contradictory, I realize, but I managed to string together something eloquent enough that I wasn’t ashamed of publishing it. There it was. I could still write creatively. It made my blood move. I could feel it, the want, the drive to create again, swirling under my surface as summer faded to fall. Passion. I felt it. So I sat down and planned out what this blog, and my social media presence could look like if I tried this again. To shift my voice from the fluffy side of writing to a discussion on what the industry might look like and how to break in now. To reassure fellow parents in similar boats to mine that yes, this time is nuts, but you’re not alone. To talk about my home community (shout out #onesiouxfalls), not from just a Sioux Falls-based perspective, but how we help small businesses stay afloat and help our communities that are struggling and will be for some time. That’s what I want now. To lend a voice to an energy I feel brewing outside my basement walls. Swirling, like wind, like the blood in my veins as I wrote this summer. So, I have a plan. And I’m back. Won’t you join me? To never giving up, Stephanie |