Friday"s How He Does It featuring Guy Ogan #MFRWauthor

We all know there are six elements of fiction. Who, What, When, Where, Why and How. I believe the first five lead to the sixth which for me is plot. What's your take on this?

1.      How do you create your characters? Do you have a specific method?

A. Okay, this will get "weird" right out of the gate! My characters come to me in dreams, daydreams while awake and actual dreams while asleep. You can call it "my Muse" speaking to me or "channeling" speaking through me, I'm okay with either. What is perhaps more unusual is that I have no way to know WHY I'm writing them into the novel, often until much later. Roger, the research physician was a perfect example. In the first book he becomes not only a key player but an extremely important friend to my character "Gary." I don't let friends die without a fight so I had to try to keep him "alive" didn't I? 

2. Do your characters come before the plot?

A. Yes, they introduce themselves in my dreams, I write them down, then the actions they perform "come" to me often well after they're introduced. A "bit player" can suddenly become a key element to the action later in the novel in which they are introduced or even in a later novel.

3. Do you know how the story will end before you begin? In a general way or a specific one?

A. The basic "plot" is revealed when my characters "visit." This is why I can tell you the title of the forth novel in the series before I even type one word into my computer. The title is, "Immortal Relations, REVENGE!" Spoiler Alert: the mates of the Vampire Gang that was destroyed at the end of book one are out for vengeance and so are leaders in both Communist China and Marxist Washington. Not a healthy combination being on the "hit parade" of a group of pissed-off vampire females and nations with major military power who want your head on a plate!  

   

4. Do you choose settings you know or do you have books of settings and plans of houses sitting around?

A. Because of the real-world "tryst" my late father had at the end of WW-II while he was stationed in Prague, CZ that had to be the starting point for "Immortal Relations" the first novel. The actions in both England and Russia, with a little in other European countries, such NATO Headquarters in Harlen, a part of Brussels, Belgium, came out of the actions in that first setting. The second novel, "Immortal Relations, Love and War" again started in Prague with major action in areas of Russia, NATO HQ., China and its waterways, Japan and to a far lesser degree Washington D.C. The setting for the third in the series, "Immortal Relations Coming Out," where the guardian vampires (having saved mankind from a possible nuclear war) discuss coming out to the human world, takes place starting in Prague but quickly moving to Cayuga, Canada (fairly close to Ontario). Washington D.C. is involved (not in a good way) but a wedding takes place in Russia with a honeymoon in Las Vegas (in a very good way). Spoiler Alert: Terra Firma is not the only place from which threats to mankind can come!

5. Where do you do your research? On line or from books?

A. This will sound somewhat egotistical, but militarily I have a great deal of knowledge and also know how, for politicians and others, "power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely." Having been in the field of psychology and studying in the field of human growth and development my knowledge in the field of medical research is fairly good as well. Where research is needed, I tend to go on-line and "Google" the specific topic. I'm now working on a story for my granddaughter (totally removed from my normal vampire genre') about dinosaurs - my granddaughter loves dinosaurs.  When I need the name of a specific dinosaur I look it up in a book I purchased, "Uncover the Prehistoric World, DINOSAURS" or "Google it" for additional information.

6. Are you a draft writer or do you revise as you go along and why? Do you sketch out your plot or do you let the characters develop the route to the end?

A. To the extent that I feel comfortable altering the story (I felt totally uncomfortable altering the "explicit togetherness" in the first book - the sex got a bit "over the top" for my prudish upbringing and my wife was NONE TOO PLEASED). I tried to explain that the sex wasn't meant to be salacious but to show that vampires don't have the sexual "hang-ups" of humans. I believe she was most upset by the fact that she knew that "Gary" was ME! I did try to tone it down, but just really couldn't do much...it was like I was altering the story as it was "given" to me! The characters develop the route to the end, I'm just a scribe when it comes to a lot of the story, but I can flesh out some details. In the second book, the one I recommend as a starting point for those who have a dislike of sex in stories, I was allowed to tone-down the sex because the first book had established the difference between the views on sex between vampires and humans. Spoiler Alert: In the second book, Gary has read a vampire novel in which the mated vampires exchange "love-bites" which heightens the experience; Magdalena confirms that this isn't just some author's creation that exchanging both blood and venom in this manner can indeed increase fervor, but while when Gary and Maggie try it the sex is even more fantastic, Gary has no memory of what transpired after the fact. Thus, since the novels are "first person" the only descriptions are what Gary is told. This greatly reduces the "explicitness" in the second and third books.   

Friday's How He Does It featuring James Di Beneditto

.      How do you create your characters? Do you have a specific method?

They really just “come to me” for the most part.  Sara, the main character for the Dream Series books, appeared more-or-less fully formed along with the original idea for the books.  For the supporting characters, I usually start with the role I want them to play, or the relationship I want them to have with Sara.  In the second book, DREAM DOCTOR, for example, Sara is in medical school, so I knew she needed a study group that she would spend most of her time with.  And I knew that I wanted one of them to be someone she already knew, and another one to be someone older, who she would see as a possible model for herself a few years in the future. 

For the person she knew, I took a very minor character from the first book and just gave her a little deeper relationship with Sara (and then a plot for her suggested itself and she became a much more well-defined character).  For the older person, I decided that with Sara being a newlywed in the book, I wanted her him to be someone who was married for a fairly long time, with kids and a house, etc, and the character of Joseph came out of that.

2. Do your characters come before the plot?

Definitely.  Although I’d say it differently: the characters, and their internal struggles, their hopes and fears, drive the plot.  In each book of the series, the plot came out of something I wanted to challenge Sara with.  In the first book, she’s growing up, and she has this new talent to step into people’s dreams, which she never asked for and doesn’t really want.  But she has no choice, and she has to cope with it.  In the second book, she has to learn about being a newlywed, and balancing life and her studies, and also learn that she can’t save everyone – and the main plot and the subplots all touch on those themes.  And so on, throughout the books. 

3. Do you know how the story will end before you begin? In a general way or a specific one?

Absolutely.  I always have a pretty clear general idea of the ending, and for the last three books, I’ve known pretty much exactly what the ending scene would be.  How I get there is sometimes a roundabout journey, though!  

4. Do you choose settings you know or do you have books of settings and plans of houses sitting around?

Both.  The first book, DREAM STUDENT (and the second, as well) takes place at a (very) thinly-veiled version of my college.  The house that Sara’s in-laws own is pretty much my cousin’s house, where I spent most Thanksgivings and Christmases.  The apartment building Sara lives in in the fourth book is the building I actually lived in when I moved to Washington, DC.  But I also have settings that I need to research, and I have a ton of background material for that. 

5. Where do you do your research? On line or from books?

 Pretty much all on-line.  But it’s not just wikipedia and so forth.  I’ve made great use of online forums and blogs to ask people for specific experiences and details that I needed to know about for the books.  People have been extremely helpful, too!

6. Are you a draft writer or do you revise as you go along and why? Do you sketch out your plot or do you let the characters develop the route to the end?

I revise as I go along – usually I go over each chapter several times, editing slightly each time, before they’re sent out to my beta readers. 

I do sketch out the plot in broad strokes, but the characters sometimes go off on their own, or demand more screen time, and I mostly let them do it.  I’ve only “overruled” them once, really.  In the fourth book, DREAM FAMILY, Sara has a traumatic experience, and one of the signs that she’s not over it yet is her inability to put her wedding ring back on.  In-character, the next step in that plot was going to be that she would purposely break her own finger so she’d have a good excuse for not being able to wear it.  But I decided that was going too far.  I’m still not sure what I think about that – it was absolutely something that she was capable of doing at that point.

---

Read about my writing: www.writingdreams.net

Buy my books: amazon.com or smashwords

Friday's How He Does it with Richard Brawer

Janet asked interesting questions about character development and plot development. Here are my answers using my novel The Nano Experiment as an example.

How do you create your characters? Do your characters come before the plot?

My characters come with my plots. I need a story first before I can think about creating characters.

The Nano Experiment was developed from a screen play my daughter wrote. Her plot was about a wrongly convicted man who escapes death row and battles to prove his innocence. Despite being a lawyer in the entertainment business, she could not find a production company to produce her movie. I said, “Let me write it as a book with a female lead because most movies have a male lead with a woman backup yet many woman actors are looking for a good leading role.

Now I had a plot and a protagonist which leads me to Janet’s next questions.

Do you know how the story will end in a general or a specific way?  Do you sketch your plot or do you let the characters develop the route to the end?

There are no direct answers to these questions. Yes, before I begin writing I have to know how the story will end. I need a target to write toward. However, writing is not a tutorial. There is no step one, step two etc.

The more I read the script, the more I realized my daughter’s ending would not work with the type of endings I liked for my novels. My endings are satisfying for the reader, but they are not Cinderella endings.

I cannot tell you the ending because it will ruin the story. However, I can tell you what one reviewer said. “The resolution is realistic, with even the winner paying a heavy price for struggling.”

 At this point I discarded the script and began to develop my own story.

To create my ending I had to create a story line. While I am creating a story line I am also creating the secondary characters. I had the basic ending. I wanted my character, whom I named Eileen, exonerated. But how did I get there? I began asking questions.

How did Eileen get on death row in the first place?
How did she escape from death row?
Where did she go after her escape?
Who would be chasing her?
How did she prove she was innocent of first degree murder?
And the most important question; What are Eileen’s CONFLICTS?

There can be no story without a conflicted main character. The anticipation as to how Eileen will resolve her conflicts is what keeps the reader turning the pages. In addition, the more the conflicts and how Eileen gets out of them, the more depth she will have.

The outward conflict is obvious. Eileen must prove her innocence. However, it is inner conflicts that I feel will be the most interesting to the reader. Creating the first inner conflict led me to the answer to the first question and a dynamic opening chapter.

Here is a synopsis of the first chapter:

At fifteen, Eileen Robinson lives in an ideal, middle class African-American family in Houston, Texas.  When her father is murdered, an innocent victim in a drive by shooting, her sheltered life spirals downward into gloom.  Her once stay-at-home mother is forced to go to work cleaning offices at night.  Instead of enjoying her carefree teenage years hanging with her friends, Eileen is relegated to babysitting her two younger sisters. One night she sneaks out on them. Trying to cook something, they die in a fire.  Tormented and wanting to kill herself, Eileen runs away from home.  Befriended by a drug dealer, she moves in with him.  At twenty-one she is a single mother of two.

The last sentence in the first chapter is: Thomas was a good man. I couldn’t understand why the Lord had let my life turn out so well, until they sent Thomas to prison for twenty-five years.

Eileen is now set up for her destruction. Chapters 2,3 and 4 send Eileen to the execution chamber where at age 32 she is executed. Or is she?

Where Eileen went after her escape is why the book is titled The Nano Experiment. Needless to say the experiment, which is actually a nanomedicine experiment, is an important part of the story. It leads to the answers to the other questions and also embroils her in her second inner conflict.

(Note: You may at this point wonder if you can follow a detail like nanomedicine. This review tells me I made it interesting and easy for a layperson to understand. “The author’s inclusion of the concept of nanomedicine in the plot is articulate and intriguing.”)

One major factor missing from my daughter’s script was a “love” interest. It is very rare that books or movies only have one gender in the story. While Eileen is involved in the nanomedicine experiment she meets a charming young man who is a serial killer. She knows he is a serial killer but she still starts an affair with him because she feels she is also a killer―her sisters’ deaths.  How she gets out of the affair and finally resolves her issue with her sisters’ deaths is part of the ending.

So now I have my ending and my main characters and a brief outline to my story from the answers to my questions. However, that is the only outlining I do. I do not want to bog myself down with a strict sequence of events. Twists and turns I didn’t think about will arise as Eileen moves toward her goal of exoneration.

Those unexpected scenes also help me add additional depth to both Eileen and the supporting characters which I guess I achieved because another reviewer said, “Don't go in expecting to have stereotypes filled, because that is the one thing you won't experience…The characters are uncomfortably realistic.”

I believe they are realistic because of the CONFLICTS I created for them.

Do you choose settings you know or do you have books of settings and plans of houses sitting around?

I don’t “have books of settings.” I am personally familiar with the major settings for my novels although some research is needed when I take my characters to an unfamiliar place. The travel sections of newspapers are great sources to learn about unfamiliar settings. Also area specific maps can helped me move the character around.

Where do you do your research? On line or from books?

My research for The Nano Experiment was done online. Eileen is incarcerated in Texas. I had to research Texas’ prison system, death row and lethal injection.

My daughter had her character uncover the DNA that set him free. I thought, that was so droll. Every crime story on TV was using DNA and so are many books. I was searching for something different as well as educational to the reader. Just because this story was a thriller didn’t mean it couldn’t be educational too.

When I read an article in the newspaper about nanomedicine, I thought what a great idea. However, the article was very general and I am not a doctor so I had to do extensive research. Everything I needed was on the internet.

Also there are many internet writing groups that can help with research. For example, I belong to a Yahoo group, crime scene writers (there are no spaces between words if you are searching Yahoo for this group) where you can ask experts on crime scenes, police procedure etc. There are many other groups on Yahoo and Goodreads that can help with research. And of course there are the search engines, Google, Ask, Bing etc.

Are you a draft writer or do you revise as you go along and why?

I am a draft writer. I try to get the story on paper as fast as possible because the story is running around in my head and I want to get it out as quickly. I say paper because I write long hand then type into my computer. Transposing from paper to print is my first edit. Then I print out the book and continue my rewrites.

I hope my experiences have helped you in your writing. To read the book jacket, excerpts and full reviews of The Nano Experiment and all my novels please visit my website: www.silklegacy.com

Richard Brawer writes mysteries, historical fiction and suspense novels. He lives in New Jersey with his wife, Ruth, and has two daughters and two granddaughters.

Note: The Nano Experiment was originally published as Beyond Guilty by a wonderful mid-size independent press, L & L Dreamspell. Sadly one of the partners passed away and the other could not continue without her life-long friend. She closed the publisher returning the rights to their authors. This was sorrowful news for L & L Dreamspell’s 100 authors because the ladies that ran the publisher were wonderful people and highly professional. Thus Beyond Guilty was no longer available in any format.

For some strange reason Amazon never takes a book off its website regardless of whether the book is out of print or the publisher is out of business. To avoid confusion when searching Amazon for my books and finding that Beyond Guilty is no longer available to purchase, I changed the title and cover to The Nano Experiment.

The Nano Experiment is available for 99 cents on KINDLE and any e-reader, Computer, Apple or Android device that has a KINDLE APP, or any TABLET that can access KINDLE books for 99 cents. Here is the link.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Nano-Experiment-ebook/dp/B00E2YXSVI/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1374501079&sr=1-1&keywords=The+Nano+Experiment

 

 

Friday How He Does It with Brian Rathbone

We all know there are six elements of fiction. Who, What, When, Where, Why and How. I believe the first five lead to the sixth which for me is plot. What's your take on this>

A big warm hello to you and your readers!

There is a certain amount of randomness to my process. While much of my story line and plotting were done over a fifteen year period while I was falling to sleep at night, my stories tend to evolve. I've often said that I create outlines which I later ignore and discard at will.

 

 

.

 1. How do you create your characters? Do you have a specific method?

My characters aren't based on real people, yet I feel like I know them all well. They tend to present themselves to me, nearly fully formed, but then I paint them with extra details. And then they do things I never expected.

 

 

2. Do your characters come before the plot? Do you sketch out your plot or do you let the characters develop the route to the end?

 

The characters and the plot developed in my mind at the same time. It all started out a bit vague and unclear, and over time the world, the plot, the characters came into focus. Now that I'm seven books into the series, I've used the material I'd built up over the years, and my outlining process is now more creative rather than just organization of existing ideas. Some of my ideas are still from years ago, but many of the details have shifted along the way.

 

3. Do you know how the story will end before you begin? In a general way or a specific one?

 

I always have a general idea of the ending, and most of the time I know exactly where I'm going, but I must admit that there are other times when I just write what's in my head, knowing I'll figure out the rest after fleshing those parts out.

 

4. Do you choose settings you know or do you have books of settings and plans of houses sitting around?

The World of Godsland exists in my mind, and I do my best to bring the reader into my world. Creating custom maps of Godsland has been among the most challenging things I've done, but it's very rewarding.

 

 

5. Where do you do your research? On line or from books?

 

I'm an Internet guy, so most of my research is done online. When writing things that take place in the real world, I like to spend some time visiting those places and looking at them with a writer's eye.

 

6. Are you a draft writer or do you revise as you go along and why?

I give myself permission to write terrible first drafts. Then I let those sit for a couple weeks while I work on something else to give myself distance from the manuscript. Then I make a couple editing passes myself. I use text to speech software on my phone to read the manuscript to me; this is great for checking plot and continuity even if on a road trip.

 

 

How He Does It Featuring Jerry Weinberg

When I have those five well in hand, the plot seems to ooze onto the ms. by itself. Sometimes, I have to force it out–which generally leads to a less satisfactory story.






1. How do you create your characters? Do you have a specific process?





I have a mixed process. I always start with some ideas of the character (not consciously modeled after any specific person). I then put that character in specific situations and see how they respond. Their responses show me the deeper parts of their character.







2. Do your characters come before the plot? Do you sketch out your plot or do you let the characters develop the route to the end?





They develop in parallel. As the book nears its end, the characters become more and more specifically shaped. I may then go back and place those details earlier in the ms.







3. Do you know how the story will end before you begin? In a general way or a specific one?



In a general way, but sometimes it changes as the book nears its end.



4. Do you choose settings you know or do you have books of settings and plans of houses sitting around?





Both. I've lived and worked all over the world, so I have lots of settings in my mind, waiting to be accessed. But sometimes I want a setting where I've never been, in which case, I research it. Or just create a house or other building. I've actually designed and built several real buildings, so I know a bit about how things work.





5. Where do you do your research? On line or from books?





I use whatever works. I generally start with my own direct experience, then flesh out some details I haven't experienced





6. Are you a draft writer or do you revise as you go along and why?





Mostly I try to write through from beginning to end, then go back and enrich the ms. with telling details. I've learned to be extremely careful about going back to revisef

How He Does It with Teel James Glenn

I met Teel at EPICon in Virginia Beach and listened to him give his reading without holding the papers and reading. He recited and held the audience spellbound. At the banquet, I saw him in a kilt. My first kilted man.

We all know there are six elements in writing fiction and often fact. Who, What, When, Where, Why and How. I believe the first five lead to the sixth which for me is the plot. What's your take on this?




How do you create your characters? Do you have a specific process?





Often their creation comes as a reaction to something I saw or read and I think “but what if- had happened” or from my desire to explore a particular part of a ‘world’-be it a historic setting or a fantasy world. Or I decide who would be best to ‘infiltrate’ that world and I begin building them like would would assemble a chair from Ikea.

As for process, I have written pretty much every way there is- organically with a vague idea of plot and a character I wanted to explore and just let it develop, with a solid outline with the last sentence figured out before I begin the first word and everything in between.

I prefer my laptop for speed, but my first books were written on an old Underwood manual typewriter and many have been written longhand in notebooks on train or buss rides so, when I gotta write- I gotta write!









2. Do your characters come before the plot? Do you sketch out your plot or do you let the characters develop the route to the end?





For me, the characters usually come first-sometime years before I have story for them to ‘live’ in. Their personality shapes the plot-even if I have it ‘laid out’ before they enter the picture. I had one character in my novel The Escape Artist who was supposed to be a ‘walk on-’ one night stand for the main character and darned if she didn’t just tell me “hell no, I’m not leaving!” and I had to rewrite the whole of the book to include her. Really.









Do you know how the story will end before you begin? In a general way or a specific one?





Sometimes I have the exact last sentence written before I start the story and work toward it. Sometimes I haven’t the faintest idea where the darn thing is going and am just as surprised as the characters when stuff happens. LOL. Really.











4. Do you choose settings you know or do you have books of settings and plans of houses sitting around?



Sometimes I chose a setting I don’t know at all just so I can have the enjoyment of researching it- I’ve written tales in Palestine in the 40s, India in the 1880s and China in the 30s without even getting close to them physically or temporally- but its been rewarding when someone who has lived in a local I wrote about (in this case contemporary Hong Kong) was sure I had been there since I mention bus fares, street names etc. with comfortable casualness. The key is research and working hard not to use everything I learn--just the stuff one might notice -a sign or a building that can be seen- when actually there.





5. Where do you do your research? On line or from books?



I have a pretty eclectic collection of books with all sorts of weird facts and stuff in them, but as time goes on I’m increasingly using the internet just because I can’t fit any more books in my place...





Are you a draft writer or do you revise as you go along and why?





I’ve changed the was I write over the years-I used to write the story in pieces--the scenes that excited me the most then wrote around them but now I pretty much start at the beginning an write straight to the end. I am not adverse to rewrites- after time has passed- but I tend to write slow enough that I am building as I go and like to be ‘done’ when I type ‘the end.’





Teel James Glenn

Winner of the 2012 Pulp Ark 'Best Author of the Year.' Epic ebook award finalist. P&E winner "Best Steampunk Short", finalist "Best Fantasy short, Collection" Author of bestselling Exceptionals Series, The Maxi/Moxie Series, The Dr. Shadows Series, The Bob Howard Series and others.

visit him at Theurbanswashbuckler.com

Friday, How He Does It - James Hutchings

> We all know there are six elements in writing fiction and often fact. Who,


> What, When, Where, Why and How. I believe the first five lead to the sixth

> which for me is the plot. What's your take on this?



I usually think of plot first, and everything else comes from that.





> 1. How do you create your characters? Do you have a specific process?

> 2. Do your characters come before the plot? Do you sketch out your plot or

> do you let the characters develop the route to the end?

(my answer to these two questions is pretty much the same)



I know that starting with a character, then deriving the plot from what they'd

do, is often held up as the best way to write. However I usually start with an

idea for a plot, and work out my characters to fit the plot.





> 3. Do you know how the story will end before you begin? In a general way or

> a specific one?



It depends. In a short story or poem I'll usually think of the ending as part of

the initial idea. But for longer works I might not. For example I'm working on a

long poem set in the old West called 'Confession of a Bounty Hunter', and up

until recently I hadn't decided whether the main character would live or die.





> 4. Do you choose settings you know or do you have books of settings and

> plans of houses sitting around?



I mostly write fantasy - and my fantasy worlds aren't baed on any particular

historical period - so I can make it up without having to look anything up.



Even when I write in a historical perod, I'm usually more interested in how the

characters interact than in the details of the setting, so I infrequently need

to find anything out (for example whether they had kerosene lanterns in the old

West, or what Smith & Wesson's first names were).



A few of my stories are set 'here and now'.





> 5. Where do you do your research? On line or from books?



Most of my 'research' is writing down interesting things from history or fiction

that I find online, usually on wikipedia. For example, these are curses from the

front of two medieval books, that I intend to use one day:



If anyone take away this book, let them die the death; let them be fried in a

pan; let the falling sickness and fever seize them; let them be broken on the

wheel, and hanged.



Should anyone by craft of any device whatever abstract this book from its owner

may their soul suffer, in retribution for what they have done, and may their

name be erased from the book of the living and not recorded among the Blessed.





> 6. Are you a draft writer or do you revise as you go along and why?



With poetry, at least traditional poetry, you have to revise as you go along to

make the rhymes and rhythm fit. With prose I also tend to revise as I go.



However I always show my work to my ex, who acts as my unofficial editor, before

sending it out. She usually has suggestions for changes, and this can go back

and forth for several drafts.

How He Does It - James Hutchings

We all know there are six elements in writing fiction and often fact. Who,
> What, When, Where, Why and How. I believe the first five lead to the sixth
> which for me is the plot. What's your take on this?

I've heard that for journalism, but I don't think I've ever used it in creative
writing. When I'm stuck I often use the five senses: what does the scene look
like, what does it sound like and so on.


> How do you create your characters? Do you have a specific process?

I'm much more interested in plots than in characters. When I have an idea for a
story it's almost always an idea for something that could happen, rather than an
idea for a character.

Several of my stories have 'gods' as characters, who are personifications of
ideas: Death, Love, Commerce and so on.

> Do your characters come before the plot? Do you sketch out your plot or
> do you let the characters develop the route to the end?

I usually think of a plot, and have characters that fit that. I know you're
'supposed' to develop characters and then derive the plot from what they'd do,
but that's not how I write.

> Do you know how the story will end before you begin? In a general way or
> a specific one?

I usually do, but there are some exceptions, such as my story 'The Death of the
Artist'. I wrote each section of that without knowing where it was going next.
As a result, I think it ended up having a more original plot than it would have
otherwise.

> Do you choose settings you know or do you have books of settings and
> plans of houses sitting around?

I almost never have physical locations 'mapped out' in any detail, and my plots
don't really require knowing (for example) how many rooms are in the house and
which ones are on which floor. I probably wouldn't be very good at writing
murder mysteries.

> Where do you do your research? On line or from books?

Most of my stories are set in a made-up world (and the world isn't intended to
be based on medieval Europe or any particular period of history). So I don't
need to do research. However I do do a kind of research, in that I write down
interesting things from history or fiction that I find online, particularly on
wikipedia. For example, these are curses from the front of two medieval books,
that I intend to use one day:

If anyone take away this book, let them die the death; let them be fried in a
pan; let the falling sickness and fever seize them; let them be broken on the
wheel, and hanged.

Should anyone by craft of any device whatever abstract this book from its owner
may their soul suffer, in retribution for what they have done, and may their
name be erased from the book of the living and not recorded among the Blessed.

How He Does It - Collin Kelly

Collin Kelley is the author of the mystery/suspense novels Conquering Venus and the newly released Remain In Light, which is a finalist for the prestigious 2012 Townsend Prize for Fiction.

1. How do you create your characters? Do you have a specific process?
The characters in Conquering Venus and Remain In Light, the first two books in The Venus Trilogy, are either aspects of myself or amalgamations of people that I know or have met. Irène Laureaux, the Parisian widow searching for her husband’s killer, was created after watching all of the films starring Jeanne Moreau and Catherine Deneuve and creating a hybrid of the two women. Then I infused her with the sensibilities and tenacity of one of my best friends, Donna. I dedicated Remain In Light to her because I think Irène becomes a more fully rounded character by taking on some of Donna’s characteristics. Diane Jacobs, the pushy schoolteacher who sets a good majority of the action in motion, in both books was based on three of my best friends, including the schoolteacher who first took me to Paris in 1995. I’ve pretty much decided that Parker Posey is the only one who could play her if they ever make films from my books.

2. Do your characters come before the plot? Do you sketch out your plot or do you let the characters develop the route to the end?
The main characters and plot sort of arrive together for me. Supporting and minor characters might be created later to help advance the plot, but The Venus Trilogy has been nearly fully formed in my head for a decade now. I wrote Conquering Venus with no outline, thinking I didn’t really need one. I thought I’d give an outline a whirl with Remain In Light and found that it kept me on track and gave me forward momentum. It also allowed me to write parts of the novel out of sequence without fear of getting lost in the plot or losing story threads I’d started earlier and needed to pick up later. I’ve been living with Irène, Martin and Diane for so many years that they almost write themselves. I can hear them talking in my head as I write, so when I write something totally out of character they always pipe up to correct me. Especially Diane.

3. Do you know how the story will end before you begin? In a general way or a specific one?
I have a very strong general idea. I knew exactly how Conquering Venus and Remain In Light had to end, but I’m weighing a couple of ideas for the final book in the trilogy. I have an outline for the majority of the third book and two different scenarios for the ending. As the writing process continues, the appropriate ending will reveal itself.

4. Do you choose settings you know or do you have books of settings and plans of houses sitting around?
The majority of The Venus Trilogy is set in Paris. I’ve had the wonderful opportunity to go there three times and I actually wrote a good portion of the finale of Remain In Light there during the summer of 2010. The other main locations are Memphis, Tennessee and London, England. I’ve been to Memphis numerous times to London more times than I can count, so they are ingrained in my head. Irène’s pursuit of the man who killed her husband takes her to the Rhône-Alpes, but I’ve never been there. I did a lot of research, looked at photos and utilized Google street view to help give those locales authentic and specific details. I also like to create fictional places within real ones. Rue Rampon, the street where Irène lives and so much of the action in The Venus Trilogy takes place, is a real street in Paris and I’ve tried to make it authentic, but have taken liberties with building design, the businesses and denizens to suit my dramatic purposes.

5. Where do you do your research? Online or from books?
Online and in the field. To be honest, I’d be lost without my MacBook and an Internet connection. Having the answer to just about any question at your fingertips is amazing. I did all of my research for the 1968 scenes of the Paris student/worker riots in Conquering Venus and Remain In Light online, and then visited some of the flashpoints while I was in the city to pick up nuances and sense memories. The vast archive of online photos and maps has helped me create more authentic locations. I’m always pleased when a reader tells me that I captured a place so beautifully in my writing – that’s a great compliment for any writer.