I have overwhelmed myself now. I find the whole process daunting, to be honest, because I want so badly to do it well.
Problems I am faced with on the particular project I have chosen? There are several.
I have envisioned a sort of Sex in the City set in San Diego with 5 female characters based on the most consistent members of my book club. This puts my potential novel squarely in the "Chick Lit" category - a genre that is stereotypically formulaic and unrealistic. I can accept that to an extent, but since my characters are based on real people that I really care about I do not want to turn any of them into caricatures. However, the characters are still fiction and need to be separated from their real-life counterparts. But how much should be fiction, how much non-fiction?
Problem #1: How do I give the characters recognizable features of a real person without attributing every neurosis of that person to fiction?
Problem #2: Defining the scope and goals of the novel as a whole. Even in flitty, awful chick lit there are always a few key issues that are neatly wrapped up by the end. Right now I have a series of personality traits and singular events, but I'm still brainstorming the ways to pull those things together into one cohesive narrative. You can't sell a novel that is just a collection of random experiences between girlfriends, even if the dialog IS witty and insightful.
Problem #3: Defining each character's individual "voice" so that we don't overlap. So often in this type of novel the way that authors get around this problem is by categorizing their characters into predetermined archetypes - the bitch, the disapproving one, the pretty boy, the gay best friend, the slutty/flirtatious coworker. I really don't want my characters to be so superficial that someone could write a facebook quiz about them like they do about Sex in the City: "OMG! I'm such a Carrie!"
So I'm following the most common recommendation I've gotten so far: Read. Read everything in the genre. Readreadread. And now suddenly everything I would do normally has become "research." The characters go to the gym and the movies and out to clubs and bars and get hit on by ridiculous men and sexy men and nervous men. The characters make great decisions concerning their careers and stupid decisions concerning relationships. Or vice versa. They talk to each other - a lot. (Be on alert, oh girlfriends mine, my ears are perked up for good dialog.)
And now, sigh, I must return to either writing or reading and stop using my blog as an avoidance tool.
Sarah, I completely understand. As we talked about last week, I am attempting to write a novel as well. So far, I have five chapters. However, I must have abandoned at least three other storylines before I found one that was working for me. I did not want flat, predictable characters.
ReplyDeleteHere is what eventually helped me. It was reading, yes, but not the novel itself. I read the portion at the back of the novel where the author explained how she came up with the idea for her story. She said she asked herself, "What is the one thing I would not want to happen to me?" That changed everything for me. My answer to that question? Moving to Holtville, the small town where Moises is from. I thought about the women I would meet, how we would conflict. How I would feel utterly out of place.
It also changed how I thought about developing a character. For each female character in my story, I asked myself what her internal conflict would be, not her personality. It helped me. I found that the conflict inherently shaped my characters.
Maybe this will help :).