“O inspiration, from where do you come?
Tell me your secret, why so mum?
Did I write these words upon the page?
Or was it with help from a wise old sage?”
–Linda Pendleton, author
I’m often asked how I get
my ideas for my characters in my novels.
I suppose I could say, “I have no idea, they just show up.” And they do, sometimes out of the blue, or in
a dream. Also they could often be a conglomerate
of specific, numerous, and complex personality traits we have observed in
others, some good, some not so good.
After all, no one is perfect, even the good guys.
I recall writing a manuscript
years back, my first or second one, when I was about four or five chapters into
it. I awakened one night with a new male
character in my head. I got out of bed
and went to find my pen and legal pad. In
those days I wrote longhand, and then used a manual typewriter. (Eh
gads, white-out and carbon, and many retypes!)
I wrote a
description of a young man in his mid-twenties.
He was dark, Italian, and good looking.
But he had a thin scar across the side of his face. I had no idea why a scar would be marring his
good looks, but I did not question it. I
gave him the scar on the side of his face, which went from the outer edge of his
eyebrow and down across his cheek to his jaw line.
As I continued writing the
novel I was to discover, several chapters later, why he had the scar on his
face. While a young teenager in Sicily, he
had been abused and lashed by an older man who was a blacksmith and
farrier. The man had snapped a horse whip
resulting in the searing cut to his face. And the
blacksmith was again in his life in those later chapters.
I was surprised when the
reason for the scar came about, as I had no conscious idea of why I “saw” him
with the scar when he first came into my mind that night. But that is the fun of writing. Many times our characters write our stories
if we step back and stay out of the way.
The question a lot of
people ask me is if I put people I know
in my books. The answer would be
no. The character or characters I create
within my own mind and who find their way onto the pages of my books may be
nothing more than a spark of creation from my own view of life, or from pieces
of others who may have come in and out of my life, whether it be in a passing
glance, a momentary speck of passion, an irritation, a voice, a song, a smile,
a frown, or even a single word.
Life itself presents
challenges, drama, pain, joy, grief, wonder, and more, and a successful
novelist is called upon to examine and develop deeper insights into the moving
forces that power creativity. Writing is an art, and it is up to the artist to
produce a living image of reality. The
author is in charge of his or her own fictional world, and that fictional world
needs to be understandable, coherent, and credible.
Although writing can be a
lonely process, the writer and the characters he or she creates, are
right there, alive and growing through the pages of the novel. And it is the author’s hope that readers will
get to know the characters and enjoy their roles within the story.
~Linda
