Creating Credible Fiction

Andrew E. Kaufman, author of While the Savage Sleeps, and the upcoming book, The Lion, The Lamb, The Hunted, wrote an interesting blog post, “Why the Decision to Kill off a Character can be Murder on an Author.”

Andrew said it well! Fiction has to be larger than life and credible. We have to build a realistic world as we create our stories. So I agree with his comment: “Our job, although writers of fiction, is to depict life in a realistic manner, make the reader forget she's actually reading.”

Our characters tell the story they want to tell and sometimes it can be difficult to kill of one of the characters. But the important thing in writing realistic characters is that even the bad guys may have some redeeming features. That makes them human. My husband, Don Pendleton, the “father of action/adventure,” was very good at that. Sometimes you hated when his bad guys were knocked off. He wrote in his book, Metaphysics of the Novel: The Inner Workings of a Novel and a Novelist:
“If you have villains in your story make sure you have made them powerful and resourceful, not reduced to the idiot level. In real life, the bad guys are highly formidable and dangerous individuals. Real life is full of grim games played by grim people. So should your fictional world be, if that is the type of story you are presenting. Do not indulge in some juvenile misunderstanding of the forces that move and shake this world. Some people are dangerous, not because a gun is in their hand, but because something cold and deadly is in their hearts. So make sure you are presenting a credible world with the world of your novel.”

After all, we are writing about the human situation, no matter what predicaments we place our characters in. 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 own fictional world, and that fictional world needs to be understandable, coherent, and credible. But it is our own story to create, and not everybody may like it. And that is just fine.

~Linda

Dr. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, Aunt Willie, and Catherine Winter, PI, Could Easily Be "Superman!"

My Aunt Loretta, age 89

Today I was thinking abut women, women who I have either personally known or who I have admired. Women who have been intelligent, daring, curious, humorous, outspoken, independent, strong, and determined. Women who I consider to be heroes.

The first woman who comes to mind is the late Elisabeth Kubler Ross, M.D. I first saw her on television shortly after her book “On Death and Dying” was published. I admired the way she put her medical career to the test by standing up for what she believed. Years later I had the opportunity to meet her and spend time with her. That was in 1989 not long after she gave my husband Don Pendleton and I an endorsement for our book, “To Dance With Angels.” When Don nearly died from a heart attack and brain hemorrhage in 1991, Elisabeth was there for me by phone to tell me how important it was for me to stay centered and rested as I might be called upon to make a life/death medical decision and no matter what happened to Don, he would be just fine. I was thankful for that advice at a very difficult time. Then in about 1996 or so, I had the opportunity to spend an afternoon with her at her home in Arizona. Just her and I. She’d had a stroke, but we shared time together, laughing, eating chocolates, and me putting food out for her coyotes. I shared with her the impact her grief work had on my life. It was a day I will always remember. She was a hero to me: outspoken, determined, not afraid to write and speak of her spiritual experiences, and dedicated to her work. An impressive and inspiring woman.

Another woman who had that innate determination, humor, intelligence, and curiosity about life was my Aunt Loretta, Willie, as I always called her. She died in 1994 at the age of 97. I’ve written about her before. From horse and buggy to rockets to the moon and beyond–all in one lifetime. She was one of those to have seen all this splendid technology unfold before her very eyes. Don and I spoke with her shortly before her death about her long life and all the changes that had taken place since her days as a little girl in the small coal mining towns of Pennsylvania and Colorado at the turn of the twentieth century. She told us, "Yes, I have seen it all from the beginning–automobiles, jet airplanes, television, man on the moon, those computers–so much–and it has been a good life."

So in one lifetime, and five-generations, the advances of mankind have been tremendous. Her great-great grand-children now have high-speed computers beguiling them into a world of "virtual reality" with both educational and entertainment values, state-of-the-art medical technology available to them if the need arises, satellite television programming, DVR's, digitally recorded music, and the vision that they may one day be taking a pleasure cruise to a destination beyond our planet Earth and into the far reaches of space instead of jetting to Europe for the summer.

Aunt Willie told us that it had been a good life but we know that it was her attitude that made it so because she had endured a lot of suffering and pain in those ninety-seven years. It is hard to say how many of us could have come through it all with such strength, dignity, grace, and humor.

These two women personified the word hero.

I believe it was the inspiration of these two older women, and women like them, that led me to create the personality of my fictional character, Catherine Winter in my Catherine Winter, Private Investigator Series. I believe I modeled her after the likes of Elisabeth and Willie. If you read my "Shattered Lens" and "Fractured Image," let me know if you see those traits in Catherine: daring, curious, intelligent, humorous, outspoken, and determined. In my mind, when I conceived Catherine Winter, I envisioned the determination and strength of a hero. She does not wear a "Superman" costume but a “skin” that bounces off disappointments, failures, and set-backs, and loves to tease and laugh, not only laugh with you, but even at herself.

~Linda

Creating Fictional Characters

“The writer is always working from his own individual world view, whatever the subject, so an honest writer cannot conceal himself in the work no matter how hard he may try to do so.” ~Don Pendleton (1927–1995)

A friend asked me the other day if my new fictional character, Private Investigator, Catherine Winter, from my book, Shattered Lens, was modeled after anyone I know. My answer was, “Not really.”

Catherine Winter is a strong woman, dedicated to her work, trusting of her intuition, and has seen it all...horrific murders, corruption, the corporate evils, the drugs, illicit sex, and downfalls of well-known celebrities and politicians.

She’s in her early sixties, a Southern California Private Investigator who has been in the business for many years, working alongside her husband in their PI Agency. After he passed away seven years ago, she kept the business going and feels she couldn’t give up her investigative work and cannot even conceive of doing anything else.

She has said, “As long as arthritis doesn’t lock up my joints or cataracts don’t keep my eyes from hitting the bulls-eye with a .357 slug then my shingle will stay on my door—C. Winter, Private Investigator.”

She also said this: “In this business you try your best to harden yourself to looking death straight in the eye but every time you are forced to face it you realize how damn vulnerable each of us are.”

I like the fictional characters I put in my novels...even the bad guys I create. I am now writing a second Catherine Winter novel, and I never know what characters will pop in and want a role in the story.

My friend is the second person who has asked me recently about the characters in my books. The other friend asked if he was in my book, Shattered Lens. I laughed and told him he was not. He wondered if I put people I knew in my stories. Again I said, “Not really.”

But the real answer is 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 word.

I also asked my male friend what he would like to be in my book--what kind of character? I failed to tell him I could envision him as a romantic lead, a hero, or a knight in shining armor astride a white stallion, galloping off into the sunset with the woman he has rescued.

But if he actually ends up in any of my books, he won’t recognize himself, that is, unless he notices the male character with a small dimple when he smiles, or a guy with a bit of a tease in his voice, or the tall, good looking man who wins the heart of the little kid, or the heart of a mistreated puppy.

But heck, if I gave him a bigger role than that it will ruin the mystery of it all. Won’t it?

~Linda