HALLIE EPHRON: The other day I was fresh out of new titles so I plucked one of my own books from my shelf: There Was an Old Woman. And I started to read.
From Page One I was stunned. The character I created back in 2012, Mina Yetner, looks and sounds a lot like the nonfictional ME, today.
The novel opens with elderly Mina reading the death notices as she drinks her morning tea. Among the “dearly departed” she finds the name of a neighbor and adds it to her ongoing (four pages so far) list of dead people she’s known.
So far so good. Feels like a good story brewing. (I do not keep a list of the dead people I’ve known.)
“Mina found lists calming, even this one. These days she couldn’t live without them. Some mornings she’d pick up her toothbrush to brush her teeth and realize it was already wet. She kept her Lipitor in a little plastic pillbox with compartments for each day of the week, though sometimes she had to check the newspaper to be sure what day it was.”
Now THAT paragraph could easily describe me today…
I continued to read the book, amazed at how much the character of Minda Yetner, whom I wrote so long ago, feels like me now.
How did I know?? Is writing a novel the same as creating a self fulfilling prophecy?
So, today’s question: Which character in which of your books is most nearly YOU? And is there an up-side or a down-side (or both) to that?
LUCY BURDETTE: I’m amazed as I look back at how much each main character contains a kernel of me. Cassie the golfer is determined yet hobbled by her doubts.
Rebecca Butterman is serious about her work, a little lonely, completely loyal. One scene written about the next door neighbor who ends up as victim, comes directly from my life when I was newly divorced.
Hayley Snow, of course, is devoted to her family even when they drive her crazy. And devoted to food. Here she is in the opening of the first book, An Appetite for Murder.
“Lots of people think they’d love to eat for a living. Me? I’d kill for it. Which makes total sense, coming from my family. FTD told my mother to say it with flowers, but she said it with food. Lost a pet? Your job? Your mind? Life always felt better with a serving of Mom’s braised short ribs or red velvet cake in your belly. In my family, we ate when happy or sad but especially, we ate when we were worried.”
JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: I agree, Lucy, there’s a bit of my in all my characters, because that’s how I create them. It’s the way I was taught when studying acting; you find the kernel of experience or emotion from your own life and use that as the starting point when fleshing out the character.
That being said, I was much more like Clare when I started writing my series at the end of the Twentieth Century! I was impulsive, asking what it meant to live out my faith in a secular world, and so, so familiar with being the outsider from my childhood and young adult years.
Now, a quarter century later, I’m much more like Russ. More cautious, definitely more skeptical, and someone who can’t think of anything more pleasing than staying in my little home town forever.
HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: Such a fun question! And the “me/not me” situation turned out to be pivotal in my writing.
When I was first trying to write PRIME TIME–my first book, in 2005!--the main character Charlotte McNally was a Boston TV reporter who worried she was getting too old-looking for her job. (You can see how I scraped the bottom for inspiration.)
But early on, I had a scene where she had to drive somewhere. And I thought: oh, this isn’t going to work, because I hate to drive, so Charlie hates to drive, and now she’ll be thinking about how to avoid it. Rats. In this scene, she really MUST drive.
And then it struck me. She’s a fictional character! She can LOVE to drive! I remember that moment, so clearly. It was the moment I realized I could make stuff up!
Charlie was as close to me as a character gets. Reporter Jane Ryland, in my Jane series, was definitely NOT me. Very different from me, except for her devotion to journalism But she is much braver.
After that, no one is ME, but of course, because of who I am and my personal experiences, no one could have created those particular characters but me.
RHYS BOWEN: I suppose we all put our values, our world-view into all our protagonists. It would be hard for me to write about someone I completely despised.
Both Molly and Lady Georgie have some of my traits. I created Molly because I wanted a feisty female sleuth with a strong sense of justice who doesn’t always know when to shut up or back off. That’s quite a lot like me in my younger years. Now I’m more mellow.
And Georgie? I have made her suffer through several of my more embarrassing situations like her brief and disastrous modeling career that mirrored mine. Also she tends to be clumsy when nervous. Also a little like me.
But they are both really young and I have to remember that they don’t have the wisdom or patience that comes with age.
On the other hand I really loved creating Mrs. Endicott for my upcoming stand-alone. A woman of middle age, the perfect British wife, who has lived her husband’s life and now has a chance to discover who she really is and what she wants. So empowering! And I loved who she becomes by the end of the story.
JENN MCKINLAY: Such an interesting question! I think there are elements of myself in many of my characters. Lindsey the librarian (occupation), Mel the cupcake baker (love of baked goods), Scarlett the hat shop owner (extrovert) – I see bits of me in all of them.
In my upcoming fantasy, I see skeptical me with childhood baggage in my heroine Zoe Ziakas.
But as for which one is most like me, I have no idea. Even in the romcoms I write, I see bits of me in the characters but not a close match to any of them as I give them drama and personally I loathe drama. LOL.
DEBORAH CROMBIE: When I first started writing my series, I felt like Duncan was my male alter ego, and I made an effort to make Gemma as different in personality traits as I could. He was more contemplative, more of an observer, while Gemma was prone to leap into situations feet first. She was quicker to judge but also quicker to form attachments that could sometimes affect her judgement.
Now I think they've both absorbed some of the other's traits, but they've also become more themselves. I'm sure I'm in the mix somewhere but I couldn't pick something out and say "that's me." On the other hand, I don't think we can imagine any characters that don't have some element of ourselves.
HALLIE: So today's question... Is there a character in a mystery novel that you can identify with? Sherlock? Hercule? Nancy Drew? Miss Marple? Stephanie Plum? Kinsey Milhone? V. I. Warshawski? Or....?
