Character Rights

Can literary characters file complaints for the treatment they receive from an author?

Case in point, Lynn Carter, the love interest in my current work-in-progress, is living a nightmare. She’s been kidnapped, injured on the job, and expected to perform dangerous feats of physical strength and endurance without the proper training. On top of that, she’ll disappoint many people if she doesn’t show up at the scheduled time to perform her maid-of-honor duties in a few days.

Admittedly, I am interfering with her personal activities for which she has pre-approved vacation time. And she wasn’t informed of the hazards of the plot and setting when she took the job.

I think Lynn filed a complaint with the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. OSHA would never approve of the hazards in my book’s plot and setting. They left a message on my voicemail last week – something about a workplace inspection.

As the author, am I legally responsible for characters’ health, missed commitments, and any lasting psychological impact my plot lines might have on them?

 

Life Changes

The Bedroom (1889) by Vincent Van Gogh

When my adult son asked to move back home, I envisioned pushing the queen size guest bed into the corner so he could set up his desk and work - with the rest of his stuff in a local storage unit.

Nope. His vision was stripping the room bare of furniture, then refilling it with a king size bed, a king size desk, a small couch, and a 60-inch flat screen tv. Oh, yeah, and the monster speakers. (I may need to get hearing aids so I can turn them off when the volume from his room gets too loud.)

I’m actually looking forward to the move. I predict he’ll upgrade the internet on the first day. I have six online writer’s meetings a month, and either my screen freezes, or I get the dreaded “Your internet connection is unstable” message at least half-a-dozen times an hour.

I’ll get a live-in dog sitter for when I travel, and he’s looking forward to organizing my garage. What’s not to love? 

 

Beyond Word Count

The word count for my current work-in-progress is hardly growing, and because of the way I write, I can’t look at that number for gratification.

I don’t write sequentially from the story’s opening sentence through ‘The End.’ I revise scenes I’ve written as I go along before I’ve completed the manuscript’s first draft. The day’s ending word count is often lower than when I began.

What the word count doesn’t show, though, is the impact the revisions have made to my story. I tweak the plot, develop characters, and strengthen scenes.

When I feel the need for authorial gratification, I read from the beginning and immerse myself in the story. I’m always amazed at the manuscript’s improvement, and I feel inspired to forge ahead.

Unusual Jobs

I took a literary side trip with a short supernatural piece I wrote for a themed anthology. In it, a character needed employment, so I searched the internet for unusual jobs. These are some of my favorites.

• Dog food taster
• Fortune cookie writer
• Herb strewer
• Hippotherapist
• Iceberg mover
• Marmite taster

But with the writing’s supernatural slant, I was hoping to find job titles more along these lines:

• Alchemist
• Astral projectionist for the Cannes Film Festival
• Cephalopodiatrist
• Ghost biographer (not to be confused with ghost writer)
• Piranha dentist

Now that post-pandemic hiring is on the rise, I wonder how many of these job titles might be filled.

Letter from Jail

Detective Scott McGregor’s best friend, Ryan Talbrook, will be arrested in the first Lynn Carter cozy mystery. I tried to imagine what incarceration would be like and wrote this letter from jail.

Dearest Brother,

I am ashamed to admit I have been arrested twice in the past week and am writing this from an 8x10 jail cell.

The first arrest was for loitering in the frozen food aisle at the grocery store during this heat wave. My defense of being old and having trouble remembering what I was there to buy was not believed by the judge who had heard the same defense by the seven other customers picked up at the same time. (Three of them are in the cell with me. We’ve been sharing recipes.)

My second arrest was for biological terrorism using the US Postal Service. The main Portland P.O. sorting station was evacuated yesterday. They traced the return address of the stink bomb to me. I was charged with violating the Stilton Act of 1997 which states “no stinky cheese should be mailed through the U.S. Postal System without proper refrigeration.” How did I know it would take 17 days for the cheese (your birthday present) to travel from HB to Astoria? I’d included an entire tray of ice.

So, Dearest Brother, Have a Great Birthday! and if you can spare the time, please call the Feds and give me a (good) character reference. Although I can raise the bail, they won’t let me out on my own recognizance.

In other words, another year, still no present.

Your Loving Sister,

Inmate 727

 

New Series, New Dog

Berger Soil Images: Berger Picard Mix

I grieved when I made the decision to skip my planned fourth Detective McGregor mystery. The second and third mysteries occurred out of town and McGregor wasn’t the lead detective. McGregor’s best friend is the prime suspect in the fourth mystery, so conflict of interest prevents McGregor working that case as well.

The series arc wouldn’t suffer without this story. But I liked the basic plotline (which was already developed), the setting, and the title.

It was a sticky situation, but with my first cup of tea in hand and my trusty dog beside me, a win-win solution crystalized in my mind. A spin-off cozy series featuring Lynn Carter, Scott McGregor’s girlfriend!

With a few minor modifications to several scenes, and a one-word change in the title, the intended fourth book in a detective mystery series is now the first book in a cozy series. Another out-of-town McGregor mystery was immediately reassigned as the second Lynn Carter Cozy.

And for a bit of eye candy, meet Maisie, Lynn Carter’s Berger Picard mix. Also known as a Picardy Shepherd, this is the breed in the movie ‘Because of Winn-Dixie.’

Creativity

Developing new plot ideas gets easier with practice.

I started with one scene idea. It was an image in my mind when I woke one morning. Brainstorming converted that image into a plot. The plot came alive and converted itself into a series.

Once my imagination and creativity muscles got a little exercise, they took over. Story ideas pop up unexpectedly. Last week, for example, the weather was hot and humid. As I tossed and turned trying to sleep, my discomfort transformed into an opening scene for a new mystery story idea. Not all the ideas are keepers, and some are blended into other stories as scenes or sub-plots.

A year or so after I started writing, I bought a new bookshelf and recycled some old binders to keep my writing ideas organized. It helped, but I still jot ideas in notebooks scattered around my house and never quite seem to get them added to a binder.

The ideas pile up faster than the publications. So far, I’ve published two mysteries, one children’s book, and short contributions to several anthologies. If my entire idea collection was published, I’d need a larger bookshelf.