Quirky, Crazy, or Plain Off Their Rockers

by Sylvie Fox

Until last month, my husband hadn’t read a book of mine in nearly a decade. But he got a free Android tablet and started reading on his way to work. He asked for a couple of my books, and I uploaded them for him.

After a few days of no reaction, I didn’t think much about it. On night as I was drifting off, he asked me. “Who are these people you write about.? Are they based on anyone we know?”

Waking myself, and turning over, I listened to his thoughts on the characters. He thought a lot of them were just plain nuts.

To say life is boring here at Casa Fox in Los Angeles, would be an understatement. I like a life free of drama. For writing, and reading, however—bring it on.

Why I like to read about quirky or nutty characters is easy to answer. Who doesn’t like to be a voyeur? I love to walk neighborhoods at night imagining what goes on behind the drapes. That curiosity translates to my writing.

I like to explore the lives of fictional people who push boundaries. Whether that push be lawful or not, moral or not, or even pathological or not.

I recently finished a book where the hero is a bit of a womanizer (to put it in the kindest possible way). Before writing his story, I had to think long and hard about why someone would act like that. What motivated him to get up every day and seek out the affection of random women.

It was an interesting journey, and Raphael Augustine the hero of my forthcoming release, Don’t Judge Me took shape.

I also recently completed a book (Under Color of Law) with a juvenile court judge who takes advantage of women who have cases before him. If they want to keep their children out of jail or foster care, they have to take care of Judge Eamon Brody first.

Abuse of power happens all the time, but what makes a man (or woman) take their control to such an extreme? In my world dominated by house repairs, dog walking, and child car pools, delving into the deranged mind of this man was a fascinating way to pass the day.

And in romance, the more difficult the heroine, the better. I like to think of the women in my books as prickly pears. A hero who can get beyond all the crazy hair (Sophie Reid in Unlikely), and off putting behavior (Hannah Keesling of The Good Enough Husband takes the cake) of my heroines, deserves the prize—finding a woman underneath who’s worthy of their love.

That’s the bottom line, I think. Each character, no matter how outsized their behavior, is deserving of our reading and writing time, a little consideration, and often our love.

So, What's Up With 'So'?

Speech has fashion trends, too.

By Cindy Jones

Why do people start sentences with the word 'so' and why do I feel compelled to understand this linguistic trend?  At first, I was only dimly aware of the word 'so' popping up at the beginning of non-interrogatory sentences.  So, I'm not going to the party at the lake.  Then I read this post on Facebook: So we had dinner at the museum. Finally, when a young woman stood at a podium and said, So we're having a fundraising event..., I said to myself: what's up with 'so'?

How did this word, formerly used as a conjunction, intensifier, and adverb suddenly ascend to the position of prominence at the beginning of sentences?  What caused 'so' to merit the privilege of initiating a thought and introducing content?

Upon consideration, the use of the word 'so' at the beginning of a sentence seemed to imply that the speaker and I were midstream in an ongoing conversation--even though we weren't.  Starting with 'so' allows the speaker to skip the work of orienting the listener with the implied information leading to whatever conclusion starts the conversation.  Perhaps people who say 'so' are busy and need to conserve words by cutting conjunctions in half. Or maybe there is a larger trend in speech away from conventional conversation toward more casual, rule-free communication.  People who put 'so' at the beginning of a sentence are in tune with the latest speech fashion: cool.

Even if you don't lay awake at night pondering the 'so' epidemic, you might be interested to know that professionals can pinpoint the origin of a linguistic trend with the same accuracy investigators can trace a forest fire to a cigarette butt thrown from a car at a precise time and place.

In a NYT essay by Anan Giriharadas I learned that while writing his book, The New New Thing, Michael Lewis found 'so' endemic to Silicon Valley.  Microsoft employees claimed it as indigenous to Redmond, Washington, with the rest of their rich lexicon of geek-speak and corporate jive.  Employees at Hewlett Packard survived boring meetings by counting the number of 'so's.  A joke even circulated: What's the sound of Santa Claus at an HP Christmas party? "So so so!"...In immigrant-filled technology firms, the word 'so' democratized talk by replacing a world of transitions with a catchall. 

So why do I care that 'so' is starting sentences? (I did it).  Because writers are wired to notice things, especially things that influence human dynamics such as a change in speech fashion.  Close observation of the choices a person makes in personal expression--whether in attire or speech--is key to understanding character, motivation, and, yes, fears.  

Bonus speech fashion trivia:  Did you know the phrase 'just sayin' is the equivalent of 'with all due respect'?

Cindy Jones is the author of My Jane Austen Summer, the story of a young woman who thinks she may have realized her dream of living in a novel when she is invited to participate in a Jane Austen Literary Festival.  Her problems follow her to England where she must change her ways or face the fate of so many of Jane Austen’s secondary characters, destined to repeat the same mistakes over and over again.

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All I really need to know about writing women's fiction, I learned from Gone with the Wind

by Maria Geraci

When I first started writing and getting my work critiqued, I noticed a pattern among the comments.

“This woman is too stupid to live.”

“Would she really do that?”

“This kind of makes her… unsympathetic.”

In my novels, my female protagonist is the only voice heard on the page. If she’s not someone the reader cares about, then they aren’t going to care about the story. Writing “nice” girls might make a reader feel sympathetic, but they can also make for boring characters. And an overly aggressive heroine who your audience wants brought down a notch or two, isn’t the answer either.

So how did I learn to write a character that the reader will identify with and want to read about and root for till the end?

Everything I learned about writing strong, yet vulnerable female characters I got from reading and watching Gone with the Wind. In between those pages and on the screen is a veritable wealth of wisdom. Like...

Never make your heroine so beautiful that she stops traffic (or draws dozens of beaus to her side at the country picnic).

Give your heroine someone to love/care about other than herself. A reckless father or a decaying mansion will do. Readers love characters with passion.

When someone breaks into the house, have her get a gun. Or a fireplace poker.

Anyone who can look at curtains and sees a cocktail dress, deserves her own book.

Giving birth while a city is burning, being bombed, or without an epidural, makes you a kick ass heroine. Do write those.

Never write a male character named Ashley and expect your audience to buy that he could ever be the hero.

And finally, don't let your heroine go after her best friend's guy. That's kind of unforgivable. Unless you're Emily Giffin. Then you can somehow manage to pull this off and make the book into a NY Times best seller.

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Maria Geraci is the author of fun, romantic women's fiction. Her third novel, The Boyfriend of the Month Club, comes out December, 2010. Visit her website at http://www.mariageraci.com/.