Over-the-top, But Under the Rejection Radar:

Making Quirky, Bigger-than-life Characters Believable

  

Recently, my non-fiction writing partner, Faye Hughes, and I did a workshop at the Romantic Times Convention.  I had an Australian bookseller come up to me post-workshop and say, “After reading several books by the same author, booksellers and readers start to imagine what an author is really like.  Many times when we meet the author we realize how wrong we were.  But not with you.  You are just as we imagined you’d be.”

 

Now, let’s stop and consider this for a just a second.  You see, I write over-the-top, southern, quirky characters who have an even quirkier family.  One of my characters was a photographer who filled her house with talking appliances—another was a perfectionist who just happened to be a nervous puker.  Then there was a fidgeting mystery writer who had a vitamin C obsession.   

 

Then comes Macy Tucker, in my latest release, Gotcha!

Macy is a smart-mouthed pizza delivery girl/law student who allows only two tissues for crying jags for fear she’ll end up being like her mom.  Macy’s history with men reads a bit like a daytime talk show where words are bleeped out, noses are broken, and chairs are thrown. 

 

So knowing this about my characters, I stood in front of that bookseller, dressed in my best suit, my hair freshly coifed, watching my Ps and Qs, keeping my southernisms of “ain’t” and “fixin’” to myself, and I wanted to claim it was all fiction.  But then I had to face the cold, hard facts. In spite of all my efforts to appear normal, people had figured me out.

 

I have moments in which I am as crazy, just as over-the-top as my characters.  Some of you might be thinking, well, this is all fine and good, but I’m not a fruitcake, yet I’d still like to write about fruitcakes.  Well, don’t panic.  You don’t have to be whacky to write whacky.  There is a method to my madness, and to writing madness.

 

The reason I bring up my own quirkiness is to make a point.  Whenever I get myself in a crazy, zany situation, there are generally four things involved that lead me, or explain my adventure into chaos: logic, emotion, universal truth, and motivation.  The method to madness, to writing over the top characters, and making the characters believable, all lies in these four things as well as the addition of a character’s own sense of befuddlement.  And making your over-the-top characters believable is generally the hardest part to getting them past an editor and a reader.

 

 

·         Logic

 

You may not think logic will play a part in the over-the-top situations with your zany characters, but you’re wrong.  While the situation may come off illogical, for the character to appear believable they need to use some form of logic for their behavior.  The reader, while they may be laughing at the off-the-chart situation in which your character arrives at, they see the character’s thought process, making the character and their reactions believable.  When writing an off-the-wall scene, follow the character’s logical thought process into the illogical action.

 

And example of this is my character in DIVORCED, DESPERATE and DELICIOUS when she grabs a singing fish off the wall to take on the man who is holding her at gun point.  My character thinks about the bat in the garage being a better weapon, but she’s not in the garage; she thinks about the lamp being a better choice, but she can’t get to the lamp.  The only thing she has within her reach is the singing fish.  It’s illogical, and over the top, but her reasoning makes it appear logical.   

 

·         Emotion

 

Whether it’s logical or not, emotion drives us.  And by allowing the reader to feel the character’s emotions, the character’s illogical/zany actions or decisions will appear not only believable but logical. How many times have you heard someone say, “I can’t believe they did that, but then again, they were so emotional they just weren’t thinking straight?”  So emotion in itself is a logical reason for acting illogical.  Even murder can be explained and the punishment lessoned by using the excuse of temporary insanity, which is generally a direct result of an emotional overload.

 

In GOTCHA! my heroine is constantly getting herself in trouble.  Like the time she pretends to deliver pizzas as she investigates a couple of missing convicts and winds up face to face with a bad guy and has to defend herself using her ball-busting knee and a Buddha statue. It was a stupid situation to get herself in, but her emotional state of mind, desperately wanting to find her brother, also an escaped convict, and get him back in jail before he got himself killed drives her to do some less than brilliant things. 

 

 

·         Universal Truth

 

Whatever bizarre situation you write, if there is some universal truth in it that you have brought to the reader’s mind, something at the core of the story that is accepted as true by the majority of people, then the reader will more than likely suspend belief.  Some universal truths are not even always true, but they are believed to be true.  A good example of this is a stereotype.  If you have a character who has an over-the-top obsession of always being exact, he may not come across as real until you add the universal truth of him being an engineer.  Because engineers are considered to be obsessively precise, the character is suddenly viewed as believable. 

 

Another way universal truth comes into play with over-the-top characters and scenes is what I call the Seinfeld method.  Start with the kernel of truth, then slowly let it built to the quirky level.  The Seinfeld show did this with almost every episode.  They took a universal truth, something we all have dealt with, i.e., a low talker.  Don’t we all know someone whose voice is so low that speaking to them over the phone is difficult, or that you have to lean close to hear their words?  Who hasn’t met the newborn baby that everyone was saying is beautiful, but one look at the child and he reminds you of an old congressman.  If you use a universal truth in a scene and write it in a way most everyone can relate, this will allow you to introduce loads of off-the-chart humor that will not only be believable, but even funnier because the reader will identify.

 

In WEDDINGS CAN BE MURDER, my heroine’s nervous puking problem and my hero’s sympathetic puking problem are both universal truths slightly exaggerated. It’s a universal truth that when nervous, some people suffer from nausea.  It’s also a universal truth that some people can’t hear another person tossing their lunch up without joining in on the party.  By taking these universal truths and building them up just a bit, I created some very funny character traits.       

 

·         Motivation

 

Why do your characters do what they do?  Behind every action, even one that is bizarre, is generally a motivation. The crazier my situation or a character trait, the more grounded and emotional I make the motivation.  When a reader understands why a character is doing something, they are more likely to believe in them, no matter how crazy the situation or trait might be. 

 

Let’s say I have a quirky character who, every time she confronts conflict, is seen running into her office and doing a backwards flip.  I will give her a real, emotional reason for having this crazy flaw.  Let’s say, that her parents died when she was eight in a tragic accident.  And her grandma, who raised her, was a gymnast and a gymnast trainer.  So as a child, her grandma was constantly telling her, “When you feel as if your world is off kilter, go ahead and do a backwards flip and when you land on your feet, you’ll have a better idea how to deal with the problems.”  So as a child, being raised at a gym, she did backward flips the same way someone else would bite their nails or grab a chocolate bar.

 

Whenever your characters do something odd, or expose a very unique character trait, delve through their backgrounds and find out what is motivating them to be who they are and act the way they act.  Creating and showing a character’s heart-rending motivation to the reader will not only make them believable but lovable to the reader.

 

In DIVORCED, DESPERATE, AND DATING, my character’s vitamin C obsession is caused by the fact that when young, her father died from a complication of a common cold.  Because vitamin C is known to prevent colds, she now insists everyone she knows and loves take the daily dose to prevent a cold that could possibly take the loved one from her life.         

 

·         A Character’s Own Sense of Befuddlement

 

Whenever your characters are doing something crazy, or find themselves in a crazy situation, make sure they react to and recognize the madness of the moment.  Have them question their own sanity.  Have them ponder if anyone will ever believe the story.  Have them second guess their decisions, or wish they could have bit their tongue instead of telling their boss that he had the intelligence of a toad on muscle relaxers and he should get the wart burned off his nose and stop wearing his pants up under his chin.  People do crazy things. But when people go bat-shit crazy, they usually have an ‘Oh-shit’ moment that follows.  Make sure your characters have their oh-shit moments. 

 

If a character realizes and acknowledges that they went completely crazy, or that they found themselves in a freaking weird situation, then the reader will think, yup, that character did that, or yes, that was really weird, but they will keep reading and believing, because the character admitted the oddity themselves.  And face it, who hasn’t done something stupid, or found themselves in a strange situation every now and then?

 

So, there you have it.  Not only the way I create my characters, but my excuses for being half-whacky myself.  I’m a logical person, but my logic sometimes seems to work off kilter compared everyone else’s logic meter.  I’m emotional.  Hey, I’m a writer, aren’t we all a bit emotional?  I love the universal truths, if that means I’m bit a gullible, so be it!  I DO NOT lack in motivation, my own back story reads worse than one of my novels.  Seriously, my mom accidentally stole a car, my dad accidentally built a bomb, my cousin, the ex-mailman, is the reason the word “POSTAL” came into being.  He did 20 years.    Yup, I come from good stock–a long line of gamblers and moonshiners, with a few murderers thrown in for laughs.  No doubt about it, I’ve got all the motivation I need to be quirky.  And those oh-shit moments, I have them daily.

 

Anyway, today I’m giving away a signed copy of GOTCHA! and a few neat promotional items to one lucky commenter.  So make sure you post.  Tell me about some of your character’s oh-shit moments or if you’re brave enough, share your own, or tell me about your character’s, or your own, motivations for doing something stupid.

 

If you’d like to read another funny post about one of my quirky situations/days pop over to www.dorchesterpub.com to their special feature section.  You’ll also see a contest to win basket of Christie Craig books and goodies.

 

Thanks for having me.