Writing is full of physical description being used as a short hand for personality. I’ve just realised that since I don’t use physical description then I’ve handicapped my characters. This, of course led to another discovery, I’m not very observant. I don’t watch people, I prefer to interact with them. But the activity becomes the focus of my attention and not the people around me. So I’m trying to describe a character now and I’m stumped. What does he actually look like and how does that mesh with his personality. Physical ‘ticks’ help keep characters separate in people’s minds. When I look around at the people I know, whatever ‘ticks’ they have are invisible to me. I am so used to them pausing before making a weighty pronouncement, or nibbling on finger nails or hair that I don’t see it as a ‘tick’. The tick doesn’t have to be intrusive or unpleasant, it could be what someone says when things are going well or bad.  The trick is to match the ‘tick’ to the personality and then make sure you don’t wear out it’s usefulness. Easier said then done.

I received the edited version of my book Beast Master. It was rather depressing all the changes that were suggested, but that is why you have an editor review it. Nina Munteanu made lots and lots of useful comments and even pointed out a grammatical usage which is different here than in the UK (which goes to show that spelling is not the only thing which is different). It will take a while for me to get through them all but one comment really stood out. She felt there wasn’t enough physical description, both for place and character. I found that both amusing and lowering because I had realised there was very little description of any kind and had done a huge edit to include description (mostly physical I have to admit), obviously not very successfully. Thinking about how important description is led me to think about why I didn’t include it in the book from the get go. That led me to thinking about books I read and the descriptions in them.

There is a lot of encouragement for budding authors to use literature as models for their own writing. In fact there are courses which are based around using the classics to help writers improve their own writing. I read a lot but physical description has never really impacted on me. I read for the story and the action. I couldn’t tell you what the main character of any of the books I read looks like, or what the land they are living in looks like. But I appreciate description which adds to suspense such as:

The suspense in this first stanza is wonderful.  This is followed by the highwayman’s description which I could care less about. I wanted to know what was going to happen, so although I read the next stanza, I barely paid attention. Why? The only reason I can give is that I am a greedy reader and want to know what happens next NOW! As a result, all those little details describing the highwayman are ignored by me, skipped over, consigned to the background, in my hurry to get to the action. And the upshot is I ignore them in my writing. So now, I have to figure out how NOT to ignore them and believe me, I find it difficult, very, very difficult to describe what I see in my mind’s eye.

PS Loreena Mckinnitt has put the above poem to music. It’s worth a listen.

Campbell talks not just about myth but also ritual, specifically rites of passage and the importance of them to humans.

….that the purpose and actual effect of these was to conduct people across those difficult thresholds of transformation that demand a change in the patterns not only of conscious but also of unconscious life (Campbell, Joseph. The hero with a Thousand Faces (Princeton, New Jersey: Bollingen Series XVII. Princeton University Press, 1968, pg.10)

These rites are not just for the individual partaking them but also for their families and communities. By taking part in the rite, the family members can also learn to accept the individual’s new role. This resonated with me. Two years ago my eldest daughter married. As is the case in many marriages at this time, she and her husband did everything themselves. We provided them with some financial assistance but the rest was done by them. It was a lovely wedding. As the mother of the bride I had absolutely nothing to do. My daughter would call to solicit an opinion but I was pretty sure she was asking other’s as well so it wasn’t anything noteworthy. I found it interesting how bereft I felt at the wedding and after. I chalked it up to the first child getting married, and thought no more about it.

Last fall my middle daughter married. She was married in the United Kingdom and since we live on the other side of the pond it was pretty much impossible for me to help her. I was so impressed that she included her future mother-in-law in many of the traditional bridal jaunts, like picking out the wedding gown. It came as a horrendous surprise, then, when I felt as bereft at her wedding as I had at the first daughters! It wasn’t until I read the section in Campbell about rites of passage that I realised that the whole messy wedding planning was a rite of passage for a mother and her daughter.

It has always been the prime function of mythology and rite to supply the symbols that carry the human spirit forward, in counteraction to those other constant human fantasies that tend to tie it back.  In fact, it may well be that the very high incidence of neuroticism among ourselves follows from the decline among us of such effective spiritual aid. (ibid p 11.)

The wedding planning provided an arena for the transformation of daughter to wife, from child who looked to our family unit for support to an adult creating her own family unit. But it also provided the transformation of the parents from seeing themselves as the ‘centre’ of their child’s life to seeing the child centering themselves on another person, their significant other. All these things are necessary and wonderful changes and the wedding is a rite of passage which marks it. But not having the opportunity to take part in the rite did not give me a chance to make my own transformation (and not because they did not wish it but because, for both of them, this is how weddings were planned by their contemporaries). Being the mother of the bride is not just a position in the wedding party, it represents a momentous change in the emotional fabric of the mother-daughter bond. The transformation happens on both sides of the mother-daughter equation and the wedding planning and day provides the rite of passage to mark this change for both.

One of the fun things that I have discovered about writing  is reading about writing. Right now I am reading The Hero with a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell. I have Nina Munteanu to thank for introducing me to the book. (The other thing I’ve discovered is how much fun a writing course is.)   The book is heavily steeped in myth, mythology, folktales and Jungian psychology. I took a course about Jung and archetypes in university, low these many years ago, so I was familiar with many of the concepts he talks about. Campbell has drawn heavily on archetypes, backing them up with examples from tales gathered from around the world.

The book traces the journey of the hero. When we think about a good story, be it fantasy, mystery, or just plain fiction, the thing that makes it good is the journey of the main character. The journey may be towards enlightenment, solving a mystery, or saving a world but the journey stripped to its barest essentials is the same: departure, search, return.

Departure is the moment when the journey is started, either willingly or unwillingly. The hero has to leave where she/he is most comfortable and go out into the unknown to find something of value, to themselves, their loved ones or their world. It doesn’t matter about the scope. However large or small the reason, it is the scary first step into the unknown.

The search is where the hero is faced with trials. It is during this search that the hero comes into his own, learns about her/himself and finds out what she/he is capable of. Sometimes the hero is accompanied by friends or mentors, sometimes they find them on their way.  And sometimes, they are alone. They are faced with betrayal and  rescue from unlikely sources.

The return is the tricky part. They go back to their roots which may or may not actually welcome them. New knowledge is presented in opposition to accepted knowing. OR they may decide not to go back at all.

I’m not yet finished with the book but I am finding it so very enjoyable to read. The best thing that I have got from it? That we all are on a hero’s journey, right now, many journeys. From going off to school , to new jobs, to new careers, new homes, new families,to meeting new friends. It is so exciting to think that life is a heroic adventure. If things don’t go as planned, and we know that not all adventures are fun, that this is just the trial part of our heroic journey. The people that we meet are there to help or hinder us. That what we gain will help not just us but other’s around us. That we return to where we feel safe or maybe comfortable and from there we set off once more on another journey until we embark on the ultimate journey, death.

It is easy to create a character. Of course naming them is difficult. I find it easy to include someone in the story to move the action along or to help the main character. Naming is really hard. I always seem to blank when I get to actually giving the name. I know what I want them to do but who are they? I expect that the who will come clear as they grow through the story, but unfortunately I still have to give them a name. I like names that somehow reflect the character, but then, if you don’t know who they are then how can the name reflect them? It is a conundrum.

My response is to name the character based on some characteristic that reflects their importance to the story or just make up a name. I like the characteristic approach better. I use web sites which are for baby names which will give the meaning and nationality of a name. Other times I’ll pick a characteristic and look it up in old English or French or Spanish. Sometimes I’ll just pick a name because it suits me.

Once a character has a name they have a tendency to take on a life of their own. I start to like them. Well today I killed one of them off. I’ve never killed a character I’ve written about. And in this case the character appeared in Beast Master and I’m about half way through In the Blood of the King and I’ve killed him! I can’t believe I’ve done it. One moment he’s there fighting and the next he’s flopping on the ground dead and no one has time to mourn, they have to escape.

When I realised that was where he was heading, it took me a whole day and night before I managed to sit down and write it. And before I actually did put the words to paper, (or fingers to keyboard) I wandered around the house a bit. But the deed was done and in a few words a character that had lived was gone! The power of the author, and surprisingly it was really hard to do. I’ve heard that sometimes writers will get rid of characters once their usefulness is gone. It’s easier I suppose then have them disappear and have the reader say, “what did happen to so and so?” But in this case, it was necessary for my main character to feel this death.

I look forward to what my beta readers will say when they get to that part.  I hope he’s the only one to die. Time will tell.