Long-Term Relationships With Your Characters

One of the things authors decide when they sit down to write is how long and drawn out their relationship will be with particular characters.  There are short stories, novellas, novels, and then – at the far end of the spectrum, you find trilogies and the continuing series.  Each of these involves a level of commitment a little deeper than the last.  I’ve written about this before, and since I’m involved in a project that depends on my getting it right, I’m going to write about it again.  The series character.

As a reader, one of the biggest problems I have with a series of novels that features the same character is that, after a while, it seems to go stale.  Plot starts to be subjugated by the side-stories and the things people expect to see.  Authors take the lazy way out by spending time rehashing things their old readers know, and synopsizing things their new readers need to know – and it all falls apart.  People still follow and read, but after a while the creativity begins to grow pale and melt into the familiar.    I hate that – particularly when it involves a character that was very alive for me – and important.

So here I am – this post will go live on November 1^st, the day that Nanowrimo begins.  I will be starting a new novel – Heart of a Dragon – and it is book II in a series.  Actually, I don’t know if it will be book II in the end – it doesn’t follow chronologically after the story I wrote in “Vintage Soul,” which has been sub-titled Book I – and I have a plot / synopsis for a book that does fill that slot in time.  It will no doubt become a headache later on, but I’m writing the book that seems right at this time – the second story of Donovan DeChance.

I have decided to be proactive about the series itself.  I have someone who reads along and gathers up details – the town, the players, anything that might need to be revisited with accuracy.  A bible is being created that will help me build a world, and a life for the characters who inhabit that world.  It’s like an uber-outline, tying the books together with threads of hair-color and location.  There is Club Chaos, which borders the daytime and nighttime worlds of San Valencez and has doors opening to many places.  There are alleys that appear to end in brick walls, but actually lead to shortcuts through the city.  There is Santini Park, the Barrio – and there are many, many types of citizens.  The day and the night are fully populated, and it’s up to me to keep them that way – and to keep it interesting.

There is no reason that a series can’t remain fresh – that each book can’t stand alone and carry the reader along to new places and new surprises.  People lead extraordinary lives – and other people lead mundane, boring lives.  Sometimes the former becomes the latter over time, but you can’t allow it to happen to your characters, or it’s time to move on and let them find a nice suburban bookshelf to gather dust on. In other words, like any other relationship, if you want to keep things fresh it’s a matter of work, compromise, and attention to detail.  Characters will usually respond if given proper attention, and just because you’ve known them a very long time it doesn’t mean you can take them for granted.

With this in mind, I am determined to attack the books in this series plot first.  I want to be sure what I have is a solid book, and then figure out during the outlining process how it integrates with my “world” – and my characters.  I also want to investigate the past of my main characters.  Each of them should provide a good tale or two – Donovan in particular, as he’s lived a bit longer than is natural…well, quite a bit longer.  “Heart of a Dragon” is a novel I had conceived earlier, based on a short story I had published long ago – “In His Heart Live Dragons”.  It never felt right…but when I added Donovan into the mix and fleshed it out – it came to life.  Novel first, series character later.  For me, I think that will work best.

I am a big fan of the supernatural in fiction, so there will be vampire novels in the series – there are vampires in Vintage Soul.  There will be magic, and voodoo.  There will be ancient texts and computer files – familiars and ghouls.  I want to try taking a completely different direction with each book, while still building on the personality and character of the protagonist and his “posse”.  It’s a tough business.   I think it’s hard, sometimes, to keep characters interesting both for myself and readers for the length of a single book.  I know I worked hard on my first trilogy, “The Grails Covenant,” to be sure that the vampire Montrovant was as powerful and intriguing in book III as he was at the beginning of book I.  I gauge this sort of thing over time.  I still love that character, and could still write about him – if White Wolf didn’t own him, and another author hadn’t killed him off …

I believe Donovan DeChance, and the DeChance Chronicles will be around for some time to come.  They won’t be the only books that I write – that might be another key – but I want them to remain among my favorites.  Selfishly – I want them to be your favorites too.

That is, after all, why I write the stories.  I like to share.

On to Nanowrimo!

–DNW