Tag Archives: Creating Characters

Where It’s At with Matt – Riverton Road Monday

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AliceOrr_AWrongWayHome_POD[1][1]My name is Matthew Kalli and I’m not usually an angry guy. Most people think I’m the steadiest most stable of my three brothers plus Bobby Rizzo who might as well be our brother. There’s just one thing in the world that makes me as angry as I am right now and her name is Kara Cartwright.

I love my life in Riverton, New York. I had a great time growing up in the North Country and it’s still a great place to be. Or it was anyway. Until Kara came back. She took off nine years ago and I said good riddance to her. She’d left me even before that to be with one of the lowest bottom feeders in town. So – like I said – good riddance.

Okay. I’m supposed to be honest here. Tell it straight from the hip. That’s my assignment. Which I guess means I have to admit I’ve thought about her every day since she left. But that doesn’t mean I want to think about her. It only means I can’t help thinking about her.

Every time I see a certain color of blue-green I can’t keep myself from seeing her eyes. Every time I see somebody in those heavy boots she used to clunk around in I can’t keep myself from remembering how slim her ankles are when she takes them off.

It didn’t help that I never stopped visiting her Aunt Dee in the big old house on Flower Street. I called her Aunt Dee too and loved her too. Then she passed away and left the house to Kara. Now I can’t drive by the place without missing Dee and knowing Kara lives there.

Both of those things damned near split my heart down the middle. And – since I don’t seem to have a choice but to be straight up here – I’ve also got to admit I know that’s why I’m mad. What man wants to let anybody see that his heart’s split in two? It’s better to be mad as hell. That way I don’t look like a sad sorry piece of crap.

So that’s where it’s at with me. By the way my mother said from the beginning Kara would bring me loads of trouble. You should listen to your mother. She’s usually right. Now that bottom feeder I mentioned – Anthony Benton – got himself murdered. Good riddance to him too.

Discover more about Matt in A Wrong Way Home – Matt & Kara’s Story – Book #1 of the Riverton Road Romantic Suspense Series featuring the Kalli family, the Kalli brothers and those who find safety and a warm welcome at Kalli Corner on Riverton Road. Buy this book at amazon.com/author/aliceorr. A Year of Summer Shadows – Book #2 out May 15.

Alice Orr – www.aliceorrbooks.com

 

All Scarlett All the Time – Orr What? Wednesday

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Scarlett O’Hara was a bad influence on the way I experienced real life romance in my younger days. A dark growling brute carries you to bed and pretty much rapes you. So you fall straight off in love with him. My first marriage got me over that screwed up way of thinking because I’d pretty much found that brute. Which wasn’t the least bit romantic after all.

On the upside – Scarlett will never stop being a positive influence on my romScarlett O'Haraance with life. My favorite Gone With the Wind scene isn’t the one where Rhett hefts Scarlett up the wide staircase with her red dressing gown trailing. The truly indelible scene for me is at the end of the first act just before the Intermission. I’ll bet you remember it too. Who could forget?

Scarlett stands on a hillside as daylight fades. She faces the devastated landscape of what was once her beautiful Tara. In the distance she sees the war ravaged wreck of the gracious antebellum mansion where her story began. She was beautiful then too with her waft waist and ivory complexion and perfectly coiffed hair. Now she’s ravaged too. But she is not devastated.

Scarlett balls her fist tight as she clutches what looks like a grimy radish root. She’s taken a bite of this filthy root then spat it out. With the vile taste of defeat in her mouth she finds what she will need to raise herself up from this rock bottom moment and the patch of scruffy earth where she now stands. She lifts her fist toward heaven and cries out.

“As God is my witness, I’ll never be hungry again.”

The first time I heard that I knew instantly what it was – a warrior cry. Even as a little girl I understood somehow that this was the spirit I would need in life – a warrior spirit. I was exactly right about that because it is the spirit we all need. We must be warriors on behalf of ourselves if we are to rise above our own inevitable scruffy-dirt-patch experiences.

What Scarlett failed to recognize of course is that one of the most effective ways of lifting ourselves is to lift others also. To become warriors on behalf of one another. Especially on behalf those whose fingers are trembling too badly at the moment to make a fist and brandish it at heaven. We take hold of their shaking fingers. We lift them high with ours and cry out.

“As God is my witness, we’ll never be defeated again, because we’ll never be alone again.”

So – we must work our fingers until they are strong and able. We don’t need a squashy ball either. Life offers lots of opportunity to exercise muscles of resistance. We practice making tight fists by shaking them at every obstacle in our path. We grow our own version of Scarlett’s warrior spirit and have it at the ready as we strike out toward each new scary challenge.

And if the pushback pushes back too hard at times and we have to go to ground for a bit. We simply say. “Fiddle dee dee. I’ll think about that tomorrow.” Because tomorrow is another warrior spirit day.

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 My latest story is A WRONG WAY HOME – Riverton Road Romantic Suspense Series  –  Book #1 – Matt & Kara’s Story. Available at amazon.com/author/aliceorr. This is my 12th novel and – believe me – it took a warrior spirit to get here.

Alice Orr – www.aliceorrbooks.com

About the Humanity – Ask Alice Saturday

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Benjamin Braddock in The GraduateQuestion: What is the most important element of good storytelling?

Answer: Mike Nichols was a master storyteller. I saw him in an interview where he was asked this same question and here’s his answer. “All we care about is the humanity.” And that’s a direct quote.

He was saying we must put the core of what makes us all human into the characters in our stories. Their dreams and hopes. Their disappointments and losses. Especially how they FEEL. All portrayed in some well written scenes.

Look at Nichols’ film The Graduate. All of that is there. Benjamin Braddock spends the entire story trying to figure out what his dreams and hopes might be. He stumbles into disappointment – mainly a big one he creates for himself by a huge error in judgment with Mrs. Robinson.

That blunder sets him up for the loss of his life – Elaine Robinson marrying somebody else. It FEELS like the loss of his life and that’s what matters. How it FEELS to the character. He triumphs in the end and we FEEL it with him even though he’s still as confused as ever.

The entire story is Benjamin Braddock. It could have been titled The Adventures of Benjamin Braddock. Each of our stories could be titled The Adventures of ________ (fill in the name of your main character). Or more accurately The Emotional Adventures of ­­­­­­________.

Because what our audience or our readership really cares about is the humanity of our characters. And how that humanity acts itself out – behaves and talks and most of all FEELS – in the story. In other words they care about the character’s Emotional Truth.

Emotional truth is what’s really going on in your story. The real truth of what’s happening to your characters. What your characters allow us to see and hear on their surfaces can conceal what they are truly feeling. Great stories are all about TRUE FEELINGS REVEALED.

This is exactly like real life and real life is the mother lode from which you mine your own emotional truth and refine it into storytelling treasure. The deeply felt emotions that are the beating heart of your story. The deeply felt emotions that make your reader feel deeply too.

I write romantic suspense novels. Scary things happen in my stories. The main character of the story I’m currently writing is assaulted by a brute. That happened to me once. My character and I both survived. Now we both benefit from my emotional truth of that awful experience.

The powerlessness while it was happening. The shock and numbness after it was over. The way others reacted. I didn’t need to take notes. All of that was branded on my humanity in indelible emotional ink. Now it is branded on my character’s humanity.

Unfortunately we’ve all had similar indelible experiences. We’ve been changed by them – traumatized by them – sometimes stopped in our tracks by them. Now we get to convert them into the very raw material of intense and dramatic and powerful storytelling.

You know what these stories are for you. Write them the way your heart FEELS them to be true which may differ from factual truth. Facts are verifiable. Feelings are not. Someone else’s emotional truth may vary from yours. That doesn’t make your truth any less valid.

Emotional Truth is individual. Your characters’ truths are what they honestly FEEL. That honesty gives your story authenticity. That authenticity gives your characters their humanity. It’s what makes your story really matter – to you as you write it and to your readers as they read it.

So dig down and dig deep. You’ll know when you hit the humanity mother lode because it will zing straight to your heart – just before you zing it straight to the page.

Find my books at amazon.com/author/aliceorr.

Alice Orr – www.aliceorrbooks.com