Sometimes I have unrealistic expectations, thinking that I should have known my characters before ever drafting, that they should be so clear to me that it would be impossible to imagine them any other way.

Instead, they seem to evolve, as does the story. What I write in one draft can turn out to be completely wrong for that character in the next draft — or completely wrong for the story I’m trying to tell. And I keep changing my mind bit by bit about just what that story is!

In other words, characters and story are elusive things, and not only do they have to be pinned down and made real, but they have to work together.

What haunts me especially is when I think of books I’ve read where even just one character did not feel real, coming across too generic. When that happens, it ruins the book for me! I certainly don’t want my book to be that way. I need to get to the point Shannon describes, where by the final draft both story and characters are KNOWN.

I’d been stuck on a particularly crucial scene in my novel for a long time. With each draft, I’d try writing it a different way, trying to channel the two characters involved and figure out how the two of them would fare in this confrontation. But yesterday I realized that even though I’d scrapped the scene and started over multiple times, I always brought it to the same conclusion: one character wanted something and the other character said no.

Working within those constraints, I’d agonized over how to make it work. I knew what I wanted the scene to feel like, having readers sympathize with both sides and feel the desperation of both sides, but I couldn’t make it happen.

Finally yesterday I asked myself, “Would she really just say no, flat out, end of discussion?” That actually didn’t seem like her at all. But I knew that she wouldn’t say yes either, with so much at stake and with her loyalties firmly elsewhere.

That’s when I realized what she would say: “I need to think about it.”

So simple! And yet perfect: enhancing both story and characters. The other character struggles with patience, so what a great way to test that patience. And it creates a new dynamic going into the next scene that I think will help the flow of the story.

I love it when it clicks — when a solution pulls multiple aspects together, like synergy.

So I’m going to try not to stress about not being sure of my characters from the beginning and just enjoy the process of finding all the right matches — the ones that make story and character gel.

Readers, can you tell when a character hasn’t been fleshed out enough? How does it affect your enjoyment of the story? Writers, what do you do to know your characters? Do they gradually become three-dimensional as your story evolves, or do you begin with them fully formed? I’d love to hear everyone’s thoughts.

Leave a comment!

A photo from Old House Online that made me think of you. How great you and I would look together in this setting!

In that quirk of Mormondom, the yearly rotating schedule, it felt like ages since I’ve had you to myself. The 1pm church time — lasting until 4pm! — made me rush past you with barely a chance for a wistful glance, as I had a strict appointment with Dinner Prep right afterward (for our exercise routine, set to the rhythm of chopping and sizzling and boiling).

But now! Now that it’s our congregation’s turn to conclude at noon, three weeks in a row I’ve had the pleasure of your company again, the gift of your lavish hospitality. You are the sort of friend everyone needs: so generous and undemanding. Last week’s sweater you helped me crochet turned out well! And the book I had today: excellent. I’m indebted to you for the hours to relax with it. How good that felt!

(Incidentally, I should introduce you sometime. You and the book would get along. If you come across John Green’s The Fault in Our Stars, please say hello!)

In the tumultuous busyness enforced by the totalitarianism of Other Days, there’s rarely a scrap of time for savoring words and ideas. Each is pushed out by the next more pressing one. But you, Sunday Afternoon — you understand that relaxation is an oft-neglected task, a necessary indulgence, a luxury as mandatory as breathing. You, like a shelter, provide the space for reclaiming lost thoughts: searching them out and gathering them up and finding a spot for them and pausing over each one to see how it is doing and what attention it needs. You give me freedom to choose words at my leisure rather than rushing to settle on the first that will do. Other Days may boast of their activity, their capacity, their productivity, their exclusivity, but you deserve praise for your charity.

Thank you, kind friend, for being here for me when I need you. It was hard to be without you so long.

Our fifteen-month-old lost the remote to the satellite box. The husband was furious! How could this happen? Surely it’s got to be somewhere. Just not anywhere we could think to look, apparently.

But sometimes coincidence shows you possibilities you might not have otherwise seen, and we decided that — in light of the four huge CPA tests for which Hubby is currently studying — the disappearance of the remote might be an omen. It was time to cancel our TV subscription . . . just until he passes the CPA.

A few weeks later, at the company Christmas party, we were asked to answer a prompt about what we’d do if we won a million dollars. “Live in Italy,” we both said, laughing at the impossibility of the dream.

It was fun to answer the what-if fantasy, to imagine how we’d spend an outrageous sum of money. On the other hand, with the suspended satellite subscription, I realized something even better: fantasizing about rewards that aren’t so outrageous or impossible.

And I began to muse with Hubby, “Okay, if you get ‘cable’ back when you pass your test, what do I get if I sell a manuscript?”

The only trouble was that I didn’t have an answer. It didn’t come as immediately as our million-dollar plan. This was real. I had to put some thought into it!

About once a week I’d try an idea out loud, telling Hubby, “I’ve got it! When I sell my manuscript, we’ll go to Hawaii.” But nothing ever quite stuck.

Over Christmas, my sister had us play a holiday version of Scattergories, and one of the prompts became “Gifts that keep on giving.” I thought, well, “cable” keeps on giving, month after month. Hawaii would be awesome, but it would be a one-time thing. I wanted to think of a reward more like Hubby’s, that I would enjoy for a long time to come and would be a tribute to having met my goal.

My mom once told me that when my great-grandmother passed away and left money to each of her four sons, three of them used the money to pay off bills and debts and such, but my grandpa didn’t want to do that. He wanted to put his share of the money into something that would always remind him of his mother. And so he used the three thousand dollars to refurbish a Steinway grand piano.

That piano is now a legacy of its own. It’s the focal point of my grandparents’ living room, the piece of furniture around which we gathered to sing Christmas carols and let each of the grandchildren play the songs they’d practiced for that Christmas Eve recital all of my growing-up years. Because my great-grandmother insisted that her four sons learned to play the piano, and because my grandfather continued that tradition with his kids, as did my mom with us, I play the piano, and so will my kids.

Last summer I wrote a post about how I’d finally discovered my main character’s main hobby/interest. I figured it out when I stumbled across the old Pentax camera my dad gave me, which was his growing up. I haven’t used it ever since film became so obsolete, and I was thrilled to discover that you can still attach those old lenses onto a new DSLR body.

The only trouble is the price tag on those DSLR bodies.

But today I’ve figured out what I want my payoff to be. If I sell this manuscript, a DSLR body seems like a pretty fitting compensation: a tribute to my main character, my dad, even my grandpa in a way — and one that’ll keep on giving.

As I write this, I’m thinking how sad I am that I don’t have photos of my grandfather’s piano — especially not any that would do it justice. My iPhone camera just doesn’t cut it for important photographs.

Yes, I think I’ve decided on my payoff. And just like the suspended DirecTV subscription is meant to give Hubby extra incentive for studying, maybe the thought of a digital body for those Pentax lenses will give me the extra nudge I need to find writing time, finish revising, and send my story out into the world.

(Ooh, plus, a nice camera would extend the life on vacation-oriented rewards like Hawaii. I could definitely enjoy Hawaii longer thanks to a good camera. Oh the photo albums I’d make! The enlargements I’d frame! I’d like to dedicate this parenthetical note to Hubby, lest he get the idea that I’m not interested in tropical getaways . . .)

What about you? Do you ever settle on rewards to give yourself extra incentive for something? Does it work? How’s the payoff?

Leave a comment!

This is the view I’ve been tackling for the last hour:

It might be hard to tell what exactly is going on thanks to that tangled mass of yarn, but the tangled mass is what’s going on. Or what’s going out.

I volunteered to crochet some hats for charity, and as I was working on the blue-and-brown one a few weeks ago, my toddler and preschooler had a little too much fun with the skein of yarn. I got to a point where I couldn’t even use the yarn anymore until I stopped to unravel it.

And the unravelling is taking forever.

Similarly, on Friday I bought myself a desk out of the classifieds. It called to me the second I viewed it, after paging through hundreds of other desks, this one full of character and exactly the size and shape (and price range) I need to move my writing station off our kitchen table and into our basement.

But it wasn’t in much better shape than my skein of yarn. I spent all afternoon Friday sanding and staining until my right arm was so dead I couldn’t use it to even wipe my nose that night.

As I sanded, I thought about the undoing of things. I thought about how much I wanted to jump to the polishing stage, how ridiculous it felt to be taking the desk apart before I could put it together better than it was.

In many ways the original desk seemed closer to being done than the sanded desk I spent hours on, as you can see in the picture of the not-yet-sanded drawer next to the sanded one.

And I thought how it feels that way with writing too. Sometimes it feels like I’m going backwards, undoing things in my story by deleting scenes and rewriting sentences. It’s hard to feel like that’s actually progress when I want to be at the polished stage.

I just have to remind myself that unraveling the story is essential. I have to sand it down until I’ve got everything in place, every piece ready to proceed.

Sometimes the undoing of things is the first step toward creating something better.

Soon I’ll have a ball of untangled yarn ready to become another hat. And as of yesterday I have a polished desk ready to hold a laptop, a printer, a manuscript binder, pens and scratch paper and all the other essentials, so that I can start 2012 off right, ready to be the year that I send off a polished novel to be published.

The desk will still be the site of more undoing as I cut more scenes and trim more lines. But it’s all in the name of progress.

Sometimes undoing is what has to be done.

For his uncle who’s been living in our basement, the seven-year-old dictated a story. I helped with the typing (or this would have been another four-hour project) and the special effects (digital photos are so handy), but the story and the clip art selection is all the seven-year-old. The story features my brother and brother’s girlfriend as the prince and princess, and it’s so cool!

Here’s my favorite page:

But shhh! Don’t show Jayson.

He pestered me to help him mail it right away, but first we had a talk about “niceties” and a subsequent revision. The second letter, complete with falling snow, turned out a little better with the help of a ‘please’ and a ‘thanks’:

Then this week I discovered I had a bigger job in the Teaching Etiquette department than I’d originally thought.

Two neighbor girls who are good friends with our boys came to our door to bring them gifts. Afterward the seven-year-old started musing about who else might bring him unexpected gifts. He began listing the likely candidates: “Well, I know I’ll get presents from Grandma and Grandpa . . .”

I stopped him. “It’s not very good to focus on what you’re going to get.”

“Why not?”

“It’s just poor etiquette.”

“What’s ‘etiquette’?”

“Good manners. Niceties.”

“But I said ‘thank you’ when they brought the presents!”

A plan began hatching in my brain as I replied, “Yes, you’re really good at ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ now, so it’s time to bump it up to the next level. Now it’s time to think about what gifts to give to people. Who would you like to give presents to for Christmas?”

He listed his closest friends.

“Okay,” I said, my idea still only half-formed. “Get your shoes on. We’re going to the craft store so we can get stuff to make presents.”

“Make presents?” he asked in disbelief. “But we can’t make toys!”

“Sure we can. I’ll show you.”

We came home armed with wooden blocks, Mod Podge and scrapbook paper. “It’ll be fun!” I declared.

Hour 1: Both the seven-year-old and the four-year-old had a great time selecting and cutting out pictures to glue onto the blocks. Soon we had plenty and they chose six pictures for each set. The fifteen-month-old made things difficult, but otherwise it was so-far-so-good.

Hour 2: The toddler went down for a nap and I got us into assembly line mode. We were slicing the pictures into twelve squares, gluing them, and testing the difficulty level. All was well, but the number of unfinished squares began to overwhelm us. Suddenly my idea didn’t seem so hot as our enthusiasm waned and the whining ensued.

Hour 3: I was left to soldier on alone, grumbling internally (okay, and a bit out loud) about how I was never going to do this again and it would have been so much better to just buy gifts they could wrap and hand to friends.

Hour 4: The four-year-old casually returned, saying, “Hey, I want to glue those on,” as if he’d just realized I was doing something cool without him. Soon the seven-year-old wanted back in on it too. “This is fun!” they declared as we completed some of the sets and they got to play Quality Control, testing the puzzles for age appropriateness and enjoyment level. “We’re like Santa’s elves, making the presents!”

And, as often happens with these parenting lessons, I found myself looking in the mirror and seeing my own hypocrisy.

I’d been doing the same as my seven-year-old, just with time rather than presents, greedily counting up the possible hours I could find to get stuff done this busy time of year. Those four hours crafting with my kids (well, minus the hour when they deserted me) were some of the first hours I’ve spent with them all month. I’m home with them all day, and yet how often do I give them my full attention and actually sit down to do something with them?

Today they’ve been playing with the puzzles again (we’ll have to create “kid-tested, mother-approved” labels for these gifts), which makes me hopeful they will be well appreciated by the recipients.At first I was afraid it would all be wasted effort if their friends don’t like the puzzles, but now I don’t think so, any more than it was a waste to revise a letter to Santa.

Both mom and kids received a good lesson and good feelings just from the giving.

Anybody else going homemade this year and have similar adventures with it? Do you think homemade gifts are worth the time and stress? What do you do to help your kids put giving ahead of receiving? (Bonus points to anyone who can name the picture book that alligator illustration is from!)

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