The Deep Dig Part III – The Reedsy Questionnaire

Posted by Joanne Huspek

The Reedsy Questionnaire is actually five interviews in one, so this resource is really worth looking up! Following is just the first of the five:

Our actions and decisions are informed by our past experiences. Take a trip down memory lane to explore your character’s backstory in more depth and help you create more believable, relatable characters.

  1. What is your earliest memory?
  2. What is a memory that makes you swell with pride?
  3. What is your worst memory?
  4. Where did you grow up? What was your childhood like there?
  5. Did you have a childhood nickname?
  6. What was your relationship with your parents like when you were younger?
  7. Who were you closest to as a child?
  8. What did you want to be when you grew up?
  9. Did you ever get in trouble as a child?
  10. Who were your childhood best friends?
  11. Who were your childhood enemies?
  12. Did you celebrate your birthday throughout your childhood?
  13. What was your favorite day or holiday when you were a child?
  14. What was your biggest fear when you were a child?
  15. What is something you were insecure about when you were a child?
  16. What is your most embarrassing moment?
  17. What is something you quit that you now regret giving up on?
  18. What is something you wish you never learned the truth about?
  19. If you could relive one day of your life without changing anything that happened, which day would you choose?
  20. If you could relive one day of your life and change its course of events, which day would you choose?

In order to delve into character motivations, you have to know your characters. And in most novels where there’s an antagonist, a protagonist, and lots of other characters that fade in and out, it’s necessary that the distinctions between all the players is more than apparent. (I will admit, this is a very hard task for me!) While you might not use every personality trait or truth that you’ve teased out by interviewing your characters, doing these exercises in some form will solidify them in your mind, and hopefully to your readers’ minds!

Happy writing!

Make your characters more than ghostly!

 

 

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The Deep Dig Part II: Gotham Character Questionnaire

Posted by Joanne Huspek

I’m still interviewing my characters, in an attempt to solidify what they look like in my mind as well as their motivations. Here’s a great questionnaire I found on the Gotham Writers web site:

Gotham Character Questionnaire

1. What is your character’s name? Does the character have a nickname?

2. What is the character’s hair color? Eye color?

3. What are your character’s distinguishing facial features?

4. Does your character have a birth mark? Where is it? What about scars or tattoos? How did he/she get them?

5. Who are your character’s friends and family? Who does she surround herself with? Who are the people your character is closest to? Who does she wish she is closer to, but isn’t? Why?

6. Where was your character born? Where has he lived since then? Where does he call home?

7. Where does your character go when he’s angry?

8. What is her biggest fear? Who has she told this to? Who would she never tell this to? Why?

9. Does he have a secret? (News flash: WE ALL HAVE SECRETS!)

10. What makes your character laugh out loud?

11. When has your character been in love? Had a broken heart?

Optional Extra Questions

12. What is in your character’s refrigerator right now? on the nightstand?

13. Describe what is on your character’s feet right now.

14. When your character thinks of her childhood kitchen, what smell does she associate with? Why does that smell so resonant with her?

15. It’s Saturday at noon. What is your character doing? Give details.

While this set of questions doesn’t really dig deep, it does fill in some holes. I know when I am in the process of beginning to write, the physical attributes of the characters I’m writing about aren’t exactly clear. It’s as though I’m looking at them without my glasses on. Then I put my glasses on, but I’m still not seeing the entirety of them, the whole of them as a person. Writing authentic characters means you have to go everywhere with them – inside and out. That’s why writing isn’t exactly an easy gig!

More next week…

California tall trees.

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The Deep Dig: Questions To Ask Your Characters – Part 1

Posted by Joanne Huspek

I didn’t post last week, as I spent most of that time

looking for my notes on my current WIP. This was complicated by instead of compiling all of my written notes into one notebook, I used my journals for notes. Take my word for it, this is a bad idea. Entertaining to see what I was doing five, six, seven years ago, but such a time suck. From now on, I will use one notebook per manuscript. Makes life easier. Here is a photo from the Mollie Kathleen Mine in Cripple Creek, Colorado, where they’re still digging deep.

I’ve often said that I use character questionnaires in order to do a deep dive into personalities so that I’ll understand their individual quirks, hopes, dreams, and psyches. Filling out such questionnaires also helps to define how each character is different from the other (I tend to write characters as extensions of myself – very boring). Well, I found several questionnaires. This is a very famous one taken from thewritepractice.com.

Proust Questionnaire

1. What is your idea of perfect happiness?

2. What is your greatest fear?

3. What is the trait you most deplore in yourself?

4. What is the trait you most deplore in others?

5. Which living person do you most admire?

6. What is your greatest extravagance?

7. What is your current state of mind?

8. What do you consider the most overrated virtue?

9. On what occasion do you lie?

10. What do you most dislike about your appearance?

11. Which living person do you most despise?

12. What quality do you most like in a man?

13. What quality do you most like in a woman?

14. Which words or phrases do you most overuse?

15. What or who is the greatest love of your life?

16. When and where were you happiest?

17. Which talent would you most like to have?

18. If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be?

19. What do you consider your greatest achievement?

20. If you were to die and come back as a person or thing, what would it be?

21. Where would you most like to live?

22. What is your most treasured possession?

23. What do you regard as the lowest depth of misery?

24. What is/was your favorite occupation?

25. What is your most marked characteristic?

26. What do you most value in your friends?

27. Who are your favorite writers?

28. Who is your hero of fiction?

29. Which historical figure do you most identify with?

30. Who are your heroes in real life?

31. What are your favorite names?

32. What is it that you most dislike?

33. What is your greatest regret?

34. How would you like to die?

35. What is your motto?

More to come next week…

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Layering Personality

Posted by Joanne Huspek

Gratuitous pear tart photo. Mmm, that was delish!

I’ve participated in NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month, in November, for you newbies) for many, many years. In fact, all but two of my novel ideas were born in November. That means eight out of ten. *good grief!*

I’ve learned that during NaNo, you don’t want to write quality. You don’t want to think. You just want to get 50,000 words down in thirty days. That means getting the bare bones of your idea down as fast as you can. In my case, sometimes I write scenes, sometimes just dialogue, sometimes a whole chapter. It doesn’t matter during November, as the goal is to cross the finish line. Verbal diarrhea and some stream of consciousness wandering is to be expected. There’s always time to ponder and correct and more clearly flesh out your ideas on December 1.

My current edit, from a NaNo completion in 2017, is really a doozy. The story is solid, but now I’m into developing the characters, all of whom on December 1, 2017 were pretty wooden and one dimensional.

Character development takes some introspection on the part of the writer. The more layered and nuanced the character, the more he/she will seem real to the reader.

These particular characters (four main ones) are adult siblings. Their father has just died. The relationships are all strained for one reason or another. While they shared the same parents, each one reacted to their upbringing differently. As with all siblings in the real world, they are not the same.

I’m not ashamed to say that during my long life, I have been in therapy a few times. Largely successful therapy, since now I look at myself and others differently. I can see where hurts, both real and perceived, can cause someone to act/react in a specific way.  I understand crazy, from the temporary illogical nuttiness to the lingering and truly batshit. I try to incorporate some of what I learned in counseling with regard to developing my characters. This is done in layers, like that old saw says, peeling away at an onion.

In cases like this, I find that answering questions for each character (regarding personality traits, motivations, etc.) to be most helpful. I’ve used these same set of questions for other novels. And yes, I use a separate notebook (yes, a physical paper notebook, with a pencil) for the novel and answer the questions for each character.

This exercise takes time to complete. Luckily for me, when I write using the computer during NaNo, I also have a notebook at my side, so a lot of my research is done while writing like a fiend.

Now, before I really get into the bones of editing, I take this information and my questionnaires and get into the heads of these people. This does take some time, especially if the characters are damaged. And these are.

I’m not going to complain how the rest of my life has taken over my time. Time is something I delegate, so it’s all my choice. But rest assured, I’m working on it.

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A Retreat From the Socials

Posted by Joanne Huspek

We recently sold our B&B, and while it’s been a couple of months, we had a lot of residual cleaning up to do. Now, finally! I have time to write and create!

gratuitous photo of California mussels

After selling our B&B (long story, doesn’t matter), we had a lot of transferring of information to complete. Since I am internet challenged, this took a lot longer than I’d expected. Yes, I am old, but also YES, the way to do things online changes almost daily. This resulted in me doing a lot more research (on a subject I don’t really care about) in order to get things done.

One of my tasks was to transfer ownership of the web site and the social media accounts. The web site transfer was a can of corn. So easy. I actually had people to talk to when I ran into trouble! I wasn’t left dangling in the wind! I loved it.

However, the transfer of social media was cumbersome. In fact, it was impossible. Having transferred in the two accounts on Instagram and Facebook just four-plus years earlier, I recalled the process as being tough, but not impossible. Plus about ten years ago, I closed my Boston terrier’s Facebook account two years after she crossed the rainbow bridge. It took about a month (Facebook asking for a death certificate – good God) but someone actually emailed me (asking for the death certificate), and after I insisted that Princess Grace Huspek was indeed canine, they deleted her account.

There’s no simplicity in the process any more.

It IS impossible.

After five weeks of trying, which included watching lots of meaningless YouTube videos, reading forums, and emailing “supposed” customer service, I figured out the only way to offload these two accounts was to off myself. Yup. Delete my accounts and all my pages completely.

First, I thought I might snag all my photographs from Instagram. WRONG! Once you post a photo on Insta, it belongs to them. Sure, you can download your information, but it looks like gobbledygook. Then I thought I might download my information from Facebook. Not so fast, little girl! They don’t want you to have that information either! Plus, if you ask for a general download, it only does from 2016 to present. Then you must ask for a download from 2008 (when I first joined) to 2015.

Screw it, I thought. I’m just going to zap my social existence out of the interwebs. Which is what I did.

Of course, both platforms want you to change your mind, so they give you a 30-day grace period. Not doing it, Zuckerboy.

In slowly weaning myself from “social” media (it should be called antisocial media for the obvious reason), I realized one thing: I don’t miss it. I knew I wasn’t going to miss the outright hatred and lies, from those I both knew and didn’t know at all. Social media is like dealing with an alcoholic parent. You want the love but you don’t want the toxic but yet you crave the love. It’s the election season and the lies and half truths are flying like cows in a tornado. I get a headache from too much of it (like 15 minutes worth).

I thought I would at least miss those people who were friends and who I regularly communicated with. But it’s been a few days now, and I don’t feel the hollow that I thought I would. Besides, the people who want to keep in touch with me have my phone number.

I started my withdrawal a few months ago, slowly, of course. I stopped carrying my phone on walks. (No hotel, don’t need it.) I started looking at my neighbors yards, I started to greet them, I started smelling the lilacs and roses and cut grass and whatever else I happened upon. I liked the sun on my face and arms. I got caught in a rainstorm and didn’t mind getting totally soaked. Hmm…I started returning to my previously grounded and human self.

Then I made a couple of friends. Hmm…ones I could smile at and laugh with and actually hold a conversation with, unlike the virtual world.

This re-grounding to the “Real World” coincided with some disturbing articles I’d read about the Internet and the artificial world. I’m totally anti AI, especially in the creative world, in writing, art, photography, music, etc. Creation of art is a completely human endeavor. It’s not meant to be easy; it’s meant to be a roller coaster ride of highs and lows. I believe you can’t achieve anything worthwhile without the learning experience, and the learning experience is a process of trial and error. Many trials, many errors.

It was especially galling for me to see photo posts on Facebook claiming to be actual places or animals or people, when to me you could tell these were AI. And then you can search online for a photo for a certain park or waterfall and see that the pictures weren’t even close. Or you would read something that sounded like a human might have written it, but was stilted and clumsy.

I know. People say it’s the “wave of the future.” That doesn’t make it better. It doesn’t make it real.

Anyway, I now have time to devote to editing. And I am, albeit slowly. Right now it’s the end of summer, and I’ve been busy canning and dehydrating what’s come out of my garden (not as much as last year). I’m fending off my pears from critters. I’ve been tying up loose ends all over the place. But I plan on posting at least once a week on this blog, to keep you abreast of what’s going on in my writing and human journey.

Oh…you can still find me on LinkedIn, Truth, and X. But I don’t hang out there.

Writing

On editing my current WIP, I decided to change almost all the names. This might seem easy with the Find-Replace function on Word, but it’s been seven years since I wrote the first draft, and I was used to those original names. I’ve also started a notebook (handwritten) complied from all the notes I wrote in three notebooks, so the information will be handy. I think the exercise of re-writing by hand is a good one. I tend to forget a LOT of what I’ve written. This will wake me up. And I’ve also taken copious notes on character developments, so I have to figure a way to weave those into the story line.

Estimated date of completion? Who knows. The sooner the better. I have seven more manuscripts to edit.

More to come…a lot more to come…

 

 

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Buried – And A Post Regarding (In)Hospitality

Posted by Joanne Huspek

Wow. It has been an incredibly long time since I’ve posted last.

Don’t worry. I’m still writing. And rewriting. I’m also still a business owner, which means I have to really squeeze out some time for writing and editing. This is not an easy task.

Then there was buying another house (can we say fixer-upper money-pit again?), the holidays, and my old Boston terror, Millie, finally crossed the rainbow bridge after 18 long years.

I’ve got plenty of blog posts on the burner, though, so never fear. I’m still here.

Recently, I took a two-week road trip to Florida, which gave me some ideas and opinions. So I will hopefully humor you with my musings.

Regarding (In)Hospitality

Things are tough all over.

Now in the hospitality business, I know it’s hard to find people. Good people. Any warm body that does not have an issue (smoking, drinking and drug abuse, general laziness, health problems, domestic issues, etc.) and can also make a bed, I’m giving them top salary and hugs and kisses. But it’s not just me. Hotels, motels, restaurants, and bars are having a difficult time finding anyone to work at all, much less an employee who is responsible, mature, and diligent.

(Now, if you’re a responsible, hardworking employee, I’m not talking to you. Just so you know.)

Even though I’m semi-retired, and semi-working, we still find an occasion to travel. It used to be you could drive for as long as your butt could take it, pull over, and find adequate lodging. Not anymore. Oh no. In the last few years, I’ve found horrible places to stay using that method. Places where the mattress was like a roller coaster, where the doors didn’t lock, where there were needles in the parking lot, where the toilet hadn’t been cleaned in ???, well, you get my point. Now a traveler must research heavily on Yelp or Expedia.com or another similar web site. I smartened up. The first thing I do is look at reviews. If you’re not a 7.5 or higher, you go to the bottom of the barrel.

The next thing I do is look for dog friendly establishments. I have two chihuahuas, and they are my travel companions.

Then I look for local eateries that are interesting and have high marks. I eat beef in Kansas and ribs in Missouri, seafood in the Gulf, Cajun in Louisiana. I keep lots of water and high protein snacks in the car. I might stop at McDonald’s for a coffee and a bathroom break, but nothing else.

My fussiness aside, I know it is difficult to hire good people. I’m in the same boat. I’m not unreasonable.

Here’s a few things I’ve noticed:

1. If you don’t want your guests to take a shower, you don’t put bath towels in the bathroom. Yeah. That pretty much tells me you want to just make the bed. (I told my husband we could forego bath towels at our place, but he nixed that idea.)

2. If you don’t want them to mess up the room, you won’t have a coffee maker in the room. I’ve actually stayed in really nice places (like the Bellagio in Vegas) and in basic dives like the beach motel (in San Francisco) and neither one had in-room coffee makers. Brilliant idea! You’ll save on trash can liners. However, that only works if you have a coffee shop nearby.

3. If you really don’t want your guests to mess up the room, you won’t have a mini fridge or a microwave in the room. That’s because a lot of people forget their take out (guilty here!) or they’ll put some sort of mystery food that readily explodes in the microwave. (In our establishment, only the deluxe rooms have a mini fridge and microwave. And yes, they take more to clean.)

4. Most hotel guest clerks don’t like being asked questions about nearby attractions or restaurants. Actually, they don’t like being asked questions at all! At our humble B&B, we not only answer questions, we give tours of the building, including an in-depth history. We point you to our favorite local eating establishments, to our favorite hiking trails, to the local grocery store, to the scenic (and sometimes scary) byways, and to the museums. (Better this than gambling.) I realize that too much information can be a bad thing, but when I travel, I like to tease the information out of the locals. Plus, I like to talk.

5. Some hotels don’t give you enough toilet paper. I get it. The spare rolls in our hotel disappear at an amazing rate. Why I have toilet paper in the car, along with the snacks and water. I’m always prepared.

6. Always, always, look under the bed. My chihuahua has found a lot of interesting things under beds, and I don’t mean dust bunnies. Me? I’ve found underwear, dog toys, a box of bullets, clothing, trash, etc. Actually, you should always look in the drawers and in closets. I found a hand gun once that one of our guests left behind. (Not the same guy with the bullets, but coincidentally in the same room. What’s up with that?)

After all this research, I found that I had to take a vacation from my vacation. This exhausting research was killing me.

 

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That Time the NYT Found Me

Posted by Joanne Huspek

Thanks to this article, and this one, the New York Times recently tracked me down and talked me into doing this:

I know. Terrible picture.

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