Characters are Born on iPods by Author Jodie Bailey

I tend to be a character first kind of girl. More often than not, book ideas come to me not in the form of a scene or a plot—although that has happened—but in this feeling somewhere around my heart.  It’s hard to explain, really, but I’m betting if you’re a writer you’ve felt it.  And if you’re a reader, you’ve probably experienced the same tug when you met a really well-written character.  Because, you see, great characters start from the heart.

Not that it happens very much lately, but I’m a huge advocate of letting your mind wander. The best way to do that?  Take the iPod, get in the car, roll down the windows, and drive.  Aimlessly, preferably through the back country.  Sometimes I do it when I’m first starting a story.  Other times I do it when I’m stuck and can’t hear my characters talking. When I hit the road, inevitably there’s a moment where one song suddenly catches my attention.  It might be because the light hit a tree just right or the breeze through the window was perfect, or it could just be something about the words or the tune, but it unlocks a character’s voice.  There’s that feeling, right behind my heart that quiets me.  Someone has something to say.

It happened when Kate—whom you have yet to meet—told me she was a Colbie Caillat circa 2009 kind of girl… when she was so full of anger I’d have sworn she was an angry rock band blow out the speakers chick. When her hero, Ryan, let me know Tobymac’s “Ignition” guided his life walk, it fit everything I knew about him and made writing his scenes even more fun. 

It happened when Shane in Freefall showed up in an old 90s Def Leppard song, “Two Steps Behind.”  And his ex-wife Cassidy? She never would tell me.  And you know what? It took me longer to get to know her than anyone else.  To this day, I think she believed music was a waste of time.  I’m thinking that’s not cool, even though she grew on me until I love her just as much as the rest.

In Quilted by Christmas, Taryn didn’t have a song right off.  Like Cassidy, she was slow to let me get to know her.  But one day, I had the iPod on random and heard that ol’ Nitty  Gritty Dirt Band song “Fishin’ in the Dark.”  If you’ve ever heard it, that song just bounces.  And I remembered in high school, one of my best friends and I would open up the sunroof on my old Maxima and spend hours driving around and singing old 60s music our dads had taught us and always, at least once, bouncing up and down in our seats to the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band. Suddenly, I could see Taryn in her grandfather’s old pickup, Justin in the passenger’s seat, zipping around the curves down the mountain to their high school, and singing at the top of their lungs.  It was crystal clear and Taryn grabbed me… right behind the heart.

Jodie Bailey writes novels about freedom and the heroes who fight for it.  Her novels include Freefall and Crossfire, from Love Inspired Suspense, as well as Quilted by Christmas, from Abingdon Press.  Her devotions have appeared in Fighting Fear: Winning the War at Home and Sweet Freedom with a Slice of Peach Cobbler. She is convinced a camping trip to the beach with her family, a good cup of coffee, and a great book can cure all ills. Jodie lives in North Carolina with her husband, her daughter, and two dogs.

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Making the Stakes Higher by Sharon Dunn

Sharon Dunn is an award winning writer of romantic suspense and humorous mysteries for the Christian market. Her suspense novel Night Prey won the 2011 Carol award. Zero Visibility is her fifth novel of Love Inspired Suspense. You can read more about Sharon at www.sharondunnbooks.net.

In writing fiction, the advice is often given to “make the stakes higher.” It took me a long time to translate that in a way that helped me construct a tighter story. To me, upping the stakes for a character just means that you increase the potential for disaster or you make what the character stands to lose even bigger if they don’t make the right choices or succeed in their goals.  

With suspense, increasing the stakes for a character usually involves the potential loss of life or of a loved one’s life. When I set out to write a suspense story, I try to come up with a threat that is relentless and escalating. For example in my current Love Inspired Suspense Zero Visibility, the inspiration for the story was a what if question. What if two character, Nathan and Merci, were completely isolated from help and they had only each other to rely on for survival? So I picked an isolated setting—a mountain side during a freak spring blizzard. Those are pretty high stakes for survival right? But harsh weather conditions and isolation are not enough to sustain a whole story.  I had to raise the stakes even more. Back to the what if questions. What if these two people were being chased by thieves bent on killing them? Those two factors help create a suspenseful story, but I can raise the stakes even more by causing more mayhem in my characters’ lives. What if one of the characters gets injured? What if they have no weapons, no way to defend themselves? What if they get lost on the mountain? With that one, I can make the stakes even higher: What if they get lost on the mountain at night? All of these factors create the potential for a character to die, thus the potential for huge loss. 

Finally, raising the stakes doesn’t just involve threats from external forces… even in suspense. Often the greatest potential for failure and best place to raise the stakes can be found within the characters. In Zero Visibility, I have points at which each character gives up hope that they will get off the mountain alive. Also, a character’s background is a good place to look for possibilities. The one thing these two characters have is each other.  What if Nathan does something that reminds Merci of her father with whom she does not have a good relationship causing Merci to walk away? When the two characters are separated, the potential for danger increases.  

Upping the stakes is not only important for good suspense writing but for all story telling. In a book I am currently working on, I couldn’t figure out why the romance between the two characters seemed so blah. The characters were forced to worked together to survive, but there was no spark between them.  Back to the what if questions. Initially, I had this hero and heroine meeting for the first time when her life is suddenly under threat. The what if question I came up with changed the dynamic of the relationship. What if hero and heroine had known each other when they were teenagers? Had in fact been in love and had a child they gave up for adoption. Their immaturity at 16 made it impossible for them to sustain the relationship. The stakes are raised not only for things to not work out romantically, but also for them not to be able to overcome the hurts of the past to work together and keep the heroine alive. 

A lot of times in a book, the stakes are emotional. A character stands to lose a relationship or faces humiliation that devastates them. The bottom line is, you need to mess with your characters. Create a situation that seems insurmountable and them make it even worse.     

      

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