Patti O'Shea's Blog

Sometimes I worry about people thinking my characters sound like me. Yeah, I do sound like some of them at times, but not because I’m making them talk the way I do. It’s because–darn them–I pick up their speech patterns. Seriously. And using seriously all the time is one of the things I picked up from one of them. I’m not even sure which one, but I’m stuck with it now.

I never used the word crap until I wrote The Power of Two. I used the actual word that’s a substitute for, or if the company I was in called for it, got the message across in a more genteel way. Cai’s book came out in 2004, she and her hero, Jake, have been gone for longer than that, and I still use crap. Of course, so did Ryne from In the Midnight Hour, but her book came out in 2007, so you’d think it would wear off by now. It hasn’t.

Right now, I lay a lot of blame on Cass’s doorstep. She’s the heroine in my next Nocturne Bites story. (I don’t know the release yet.) I never used the word dude and I prided myself on that. No longer can I claim that distinction. Yep, you guessed it–Cass uses dude and now I do, too. You don’t even want to know how many times I think seriously, dude? Sigh.

Other characters, both hero and heroine, have added other words to my way of saying things. Sometimes the usage will fade over time. Sometimes (like with crap it shows no signs of ever leaving me.

I’ve always been susceptible to picking up language from the people around me. I drawl y’all more easily than I say you guys now and in Minnesota, you guys is pretty common. I also pick up accents without realizing I’m doing it. I’m sure there are people who thought I was making fun of them, but I honestly wasn’t.

I don’t know if this easy adoption of language and accent is just a me thing or if other writers have it happen to them, too. I’ve never asked, but it’s constant now. Seriously, dude.

I blogged recently about getting to know my heroine. I thought I was on the right track, but realized that I wasn’t seeing clearly enough. So I’ve been spending time recently trying to unravel what makes the heroine in my Work In Progress (WIP) tick. Who–exactly–is she?

From the beginning, it’s been the hero who’s talked and shared. I’ve seen scenes from his Point of View (POV) and I feel as if I know him pretty well. I always learn more stuff as I actually write in the character’s head, but that’s normal.

The scenes the hero showed me have the heroine in them and I thought I knew her because of this. And because I had facts about her, but as I’ve started to write the first scene in her POV, I’ve decided that I don’t know her quite well enough.

When I write something a character won’t do, they dig their heels in and won’t let me write further. It’s kind of a pain, but I’m not going to complain about it. I complained once about not being able to name my characters myself and then I had a heroine who made me come up with her name without any help. I decided that was a curse. It’s much easier when they say, “My name starts with an R.”

Anyway, I’ve been writing this scene in Zo’s head and got stuck. Totally, completely, utterly stuck. You’d think after all this time that the first thing I’d do is think, wow, I messed up and should figure out what’s out of character. That’s not what happens. I console myself with the fact that at least this time I thought of it without someone else telling me. Sadly, usually it’s one of my writing buddies who says, um, hey, I don’t think she’d do this. Then I go, oooh, that’s why I’m stuck.

I went through the scene (what I have of it so far) paragraph by paragraph, checking with my heroine if this was right or not. I found a few things that were relatively minor, but one thing that might be big enough for her to dig her heels in and refuse to move forward.

I had her going from zero to frantic over not very much. I know Zo (the heroine) takes things in stride with her hero and I knew she had a job that would require her to be able to think on her feet and improvise, but I didn’t have her reacting that way in the scene. Zo wouldn’t become frantic. She might become concerned–she has reason to be–but she’s a planner. Instead of becoming frantic, she’d start thinking up plans. If he does A, then I’ll do B and so on.

It’s too soon to know for sure whether or not this is what had me spinning my wheels all week, but it’s a decent bet. I’m reworking the scene now, toning down Zo’s reaction and bringing in her thought processes. One of the keys of her personality is how cool she is under pressure. Now I just need to write her that way.