Dixie

I am right now in the middle of trying to develop a character for a novel, but Ive had so many false starts in the past it is not funny. It is like I cannot get past chapter 1.

Ive decided that I probably need to start over again from scratch and develop characters, not based on looks or their personalities because I think I limit myself and the characters if I try to build them around their external descriptions.

Im thinking about writing a book on a woman who grows up and she has all these dreams of being successful but life gets in the way, the point of making her wanting to give in numerous times. I want it to be like a good John Grisham novel. Somewhat believeable, but you know none of it really happened. but thing is I have a zillion ideas but none of them seem to go anywhere. The ending could go either way she could die trying or she could actually succeed.

The more I think about it, maybe I want the woman to be in her first year of college when she is diagnosed with a disease that slowly robs her of her vision and hearing. (there is an actual disease out there that does but cant remember what it is called) but she becomes a candidate for a new drug that reverses it, but the drug turns out to be a bad drug... not sure about the rest though..... It would be a story that takes place over her lifetime though since the disease does not cause sudden loss of vision and hearing.

As I said the main character could live or die. I hope to have a first draft of the first chapter within 2-3 weeks up for critique. I am trying to brainstorm for ideas. I know if I sat down long enough I could figure it out on my own, but I am asking for ideas and suggestions on where this story could go.

Heres what I have:
The woman is first diagnosed when she is in her early 20s, by the time she is in her mid to late 30s maybe early 40s, she uses a cochlear implant to hear and she only see outlines of objects, absolutely no details as to colors or demensions. her doctor tells her she could be a candidate for a drug that reverses the effects of the disease over time, but it takes 2-3 years to fully reverse it. Well she signs up and she is accepted into the trial program, and 3 years into the trial, news gets out that the drug is bad in the long run and that it causes cancer of the eyes, or something like that. Do you think this idea is getting off to a good start or not??

any help would be appreciated.

Hero

How about making her go against the drug company and file a law suit against them? Along her path to justice she could encounter other factors and become a rolemodel to the youngin's: A woman who's slowly going deaf and blind and she has cancer of the eyes. A touching end would be that she dies accomplishing a goal she never set out for, and it would be more real.

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cbrmale

You want it to be good like a Grisham novel? You're joking, his characters are generally dreadful!

Real people don't develop in a vacuum, they develop through relationships. So too must your characters.

You seem to have tried to start chapter one without considering where you are going, which is going to make it hard. Most authors plan, even though the end result may deviate from the plan. What I also do is write the first and last chapters, and then I know where I am heading. I believe Stephen King does the same, but that is coincidence.

At the moment I am working on something where I had a few ingredients, but it was hard to pin it down at first, like your work. I had the place and time (Paris, 1921), I had an Australian author (the narrator), his casual lover and a gypsy girl who wins his heart. The author experiences good and bad things, culminating in a tragedy. The ending is set in the South of France in 1939 where he has an attractive young mistress who is aloof but is living with him because he is a good lover and a decent man who knows 'what she is worth'. From there, the fragments of his journey eventually fell into place. You can see it is the three girls in his life (the lover, the gypsy and the young mistress at the end) who gave me what I needed.

You may not want to write something blantantly romantic (actually it is more erotic) like mine, but somehow someone is going to have to touch your character in such a way that she is transformed, and the reader will be transformed with her.

Dixie

But how that someone touches my character to the point that it also touches my readers is what Im having a hard time with. I have been known to move people to tears, but it has been a long time since Ive done it and not sure if I could do it again.

Maybe some sort of love or religious touch might help. Maybe she falls in love with her doctor who then assumes taking care of her later in her life where she is no longer fully independent maybe??

Im going to have to sit down and do some writing with pen and paper. Usually my words flow alot better than they do on the computer.

Msybe I should try to draw some inspiration from other authors, I admit I have been a bit heavy on the Grisham novels lately. I will put my library card to good use tomorrow. Is there any recommended reading that might be available at my local library??

cbrmale

Recommended reading - anything but Grisham? Actually, a lot of contemporary fiction is very one-dimensional, so you need to search hard for really good works, particularly if your local library is like mine!

Love can be used as a thing that moves characters, love is one of our most basic psychological drives (actually sex is, but the love and sex are very intertwined). Anyone who has been in love (rather than a teen crush) will relate to love, in my case I had to make a sacrifice for love, so I know the pleasure and pain well enough to write about it.

Religion as a core theme of a story I would steer clear of. I am not a religious person, I come from a non-religious country, but I may mention religion in my works as appropriate. But like politics, religion is probably best left out of casual conversations and the main theme of works of literature.

Moving people to tears? I read somewhere that an author needs to have a shard of ice in their heart (or something like that), so sometimes you need to be cruel to a character to be moving.

Aguirre

Dixie, your idea is extremely rough. First, identify your audience. This doesn't sound like the type of novel that has a Grisham audience, unless you're going to turn it into a legal thriller due to the protagonists medical problems.

After that, you've still got a lot of steps to take. I'm frankly confused on what you're trying to accomplish with your narrative here. But identifying who you're trying to reach is a first step.

FrankBlissett

Is your problem that you get flashes of the story, but are unable to make them gel together?

You could try writing out those flashes, regardless of whether or not they end up turning into anything. Best case is that these vignettes and short stories will develop into your story. Worst case, your character will get new depths in your mind and you'll get practice writing.

-Frank

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"Sheepish Sentimentality" - 40 pages of verse from Michigan's north country

Dixie

Yes I get way too many flashes but seems like none of them mesh well with any of the others.

The more I think on my story, the more I try to see it come together. Maybe the woman decides to research the drug company on her own when she files her own seperate lawsuit instead of joining the class action suit, well of course you know big companies are going to have people out there watching the plaintiffs if their butt is on the line. Well maybe my main character finds out some hideous secret about the Pharmacuetical company, but she doesnt know she is being watched. Once the Pharma knows that this woman has found out their dirty little secret, they try to find a way to off her so that she cannot testify in court because if she did, the company would have no choice but to make an Enron like exit. Is this getting better or is this getting worse??

Maybe I need to scrap the idea again and start over??

cbrmale

No, don't know if you need to scrap the idea or not. The initial plot was thin, so characterisation as the key, it would be a character-driven work. You'd need to have really good characters where the reader has strong empathy with them and then you would tear at those characters. You would need to be a pretty good writer to pull it off. This plot needs a good twist to make it work.

The second idea, bad industry, is too much like a few books and movies that have been done over the decade or so.