Models Who Inspired Characters

 This Week's Topic: IRL Person on Whom I've Based a Character

Beyond models whose images helped me focus on the physical aspects, I don't think I consciously developed a character's personality based on someone I know or a celebrity. {chin scratch} Maybe a quirk here or a tic there, but no one individual comes to mind.

What's that? You want to see the models' reference photos? Oh, well, pfft, yeah! I have to thank whoever chose this topic because it's been a few years since I reviewed these photos and I've fallen in love with the characters they inspired all over again. 

From my Immortal Spy urban fantasy series:

Character = Bix; IRL Inspo = I wish I knew her name

Character = Tobek; IRL Inspo  = Lasse L. Matberg: 

Character = Phobos; IRL Inspo = David Gandy: 

A Secret Celeb I Based a Male Lead on

 This week at the SFF Seven, we're talking about real life people (or celebrities) we've based characters on. 

That phrasing makes me laugh a little because I'm pretty sure celebrities are still real life people. It puts me in mind of some of my ongoing themes of reminding readers that their favorite authors are still people who get sick and have life drama. But I digress.

I don't know if I've talked about this openly, but in UNDER HIS TOUCH, the second Falling Under book (and this series is contemporary erotic romance, not SFF, fair warning), I totally based the male protagonist on a celebrity. I wanted a Brit man, one who was brooding and not conventionally handsome, full of smoldering sexiness. Guess who I based him on?

Neil Gaiman.

Yeah, yeah - I know. Only a book nerd like me would pick someone like that. I don't think it's at all obvious in the text to the reader, but he was the guy I envisioned when I wrote it. I even threw in a little Amanda Palmer easter egg, just for fun. 

Writing Believable Scenes

 We had big fun at Beastly Books yesterday celebrating FaRoFeb! The delightful Vela Roth came up from El Paso, and A.K. Mulford and A.J. Lancaster joined us online from down under. The panel was also broadcast on Instagram Live and you can find a recording of it on the FaRoFeb Instagram account.

Our topic at the SFF Seven this week is "How do you make your love scenes believable?"

By "love," I assume the asker means sex - though how to make the confessional of heartfelt love feel earned and not pasted on or saccharine is an interesting question. But, in truth, the answer to both, or even really ALL scenes - love, sex, fight, daily conversation - believable is to ground them in character.

This is true whether you are a plot-driven or character-driven writer. Stories are about the emotions of the people in them - what they want, what they can't have, what drives them to chase what they want anyway. So, a fight scene is never just about the choreography and who wins or loses. It's about what that win or loss MEANS to the characters, what impact their injuries might have on them beyond the physical.

Likewise, a sex scene is never just about tabs and slots fitting together. It's about emotional intimacy, what the sexual interlude means to the characters. It has nothing to do with whether or not multiple orgasms are believable or making first-time encounters awkward or including realistic body noises and accidental passing of fluids and gases. Those things might factor in if they relate to the characters' emotional lives, but by themselves, they don't change anything, one way or the other.

Because believability comes from emotional truth, regardless of everything else.

MICE Preference

Greetings from the Hemingway House garden in Key West, FL. No mice here. Too many polydactyl cats on the property. They have the run of the place. They are pampered and well cared for and they own the place. 

Like everyone else this week, the MICE tool is new to me. The concepts aren't, but I had never heard of them brought together this way. Still, who doesn't like a good acronym?  

I love a good milieu. See photo at left. So. Milieu, Idea/Inquiry, Character, and Event. Those are my options.

Okay. Pre-existing conditions: we know Marcella is a character-driven writer versus being a plot-driven writer. This means that no matter what other MICE element I might use to frame a story, character is always, always a part of the picture in that frame. 

My first book opens with Ari being someplace she doesn't to be in a context she doesn't want and an EVENT kicks off her story. 

For book two, EVENT again. Someone Damen Sindrivik cares about becomes a target. Cue mayhem.

Book three mirrors the first book. Edie is someplace she doesn't much want to be in circumstances she doesn't want. Then someone drops a burning spaceship on her head and things get worse. So again. EVENT. 

Book four - - someone help. I seem to be stuck in a rut. The heroine is a prisoner sentenced to die in a war on a miserable planet in the middle of nowhere. And EVENT. Huh.

The Urban Fantasies start with character and a bit of milieu ,but then, that's the genre, isn't it? This makes me wonder if your MICE choices might be partially dictated by genre expectations. Idea/inquiry is going to show up reliably in mystery and thriller. UF really wants to linger in setting. Space opera requires a steep on ramp to an inciting incident - the event. Women's fiction usually lasers in on character. I feel like I rarely see a single element used from the MICE toolkit. It's usually a combination of two. I'm trying to think if I've ever seen a story that used more than that, though. I'm coming up empty. Can you think of someone who's used more than two tools at a time? Bonus points if they do it really well. 

How I Hook

 Hooks? We don't need no stinkin' hooks. 

I'm reading over the list of seven hooks and either I don't understand them - entirely possible because this week is the first time I'd seen them. Seems to me they lack a little imagination because I don't see an action hook. And y'all, that's my favorite! 

Though I am in a class right now that's teaching me to hook via character. This is alien territory for me, but in a romance novel, it makes total sense that you'd want your readers to connect with the characters before, or as, the story action kicks off.

• Enemy Within: Sun glinting off the barrel of a gun stopped Captain Ari Idylle dead in her tracks. (I'm calling this the Oh, shit hook.)
  
• Enemy Games: The communications panel trilled, echoing the call in the confines of the tiny cockpit. (Uhm. I dunno? This is the point where everything changes for the hero. Does that make this a why hook? Or just a weak hook?)
  
• Enemy Storm: Holy Gods, don’t know what I did to piss you off, but dropping a starship on my head is overkill. (Ah, Edie. I'd like to imagine this is action and character combined, but that could be wishful thinking.)
  
• Enemy Deliverance: Even though her eyes were closed, even though she’d done her best to relax in the tiny barracks pod that qualified as a bunk, even though rainwater dripped on her mattress in a lulling plip, plip, plip, Ildri Bynovan wasn’t asleep. (Character and setting.)
• Enemy Mine: Priority Two Alert. Assassination contract for Captain Xiao Zhong verified. Guild assassin Mekise Tolenga en route.(Definitely a why)
  

 You can see a major change between books 1 to 3 and book 4. Also, sneak peak. You're getting to look at an opening line for a book that hasn't been published yet.

Well okay, Marcella. That's the SFR. What about the others?

Look at the fantasies.

• Blood Knife: The sweet scent of coffee spiked with caramel syrup preceded the shadow that obscured the golden October sunshine pouring into my office. (Setting I think.)
  

• Emissary: When I walked out of the Red Desert into the thin strip of fertile land I’d left as a girl, I barely recognized it. (I have no idea what this is.)

Urban Fantasy

• Nightmare Ink: Funny how longing for something you can’t have gets blown away in the first swirl of snowflakes heralding an oncoming blizzard. (No idea what this is.)
• Bound by Ink: Isa hadn’t intended to end up in a crowd of people so soon after getting rid of a Living Tattoo who’d wanted to kill her and take over her body for his own use. (This must be the Why.) 

The paranormal.

• Damned if He Does: The problem with being damned was that no one would meet your eye.(Character, I think.)

Huh. Look at that. I only thought that action was my preference. Looking through my first lines, it looks like I've done far more character hooks than action hooks.

My illusions are so shattered. What is writing even?