Danger: Cliche Ahead!
One of the biggest challenges I face in my books is how to make my characters three-dimensional. It’s so easy to fall back on stereotypes – cardboard cut-outs straight from Central Casting. How do I write a cynical police detective in a way that doesn’t put his cynicism front and center? My main character, Laurie, is a focused career woman – what quirks, what shades of personality, can I give her to make her more believable? What drives the two of them to act in the ways they do?
The answer, of course, comes from looking at all the real people I know in my own life. Family. Friends. Co-workers. I don’t know about you, but I’ve never met a true archetype. Bad people have good qualities (well, most of them do…), good people abound with flaws, seemingly boring people harbor unexpected streaks of color. The only consistent element is that of surprise.
In Meeting Murder, I started to explore that idea, and I tried to give my characters a few unexpected traits. In future books, I’d like to do much more of that – to create characters that are as complicated, as multi-layered, as the people I see every day. As for my own motives, they’re pretty easy to figure out – as much as I want people to enjoy Meeting Murder, I just hope to write a better story each time.
