The most common question a writer is asked, of course, is, โWhere do you get your
ideas?โ
I always answer, โTheyโre lying around on the ground everywhere. I just pick them
up.โ Because the hard thing about getting ideas isnโt finding them. Itโs forcing
them to make some sort of sense.
The second most common question is, โAre your characters based on real people?โ
No! No! A thousand times no!
Even if they were, Iโll never admit it. But sometimes theyโre inspired by real
people.
For instance, my detective-heroine Lee McKinney Woodyard is nearly six feet tall, a
natural blond former beauty queen, half Dutch and half Texan, and a whiz at figures
with a degree in accounting.
If anybody asks, I always say sheโs based on me.
Thatโs because Iโm five-foot-two, fat, with dark hair, remarkably ugly, have
trouble balancing my checkbook, and am old enough to be Leeโs grandmother. In other
words, Lee is based on everything Iโm not.
But Iโm not lying when I say Lee is based on me. When Iโm writing about Lee, when
Iโm seeing the world from her viewpoint, I do look like Lee. In my imagination.
Unlike real life, in that moment Iโm a person who can balance her checkbook on the
first try. I can play the guitar and carry a tune. In my imagination Iโm so
gorgeous that my fictional first husband thought heโd bought a trophy wife. Iโm so
thin โ well, you get it.
But when I say Lee is based on me, I donโt mean she looks like me or has my
talents. But she does have many of my attitudes and beliefs.
Leeโs Aunt Nettie, proprietor of TenHuis Chocolade, is another example of a
character inspired by a real person, or in her case by two people.
I was lucky enough to be reared in frequent proximity to my grandmother and her
sister, known as Gran and Aunt Sula. I deliberately made the character of Aunt
Nettie like a combination of the two of them. They were known as โthe ladiesโ in
our family.
My grandmotherโs name was Nettie, and Aunt Sulaโs was officially Ursula. They were
kind, calm, loving but not sentimental, great listeners, fabulous cooks, and full
of common sense. They were also two generations older than the Aunt Nettie in the
Chocoholic
Mystery books, since both were born before 1900. So their attitudes and
experiences were quite different from hers.
Naturally, book characters have various functions. They may be comic โ like Aunt
Nettieโs assistant Dolly Jolly, who canโt speak in a normal tone of voice. She
shouts.
Dolly is really a joke on myself. This is because I despise the use of an
explanation point to indicate that something is a joke. โHe swore he wouldnโt
forget this time!โ Sorry, fellow writers, an explanation point isnโt shorthand for
โthis is funny!โ
So in the days when I was editor of the Sisters in Crime newsletter, I forbade that
usage. Then I created a fictional character, Dolly, who ends every sentence that
way. โThereโs someone at the door!โ โThe UPS man came!โ โA friend of Jeffโs is
here!โ
Okay, okay, itโs not funny. Iโm just kidding myself by writing a character who
speaks in a way I once-upon-a time forbade other writers to use.
But whatโs the use of being a writer if you canโt kid your own foibles? And those
of others.
JoAnna Carl is the author of the fifteen books of the Chocoholic Mystery
Series, and has also written books under her real name, Eve K. Sandstrom. She is a
fifth-generation Oklahoman, but writes about a resort on the shore of Lake
Michigan. Go figure.
Website
From the bestselling author of THE CHOCOLATE CLOWN CORPSE, itโs murder, my
sweet, for a chocolatier whose love of old crime films plunges her into a real-life
murder where the motives arenโt so black and whiteโฆ
The Warner Pier tourism board is kicking off its Tough Guys and Private Eyes film
festival with The Maltese Falcon, and Lee Woodyard and her Aunt Nettie are
preparing a delicious chocolate noir tie-in at TenHuis Chocolade. What Lee isnโt
prepared for is a face from the past: Jeff Godfrey, her former stepson. The last
time Jeff showed up in town, he wound up being accused of murder. Now he says heโs
only in Warner Pier to see Bogart on the big screen. Honest.
Jeff may now be a college grad, but that doesnโt mean heโs any less naรฏve than the
kid Lee had to bail out of trouble earlier. There are all those strange phone
calls, a girlfriend whoโs secretly on Jeffโs tail, and a pack of suspicious-
sounding acquaintances right out of Dashiell Hammett. Then Jeff goes missing, the
Falcon theme is haunting everyone, and a body falls at Leeโs feet when she opens
the front door โ just like in the movie.
Now Lee is under deadline to rewrite the ending of a cunning killerโs increasingly
convincing murder plotโฆ
Includes Tasty Chocolate Trivia!
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