The narrative that’s brewing in your mind does not truly come to life until your characters stop speaking to you and start speaking to each other. Only then does the dramatic tension fully manifest, propelling the reader through the pages and delivering a climax that is unexpected, perhaps even to the author.
How can you get there? With each of your main characters, you must strike a careful balance between relatability and enhancement. As James Frey notes, a vivid character “has hotter passions and colder anger; he travels more, fights more, loves more, changes more… Even if he is plain, dull, and boring, he’ll be more extraordinary in his plainness, dullness, and boringness than his real-life counterparts.”
In our August 9th meeting, Anne Hillerman will guide us through a writer’s relationship with the characters who will touch, and perhaps also break, the reader’s heart.
Santa Fe author Anne Hillerman continues the Navajo detective stories her father Tony Hillerman made popular. Her debut mystery, Spider Woman’s Daughter, received the prestigious Spur Award from Western Writers of America as best first novel. That book and the five novels that followed were all New York Times bestsellers. Her sixth mystery, Stargazer, was published in 2021. Before she became a novelist, Anne was a nonfiction author and award-winning journalist. When she’s not working, Anne likes to read, cook, and travel. She lives in Santa Fe with her dog, Sally.
When: Monday, August 9th at 7pm
Where: Zoom – Members will be receiving an email with the Zoom invite
Become a South Bay Writers Member here
If you aren’t on our event email list yet, you can get a zoom meeting invite by contacting Tatyana Grinenko (pr@southbaywriters.com) who will add your email to the South Bay Writers publicity and Constant Contact list.