Don’t make your characters stereotypes

Make him real, not a stereotype

I’m a woman, so I must like shopping, shoes and soaps. I must hate football, not know the offside rule and how to fix things. And of course, I abhor bad language as it offends my feminine sensibilities.

In reality, shopping is my idea of hell, I hate shoes and wear trainers all the time because I walk a lot and soaps, well as though I am as susceptible to big storylines as anyone, I can take or leave them.

I don’t just love football, I was a football journalist for years and I am the one who fixes things in our house.

I also (shamefaced) have done quite a bit of swearing in my time. Well, put it this way, if there was a swear box in our house, I’d be putting a heck of a lot more in it than my boyfriend.

Are you a stereotype? Chances are you probably are not. So, why should your characters be?

Make them different. Make them stand out. They can even be a contradiction. For instance, in the Harlan Coben Byron Molitar books his friend Win Lockwood looks like a soft rich boy, but he’s a violent man and a master in various martial arts.

Myron’s business partner Esperanza is a small, pretty Latino lady but she used to be a professional wrestler known as Pocahontas in the Fabulous Ladies of Wrestling.

Whatever you do, DO NOT make them a stereotype; don’t generalise.

Real life people aren’t stereotypes and you want to breathe life into your characters.  

If Choke Hold were a movie, Tarantino would direct

Sometimes you start to despair of the way women are portrayed in fiction. Even when they're the police officers in charge of major investigations they tend to be weighed down by child care arrangements and will they or won't they get it on with that colleague? You don't get that with male characters.

At times it seems that women are only defined by two things: motherhood and their relationships.

How refreshing it is therfore to read a book like Choke Hold by Christa Faust where the woman in it, the brilliantly named Angel Dare, is a person in her own right. She's not looking for the man of her dreams or looking to be a baby mamma. She just wants to stay alive and is feisty enough to do all she can, including using violence if need be.

If you think Choke Hold is the book for you, I've reviewed it at Shadowlocked. There's also a link in the review that will direct you to an excerpt so you can try before you buy.

This book is worth the money for the cover alone.

Released on 7th October 2011, priced £7.99

Time saving devices cost you time

Don’t get me started on modern technology that’s supposed to save you time.

Yesterday, I was out and about when inspiration struck and I thought rather than doing what I normally do and writing in the notepad I carry around with me, that I would use the Notes facility in my Nokia 5800 Xpress Music mobile phone. That way when I got home I could synch it with my laptop as I’d done countless times before.

I tried it and the thing wouldn’t work. So, I went online looking for trouble shooting guides – you know the one the manufacturer didn’t think would be helpful to include with the phone.

Nothing seemed to work.

Five hours later, I’m snapping at my partner who’s only trying to help and have visions of taking a hammer to the phone and smashing it to bits, before setting it on fire.

In the end I did a factory reset and set everything up again from scratch.

Time consuming? Yes.  Did I get any writing done? Nah. I guess these time saving devices aren't as time saving as they claim.

A word to the wise to Nokia and anyone else making electronic devices: if you have a manual it’d better be concise. You know one that actually has a trouble shooting guide on it, instead of space being taken up with things like ‘don’t let your phone overheat’ (do they honestly think I was going to send it to the sauna) and ‘how to switch it on’ (doh, that’s too high tech for me).