Adding Reality to Fiction

Today my partner in life and in crime—novels, that is—Larry K. Collins is my guest. See how we create reality in our fiction.

During a conference presentation, I was asked this question: “I write fiction. What kind of research should I do? And how much?”

My answer was: “As much as you can. The more reality you put into your fiction, the more believable it becomes. As a rule of thumb, I put in a true fact, a fact, a fact, a fact, and make up a fact. If I do it well, my readers won’t be able to tell which one is made up.”

WRITING A REAL LOCATION

In our second mystery, Murder in Paradise, our protagonist, Agapé Jones, retired NYPD detective, was supposed to drive from Honolulu to Hale’iwa. While doing research on Oahu, I drove the same route, noticed the outrigger canoes parked along the Ala Wai Canal, and shopped at the Foodland in Hale’iwa. Then Agapé did the same things in the book. We know our readers will never forgive us if we mess up their town. And if our hero drives the wrong way on a one-way street, we’ll never hear the end of it.

While writing a story in a real place, I surround myself with photos, clippings, and maps of the area I intend to write about. Anything to keep me grounded in reality.

Sometimes a picture will inspire a scene. In Murder in Paradise, I had the grandmother character tell the story of growing up as a child on the North Shore and visiting the Hale’iwa Hotel, a beautiful Victorian-style inn featuring a two-story lanai and luxurious dining room. Opened in 1898, the building was torn down in 1952. As inspiration, I purchased several early photos of the old hotel from North Shore Photo Hawaii and hung them on the wall over my computer. The pictures themselves never appeared in the book, but my descriptions became more accurate because I could visualize being there. Hopefully I passed my vision on to the reader.

WRITING A FICTITIOUS LOCATION

Lorna and four friends created the fictitious town of Aspen Grove, Colorado, as the location for their anthologies, Snowflake Secrets, Seasons of Love, Directions of Love, and An Aspen Grove Christmas. This allows the authors to invent shops, restaurants, churches, B&Bs, etc. to fit the various novellas. They placed Aspen Grove in the mountains west of Denver on the road leading to the ski resorts. Even though it is fictitious, it needed to have the real look and character of the area. Aspen Grove became a composite of several real towns.

Walk down the main street of Idaho Springs and you expect to see Daisy’s Diner and the Book Nook. Wander along the lakefront in Georgetown to find Drew’s log cabin and on through town to the stone building housing the Presbyterian Church. Several readers have remarked they would love to visit Aspen Grove. So would we.

WRITING HISTORICAL FICTION

Not only do the locations need to be correct, but also the specific time period. The events, language, customs, clothing, and props must all fit the era.

In historical fiction, it is even more important to do accurate research. Our latest endeavor, The Memory Keeper, concerns life at the San Juan Capistrano Mission between 1820 and 1890 as seen through the eyes of a Juaneño Indian.

For inspiration, an original etching by Rob Shaw, published in 1890 by H L Everett, showing the mission grounds, currently hangs over my computer.

Our bibliography is running about five or six pages and growing. We have also enlisted the aid of the local San Juan historian and a Juaneño native storyteller as beta readers for historical information. We won’t be satisfied until they are satisfied with the accuracy of our details.

Now that I’ve said all that, I have to remind myself. Never let the facts get in the way of the story. Too many details can turn a good story into a boring history lesson. In the end, the research should support and enhance, but not overwhelm. We must choose carefully which facts to include, leave out, and make up. If we’ve done our job, our readers will become so involved with the plot and compelling characters, that the facts just blend in. They’ll never know how much research went into it. But we will.

Celebrate Romance

Celebrate romance with me on  The Book Connection where I write about how our romance anthologies came about.

 

Cover designs by Melissa Summers

Creating Characters

We’re often asked how we create characters. Do they just appear or do we make them up? The answer is “YES”!

The truth is that we sometimes start with a plot, and the characters emerge from that. At other times we ‘cast’ them based on friends or celebrities. Here are a few examples:

AGAPÉ JONES

We were attending the Maui Writers Conference when Larry got the idea of writing a mystery set at a writers’ conference. So Murder… They Wrote began as his brainchild.

The next day, we met Love Smith and talked to him about ten minutes. As we walked away, I said to Larry, ‘We have to write that guy!” Thus our protagonist Agapé Jones was born. He’s loosely based on Love. However, whenever we see him, we discover that we’re writing what he’s actually doing! So maybe we’re channeling him… And here we thought we were creating the whole story.

AMY & DAN

For my novella, “Winter’s Song” in the anthology, Seasons of Love, I decided to use our friends Amy and Dan as the inspiration. He’d been after me for years to write their story, and this was the perfect opportunity. (I used their real first names with their permission. Find out what happened after the story here: )

Of course, I fictionalized most of the story. At least I thought I did.

Amy’s mother is a member of our writing group. Several times we’d read a chapter and she’d say, “How did you know about that?” I’d answer, “I thought I’d made it up.” Then she’d proceed to tell me the real story which was eerily similar to what I’d ‘made up.’

COUNTESS ELEKTRA ROZANSKA

For Murder… They Wrote, we decided to create an older lady as one of the suspects. Larry’s speech teacher in grammar school was Countess Elektra Rozanska. I said, “I’d love to use her real name!” “So would I,” he said. So we tried to locate her family without success.

We decided to use her name anyway since she was long gone and she’d have loved being a suspect! So we wrote the character based on her with a few embellishments. (Find out why she was so important to Larry here: http://bit.ly/cERPQc)

A couple of years after the book was published, we were contacted by her grandson. He was delighted that we had written her as a character, and he agreed that she’d have loved her role. He later contacted us to let us know that, although she’d convinced Larry that her title and exploits were all true, she had actually made up not only the name but also part of her back story! Still, we’re so happy that we could pay homage to this very special person in Larry’s life.

LOVEY JONES

Another special lady in my life was Lovie Cooper. (You can see her photo and read about her on our website (http://bit.ly/LBSdjM). When we created Agapé, we decided he needed someone to confide in. Thus was his dead mother, Lovey created, based on our own Lovie. She’s really easy to write since I just close my eyes and imagine her talking to me.

KIMI MCGUIRE & JASON NAKAGIRI

When we first discussed our anthology, Directions of Love, I knew I wanted to take the west. I love Hawaii and wanted to set at least some of my novella there. So “Finding Love in Paradise” was begun. I also decided to take advantage of our own experiences even farther west: Japan.

In this case, Kimi grew out of the storyline. She had to be at least partially Hawaiian so she had a connection there. I’ve seen many lovely Hawaiian girls in our many trips to that special place. We also know many young Japanese women. So Kimi’s appearance was based on a composite of them. Since she was raised in the US, her personality, speech, etc. were easy to write.

Her love interest, Jason, needed to be Japanese/Hawaiian for the story to work. Again, he grew out of the story. However, one night we were watching “The Mentalist” on TV, and Detective Cho (Tim Kang) walked onscreen. “That’s Jason!” I exclaimed. From that moment on, Jason looked like the actor.

However, that wasn’t the end of the story. A couple of years later, we were visiting Oahu and decided to spend a day at Queen Emma’s Summer Palace. We were assigned a docent, and when she appeared I gasped. “I’m sorry,” I said. “But you look exactly like a character I created for a book.” I went on to describe “Finding Love in Paradise” to her. It turned out that this young lady shared many characteristics with Kimi. Both were Irish/Hawaiian. Both studied anthropology at UH. Kimi was a docent at the Bishop Museum, and this one was at the Summer Palace.

And once again I wondered just how much I’d made up.

NAN BURTON & MAX MURDOCH

The character of Nan Burton in my new novel Ghost Writer is loosely based on the young ladies I worked with at my last job. I tried to capture their speech patterns and language since they were close to her age.

Max Murdoch, the ghost, was really based on some of the characters portrayed by Clifton Webb in his old movies, particularly Three Coins in the Fountain (http://bit.ly/JucuHy). He is an old curmudgeon, egotistic, and insensitive. He’s also a bit arrogant and British like the character Jonathan Harris Played in the TV Show Lost in Space (http://bit.ly/5n79q).

Even though I think I made them up, I have a sneaky suspicion that, given my record to date, I may actually meet people like them someday.