Author Confessions: Getting To Know You
When we meet people, there is often a process of “getting to know you,” that takes place. For most of us we don’t blurt out our entire life’s history at a first meeting. We share information, bit by bit, as we deem someone is safe to share with. The superficial before the deeper, more intimate secrets, we might carry. That’s true in fiction as well.
I’ve mentioned before that I write by the seat-of-my pants. I will do a back page blurb and have my two main characters and inciting incident where they meet and then I eagerly jump in and write. I can write fast when I put my mind to it. Not as fast as some but it is a matter of discipline. The reality is when I’m excited about something I can’t wait to get back to it!
That’s the definition of an ideal job, right?
I wish I could say that every part of writing and editing is pure, unadulterated joy. It’s not. It can be grueling and hard. Grit your teeth and git-‘er-done type of work. However, the initial excitment of starting a story, especially when it flows and the characters are engaging, can be so much fun to write.
I’m often too impulsive to do a basic character interview with my main characters so I jump right in and let them surprise me when they reveal parts of their past that I didn’t know. Sounds mysterious, right? It’s a creative process. I pray that I’m following where the Holy Spirit leads as I write stories that I hope and pray will give glory to God.
This year I do not have a Christmas gnome novella releasing as I focused on one I co-authored with DeeDee Lake called Mission: Matrimony, the last of our military romance series. I also finished, with great joy, writing Sealed With a Kiss, a contemporary Christmas romance based on letters from WWII that had been germinating for years. With planning a house, there wasn’t time to produce another novella. Both of those should release this November, 2026.
Space opened up in my schedule and I’ve longed to write a romance for Quincia Bellpepper. Puck’s twin sister in Gnomebody But You, needed her own story and perhaps I should start writing it. This time I decided to do a character interview with Quincia and her love interest, Jinx Jingleheimer. That takes prayer and time. Real life people don’t give up all their secrets at once and neither do fictional ones. I should always do this and my writing would be better for it.
When I wrote Sir Micheal’s Mayhem, it was probably the first time I’d done a character interview. Something as simple as the answer to the question, “Do they have any scars and how did they get them?”, resulted in a focal point in the story that revealed secrets and brought the couple back to the spot. I won’t give anything else away, you’ll have to read it to find out, but Sir Michael and Katrina are one of my favorite couples, maybe because I got to know them so well during that interview process.
There was another reason to do an interview for the gnome novella. Gnomes have unique names and I needed to map out family and friends with their requisite names! Picking names is always part of the fun for any story, but the names in the gnome novellas adds whimsy to the tale. It is no different with this one! And even though I’m the one who comes up with their backstories, they still reveal themselves to me in a deeper way through this process. Not everything in that interview will show up on the page but it might influence their actions and choices. Eventually the reader might be privy to the why they behaved as they did. The slow unveiling of a characters past makes the story more enjoyable instead of dumping their individual backstories in the first chapter. A reader wants to experience the adventure, not read their biographies.
If you are an author or aspiring author who would like to write a character interview and acquainted with your characters before you write, there are likely some examples on line. Or you can email me at silygoos@gmail.com and ask me to send my blank chart that I developed for couples (I might have a single one as well). Since it’s a Word doc file you can modify it to your heart’s desire. I’ve taken what others have done and made my own but I don’t proclaim to own rights to it. You might find other questions you’d like answers to.
If you’re a reader, I hope you enjoyed getting a peek behind-the-scenes of an author’s “Getting to know you,” process. I hope the characters that spring from that will bring you a few hours of enjoyment, and inspiration.