The Name Game

I was thinking about baby names long before I was pregnant, though I was several months into my pregnancy before I settled on my daughter's name. I would try out different names, think about them for a while, try to imagine calling my child that as she grew up. By the time of my baby shower I was sure enough to tell my friends. At the end of the shower a friend's ten-year-old daughter patted my pregnant stomach and said "goodbye, Mélanie." The name was starting to seem inextricably intertwined with this little creature who kicked with increasing vigor.

My daughter, Mélanie Cordelia, is named after two characters in my books, with a nod to Shakespeare. Just a couple of yeas ago I was naming the character Cordelia, who appears in my recently released Imperial Scandal. I went through a similar process to the one I went through naming my baby - making lists, trying out names. Save that the character who would become Cordelia already had a very clear personality in my mind. That's where naming a character is different from naming a child. The character is usually already a fully formed adult. And of course one doesn't have to worry the character will hate you as a teenager for choosing that particular name.

Sometimes I struggle over character names, other times they seem obvious to me. While it took me a long time to settle on Cordelia's name (and on Harry for her estranged husband), I knew almost instinctively that Cordelia's sister should be named Julia. Last month, just before Imperial Scandal was published, I was having dinner with a friend in New York. We started talking about Brideshead Revisited, and only then did I realize that the two sisters in Brideshead are named Julia and Cordelia. Very different characters from my Cordelia and Julia, but subconsciously I must have remembered when I named my characters, if only in the sense that those two names seemed to go together. The tricky thing of course about naming characters is that one doesn't know what conscious and subconscious associations readers will bring to the names one chooses.

In naming a character a writer struggles with not only what fits the character but also with what name that character's parents might have chosen when the character was as much an unknown as my unborn daughter was when I named her. I went through several names for the hero's sister in Beneath a Silent Moon before I realized her half-French mother would have given her a French name. Suddenly not only was the name obvious, but her character fell into place. The historical novelist also has to deal with what names were in historical usage. A real challenge when family trees of the era reveal a multitude of George, Edwards, and Johns. This becomes particularly problematic in an ongoing series. Yes, a set at Almack's might have been made up of two Georges and two Elizabeths with two Edwards and two Annes in the next set over, but in a novel the reader will get confused. Yet, going back to the question of what names the parents might pick, some characters' parents would be likely to pick conventional names. And then there's the real historical character who suddenly cries out to pop into one's fictional narrative and happens to share a name with an already established fictional character. Or two historical figures who share a name - the book I just finished features Sir Charles Stuart, real life British diplomat, and Charles, Lord Stewart, real life British diplomat/soldier. One can only imagine the confusion at diplomatic soirées, especially as both men were known for their amorous intrigues.

When I find the "right" name for a character, it's soon hard for me to imagine them as anyone else. Just as it's now hard for me to imagine my daughter as anyone but Mélanie Cordelia.

Do names affect the way you view a character? Have characters in books changed the way you feel about a particular name? How important is historical accuracy to you in character names? Writers, what are the particular challenges you face in naming characters?

What to do with a villain

I just finished going through the galleys for Vienna Waltz. Reading the final chapters in which the villains are unmasked, I was reminded of a conundrum I face writing historical suspense. What to do with the villains after try are caught. One problem I find with historical settings or perhaps with the kind of plots I write is that prosecuting the villain often entails revealing secrets that would cause scandal and ruin numerous lives. Which can be a dilemma for a hero/heroine who wants to see justice done but doesn’t want innocent lives destroyed. Also in many of my stories the villains prove to be closely connected to the central characters, which means ending with an arrest and the prospect of a trial leaves a great many dangling ends that I don’t necessary want to be the focus of my next book. In Secrets of a Lady Edgar and Jack both die in the dénouement, leaving Meg to go to prison (I’d still like to deal with Meg more in a subsequent book). In Beneath a Silent Moon, Evie also dies, killed by Tommy who escapes (definitely to be dealt with a in a future book). I’m not quite sure what the other characters would have done with Evie if she hadn’t died in the dénouement. It’s rather interesting to contemplate.

But the murderer can’t always conveniently die just as he or she is unmasked. In an as yet unpublished book, I have the murderer get away with the crime. In Vienna Waltz, because the events of the book are very much intertwined with real historical events and people, it was particular difficult to find a solution that worked with the historical record. Reading over the galleys, I’m pretty happy with the solution I found. If you read the book, you'll have to let me know what you think.

When I blogged about this topic on my own website, several readers pointed that there are different types of villains. Sarah said, "I think it depends if the ‘villain’ is a plot device, to be written out with the end of the novel, or an antagonist, who may reappear in sequels (I’m thinking of Chauvelin in the Scarlet Pimpernel books). I can’t think of any books I’ve read recently with an out and out ‘villain’, apart from detective/murder mysteries, where the goal is to catch the killer." As JMM pointed out, "Often the only difference between a hero and antagonist is the side he/she is on."

Since my books are suspense with murder mysteries, when I used the term villain I was really thinking of the murderer. Susan said, "I would think that a good suspense/mystery would need pretty loose definitions of villains, antagonists, and other misc bad guys. If someone is clearly a villain, committing obvious crimes, the story would be pretty predictable, and there wouldn’t be much debate about what should happen to the bad guy. Things get more interesting when good people are put in desperate situations. When there is not really an obvious choice on what they should do."

I totally agree with this. I think “villain” relates to a character’s position in a story rather than necessarily to something intrinsic about that person. In fact, part of what I think is interesting and part of setting up a mystery that’s tricky to solve is that the murderer is someone who seems like a sympathetic person. In a book that’s more suspense than mystery, you can have an evil mastermind behind a nefarious plot, with the emphasis on how the plot will be stopped. But if there’s a mystery and multiple suspects, I think it’s more interesting if the reader than imagine any of them possibly being driven to commit the crime. In creating the character of the murderer, I need to figure out what drives that person and what would push them over the edge. And then, at the end of the book, how to resolve their story.

How do you feel about how plot lines are resolved for villains? What are some of your favorite resolutions? Writers, do you struggle over what to do with your villains?

Clothing Makes the Character

Pam had a great post last year about period clothing in the wonderful movie Milk and the fascinating television show Mad Men and in historical fiction. As I blogged about around the same time, one of the things I loved about Milk was its wonderfully vivid recreation, in settings and costumes, of San Francisco in the 70. At times I felt I was watching scenes from my childhood. I recently caught up on seasons one and two of Mad Men and then was riveted to season three (and am now eagerly awaiting season four). It's a fascinating, layered show, that brings to life New York in the early 1960s. It's the era when my parents were dating and first married. I have pictures of them in similar clothes to those in the show, my dad in suits and ties and gleaming white shirts, my mom in fitted dresses and suits that required a girdle and a structured bra. By the time I remember them, in the 70s, my dad's version of formal was a turtleneck under a sports coat, and my mom usually wore jeans to work or Diane von Furstenberg-type dresses that were fluid and much less structured. They look like different people from the couple in polished, formal clothes in those early 60s photographs.

Clothes are so much a part of defining a character. As Pam wrote, But as a writer I'm more interested in the clothes from the inside out. The way they make us feel when we wear them. Because our clothes may be our most consistent guides and goads to who we try to be in a world we didn’t create; our nakedness when we're alone an intermittent reminder that we aren't exactly those people; our nakedness with a lover a way of revealing this fact.

I love clothes, both as a writer and in real life.I think a lot about the clothes my characters wear and what that says about them. I love to pour over Regency fashion plates (I'm so thankful for Candice Hern's great website)and think about which clothes would fit which character. Sometimes I think about what sort of clothes my characters would wear if they were living in the present day, which can be an interesting way to get a new take on the characters.

I like to describe clothes as the characters interact with them. I think quite a bit is revealed about Charles and Mélanie in the first scene between them in Secrets of a Lady where Charles shrugs out of his evening coat sparing a silent curse for the close-fitting passions of the day while Mélanie unwinds the voluminous folds of her cashmere shawl, peels off her gloves, unwinds the ivory satin ribbons that crisscrossed her silk-stockinged ankles. Charles is impatient with clothing and doesn't think about it much. Mélanie removes each layer with care. I changed the color of Mélanie's dress in that scene several times, until I settled on champagne-colored silk, which immediately seemed right. Writing this post, I realized there's also a metaphorical element in that Charles and Mel are undressing in that first scene, removing the layers of clothing that define and contain their roles, in the way they will strip away layers of secrets in the course of the story. Recently a reader commented on the fact that their clothes disintegrate over the course of their adventures, as the façade of their perfect life also crumbles.

Later in the book, Mélanie thinks She felt naked and vulnerable, as though the layers of goffered linen and pin-tucked sarcenet and rushed velvet had been stripped from her body. Layers that constrained her but also defined who she was, who had been for seven years. I think I pay particular attention to clothes and accessories when I'm writing about Mélanie because she's always playing a role. One of the first lines I wrote about Jeremy Roth was where he thinks that Mel looked like a woman who always wore earrings, which I think says a lot about both Mélanie and Roth. In Beneath a Silent Moon, Mélanie wears a shirt and breeches for a couple of nighttime adventures. I hadn't planned that in advance, but when I got to the scene where she and Charles go to explore Dunmykel's secret passage, it occurred to me that Mel, who always dresses for the part, almost certainly would wear breeches on occasion and would probably have packed them on this trip, knowing the sort of adventures she and Charles might encounter at Dunmyel. That led to the sequence later where she's mistaken for a boy by the smugglers. The morning following the first scene, Mélanie thinks that She'd exchanged last night's shirt and breeches for a cambric morning dress, scalloped and threaded through with peach silk ribbon. The ensemble of a decorous wife. Like me, Mel understands that the right clothing defines a character.

Vienna Waltz, on which I'm currently finishing up revisions, takes place in the social whirl of the Congress of Vienna, so clothes are particularly important to all the characters. Whether it's masquerade ball costumes, elaborate court dress, Renaissance costumes the Carrousel (a recreation of a tournament) or simply what one wears to pay a morning call. In the midst of investigating a murder, Mélanie/Suzanne thinks She chose a Vitoria cloak of Pomona green sarcenet and a French bonnet of green velvet and white satin with Blanca’s advice (she was after all calling on one of the most fashionable women in Vienna though the purpose of the visit was not social). She also ruins an evening gown early on in the book, climbing over the roofs of Vienna to avoid pursuit. She tends to be hard on her clothes. I'd been in tears if I ruined so many beautiful dresses.

Writers, how do you approach clothing your characters? Readers, do you notice details about clothing in books? Any examples that particularly stand out?

Rivals & Brothers

San Francisco Opera’s season last fall opened with a fabulous production of Verdi’s Il Trovatore. I was lucky enough to see it three times (the final dress rehearsal, a simulcast at ATT ballpark, and the closing performance). The production updated the setting from medieval Spain to the Peninsular War, which of course I loved. The Goya-inspired setting fit well with a story of war, divided families, and one atrocity leading to another.

At the heart of Trovatore’s tangled, over-the-top plot are two brothers, separated at birth, now unknown to each other fighting for opposite sides and rivals for the love of the same woman. Watching the opera, I found myself thinking about brothers in literature. A topic which was also on my mind watching tonight's episode of Lost. Sibling relationships are fascinating, but in historically set stories, inheritance can make the the rivalry between brothers particularly intense. Perhaps especially so in British-set historical stories because of the laws of inheritance. Among the aristocracy the eldest son inherits the title and estates, while younger sons may at best receive a secondary property of their mother’s and in many cases have to make their own way in the world as soldiers, ministers, or barristers. In As You Like It, Orlando is living as a servant on the dubious charity of his elder brother Oliver who has inherited all the family lands and fortune.

Questions of legitimacy can further complicate this rivalry. In King Lear, the Duke of Gloucester’s illegitimate son Edmund sets out to destroy his legitimate brother Edgar, driven by the pent up jealousy of watching his brother be heir to their father’s lands and title due to the fact that Edgar’s mother was married to the duke while Edmund was born on the wrong side of the blanket.

The issues grow even more tangled when an acknowledged son and heir may actually be illegitimate. The rivalry between Lymond and Richard runs through Dorothy Dunnett’s Lymond Chronicles (including one of the best literary sword fights I’ve ever read in The Game of Kings). At the heart of that rivalry is competition for parental affection and the family estates, and the question of who is who’s son, who deserves what, who is loved best. What makes rivalry between brothers particularly interesting is that it tends to be mixed, as in Lymond and Richard’s case, with strong love that goes back to the cradle.

I think I had Lymond and Richard in mind when I created Charles and Edgar in Secrets of Lady. I know I was thinking of Edmund and Edgar, because I deliberately named my Edgar after the legitimate brother from Lear. I decided quite early on in the plotting process, over lattes with my friend Penny, that Charles was illegitimate, that Edgar knew this and Charles didn’t, and that part of Edgar’s motivation stemmed from feeling that everything Charles had inherited should rightfully be his. I also knew I wanted the bond between the brothers to be strong, so that Edgar’s betrayal would be a particularly intense blow to Charles (poor Charles gets betrayed a great deal).

Beneath a Silent Moon features another pair of brothers in Quen and Val. There’s a rivalry between them that their father has encouraged. Charles tells Mel about the boys trying to scale the Old Tower at Dunmykel when they were children. But I found as I wrote the book that, despite the fact that much of Val’s behavior is appalling, the relationship between the two brothers was more complex and had more affection in it than I had at first envisioned. Quen and Val’s relationship is also clouded by questions of legitimacy as the story progresses. I think that one of the reasons I write about legitimacy and illegitimacy in so many books is that so much of the social order among British aristocrats was build on birth. So that questions about legitimacy can strike at the very foundations of that world (foundations which Edgar, in particular, takes very seriously).

In Beneath a Silent Moon, the reader doesn’t see Val react to the revelations about Quen’s birth, but in the letters I wrote for the trade edition, Quen writes to Aspasia that Val said their father “wouldn’t do violence to himself–Talbots have too strong a sense of self-preservation, as we both should know. I pointed out that I’m apparently not a Talbot, as I had explained to him before we left Scotland. Val shot me one of his looks and said I’d been raised as one, I couldn’t escape the legacy.” Val handles the revelation of his elder brother’s illegitimacy better than Edgar. But then, for all his faults, I think Val has more ambiguity tolerance than Edgar.

Do you like stories about brothers? What are some favorites? Writers, do you enjoy writing about brothers as rivals?

Sex as a Literary Challenge

In her recent post Pam talked about writing a seduction scene. Which got me to thinking about writing love scenes. Or to be more accurate, sex scenes, as there are certainly love scenes that don’t involve sex, except as subtext. Sex scenes are perhaps a particular challenge for the historical novelist because, as Pam said, of the need to carry "with it the feeling of its historically understood world, quite as fully as any other scene in the novel." Which includes everything from the mores of the time to contraception or the lack of it to details of clothing as it is removed (with which last issue Kalen is a wonderful resource).

When I first began co-writing Regency romances with my mom, under the name Anthea Malcolm, my friends teased me that our books started very chaste and slowly got more explicit. In our first book, The Widow’s Gambit, the characters barely embraced. In the second, The Courting of Philippa, there were more detailed kisses. (There was also a description of birth control methods when the radical reformer hero took the Silver Fork novelist heroine to a meeting put on by another reformer). In the third, Frivolous Pretence, which focused on an estranged married couple, there was an actual sex scene, though it faded to black. Our fifth book, A Touch of Scandal, had ex-lovers who resumed an illicit affair. Sex scenes were part of the story. I told my mom she had to write them. Our sixth book, An Improper Proposal, was a marriage of convenience story. My mom said, “You have to write one of the sex scenes this time.” I wrote my first draft of the scene on a day when my mom was out shopping. And (this is true, though it sounds so funny now), I turned down the screen on my computer, so I couldn’t look at the words as I typed them. When my mom got home that night, I said, “Okay, I wrote the scene. Go look at it and tell me what you think. But I don’t want to be there when you read it.”

Oddly enough, after that first scene I stopped being embarrassed about writing sex scenes. I got to find them quite a fun challenge, especially trying to make each one true to those particular characters and that stage in their relationship (my favorite, I think, is the one in Shadows of the Heart, which takes place in the crypt of a church after the hero and heroine have narrowly escaped being killed). But when I wrote Secrets of a Lady, it was quite obvious to me that after the opening interrupted sex scene, Charles and Mélanie were too focused on finding the Carevalo Ring and getting their son back to stop to have sex. On top of the fact that their relationship is so strained that Charles finds it difficult even to look Mel in the face let alone make love to her. In fact one of the reasons I had Mélanie be attacked fairly early in the story was to break through some of the distance between them so that Charles at least touches her. If you examine the book, their physical contact slowly increases through their desperate adventures in search of the ring and Colin.

In Beneath a Silent Moon, (which thematically is in many ways all about sex), Charles and Mélanie do make love fairly early in the story. When I wrote the scene, I automatically faded to black without thinking about it. I did the same with a later sex scene in the book. Despite the fact that what happens between them in the second scene is important to their relationship. They both think about the scene later. Charles even apologizes to Mélanie for it being "without thought." But I rather like the fact that it's left up to the reader's imagination to fill in precisely what did happen, why it disturbs Charles, why Mel is much more matter-of-fact about it. I’ve come full circle, in a way, from from being embarrassed to write sex scenes to enjoying writing them to liking the mystery of not showing everything. Of hinting at exactly who does what and how and what it means to them but leaving a great deal up to the reader’s imagination.

When I blogged about this topic on my own website, our own Mary Blayney said "I love writing sex scenes, but I find the longer I spend creating them the less effective they are. I think it has everything to do with my understanding of the characters sexuality which I have to admit I do not always know as well as I know other aspects of their lives."

I had thought about it in quite those terms before, but I think understanding a character's sexuality may be one of the more elusive pieces of developing a character. One can know a person very well without knowing about the intimate aspects of their life. And the historical novelist has to think her or himself into the head of someone whose sexuality is influenced by the societal pressures of another era. Depending on the era about which one is writing, one sometimes has to tease attitudes toward sexuality out of subtext in letters and journals and literature of the era (while in other eras the historical record is much more frank and explicit).

In the discussion on my website, Cate commented on sex scenes that are less explicitly detailed. "One of my favourites is Laurie R King’s Russell, who writes throwaway lines like: 'And then my husband came in looking very handsome in his suit and one thing led to another and we never got around to talking about X until morning.' (Forgive my paraphrasing, I don’t have my books handy.) It so wonderfully suits the characters of Russell and Holmes.

"I find lines like that almost more entertaining than fully-described scenes. Just so delightfully understated — and I can imagine as much or as little as I wish to on my own. I tend to write scenes like this for my own characters, but not always."

I too love the way Laurie King handles handles these moments. The throwaway lines can either be witty as in the example Cate quoted or quite emotionally powerful (as in a later scene from The Moor where Russell is upset–understandably–after having just viewed a dead body and Holmes comes in (reappearing unexpectedly after an absence) and holds her (”Holmes was always very satisfactory at determining, with a minimum of clues, what in a given situation was the required course of action.”). I also love that if you read King closely you can often figure out the physicality of a scene (say how Russell and Holmes are lying in bed) without her overtly describing it.

How do you feel about sex scenes? What makes them work or not? How detailed do you like them to be? Writers, how do you approach writing sex scenes? Do you enjoy writing them or find them a chore? How much detail do you go into? Has your approach to them changed through the years or with the type of books you write?

I Could Have Danced All Night

As I've mentioned in prior blogs, a lot of my nonwriting time is spent working as a board member of the Merola Opera Program, a training program for opera singers, coach accompanists, and stage directors. On March 28, we had our annual Spring Benefit fundraiser. This event is about as close I get to the parties and balls that are so important in many of our novels. I got my hair done (with a ceramic curling iron rather than metal tongs heated in an Agrand lamp); I helped with decorations (laying out Silent Auction items rather than arranging flowers and lighting wax tapers); I scrambled into my dress and helped do up the hooks on friends' dresses (in a hotel room not a boudoir in someone's Mayfair town house); sipped champagne (some things never change); filled a supper plate from a buffet (artichoke ravioli rather than lobster patties); listened to a wonderful concert (some of which, Mozart, might have actually been performed at an entertainment in one of my books); and danced in to the morning (to decidedly different music from that at Regency ball).

The next day, I found myself thinking about parties and balls in novels. A number of memorable ones spring to mind, beginning with the assembly ball in Pride and Prejudice. In fact, Pride and Prejudice has a number of ball and party scenes, including the memorable the Netherfield ball. When the A&E adaptation first aired, my friend and fellow writer Penny Williamson commented on how often the characters went to parties. She said she could imagine Jane Austen as a writer thinking “how am I going to get these characters together? I have to have another party scene.”

In an era before cell phones, texts, emails, and tweets, where it was difficult for unmarried men and women to interact unchaperoned, balls, receptions, and other social occasions were hubs of social interaction. Whether it's a provincial assembly ball, a subscription night at Almack's, a convivial evening at Mrs. Phillips', or a ball at Netherfield Park, these entertainments provided the opportunity for everything from flirtation (not to mention and out and assignations) to gossip to catching up with an old friend or an old lover to mustering support for a Parliamentary bill. For the novelist, balls provide rich opportunities for the characters to interact. There’s the chance for private conversation during a dance (Darcy and Elizabeth at the Netherfield ball) and the opportunity for one character to observe another (Darcy makes a disastrous impression on Lizzy at the assembly ball and the Netherfield ball confirms Darcy’s negatives of the entire Bennet family). The chance to advance multiple story lines in one scene (both the Darcy/Elizabeth and Jane/Bingley relationships move forward in these various party scenes, and the ball early on in Anna Karenina not only showcases Anna and Vronsky's meeting it moves forward the Lenin/Kitty storyline and the story of Anna's brother and his wife). A ball can be the occasion of an unexpected meeting (Marianne encountering Willoughby and his wife in Sense and Sensibility). It can be spun-sugar covering for scenes of intrigue and drama (the Grenville ball in The Scarlet Pimpernel).

One of the more dramatic real historical entertainments is the Duchess of Richmond’s ball in Brussels at which Wellington learned that Napoleon had stolen a march on him. Soldiers in ball dress left the dance floor to join their regiments and marched out of Brussels that night. The duchess’s ball has been brought to vivid life in a number of novels–by Thackery in Vanity Fair, by Georgette Heyer in An Infamous Army, by Bernard Cornwell in Waterloo. I had the fun of writing about it myself in Shores of Desire (what could be a better setting for drama? all the major characters together as they receive news that will change all their lives in myriad ways). I’d love to use the Duchess of Richmond’s ball in a Charles & Mélanie book some day, either in flashback or in another prequel.

The public nature of a ball can create a wonderful tension with the intimacy of an exchange between two people. Imagine if Romeo and Juliet's first meeting had occurred with the two of them alone rather than in the fraught setting of a ball in her parents' house, at which he is an interloper. There's the added tension of the fact that even if it isn't a masquerade ball, everyone to a certain extent wears a mask in a very public social setting.

Balls and parties an also be a way for a writer to introduce the reader to an array of characters and to their world. Edith Wharton does this brilliantly in the opening The Age of Innocence. You get a sense of the world of the Archers and Wellands in a way you wouldn’t in small scenes. The ripples in that world caused by Ellen’s return from the Continent come through vividly.

I love to read ball scenes, and I enjoy writing them, but they can be a challenge. There are multiple characters to juggle and an elaborate scene to set, all without confusing the reader. There's the challenge of deciding whose pov to start in, when to switch povs, and how to give the reader the sense of a large, crowded entertainment, when the character in whose pov one is may be entirely focused on his or her personal problems. Secrets of a Lady opens with Charles and Mel returning from a ball, but after that has no scenes set at social gathering. I deliberately wanted to pull Charles and Mélanie out of the jewel box world represented by the Esterhazy ball they’ve attended before the book opens. Beneath a Silent Moon, on the other hand, opens with the Glenister House ball. Inspired by a number of memorable book openings (notably the one from The Age of Innocence) I wanted to set up the various characters and the world of the Glenister House set. And I wanted to show the difficulties both Charles and Mel are having adjusting to London society and the strain that that’s putting on their marriage. And seeing all the major characters react to the news of Kenneth Fraser and Honoria Talbot's betrothal seemed the perfect way to set up the mystery that is about to unfold. I reworked those chapters a number of times, deciding where to start, who to focus in on (how to move the camera in a sense), and what to show from whose perspective.

Do you have some favorite scenes at balls or other parties in books? What makes them memorable? Writers, do you like writing scenes set at parties? What are some of the challenging of writing scenes in which one has to juggle a number of characters and plotlines?