The Writing and Marketing Show
The Writing and Marketing Show
Crafting Captivating Series Characters with Linda Mather: Techniques, Diversity, and Maintaining Continuity
Ever wondered how to make your series characters captivating, engaging, and real? The key is layering their personalities, their stories, their motivations, and their unresolved issues in just the right way. Today, we're honored to have Linda Mather, author of a murder mystery series starring an astrologer-private investigator, on the show. As a seasoned writer, she takes us behind the scenes, sharing how she crafts her characters and their world with depth and intrigue.
The galaxy of characters in a book series are the lifeblood of your narrative. Linda uses her unique blend of experiences, along with a strong sense of place, to breathe life into her characters. We discuss her sixth book, which is based on Virgo themes, and how she makes her characters relatable and dynamic to a diverse audience. We also delve into the importance of maintaining a clear arc for the characters, balancing their traits, and drawing upon real-life experiences to breathe authenticity into their personas.
Lastly, Linda offers an in-depth look into how to develop characters and storylines, bringing a fresh perspective to the storytelling techniques. We discuss methods of slowly revealing backstories, using conflict to enhance character depth, and how to create a diverse and interesting world that keeps readers hooked. Listen in as we uncover the power of meaningful challenges, engaging editing, and the importance of continuity in a series. With inspiration from series like the BBC Four’s Swedish detective Beck or Louise Penny's Inspector Gamache series, we hope to give you the tools to weave captivating narratives and compelling characters that your audience won't be able to forget.
Hi and welcome to the Writing and Marketing Show brought to you by author Wendy H Jones. This show does exactly what it says on the tin. It's jam-packed with interviews, advice, hints, tips and news to help you with the business of writing. It's all wrapped up in one lively podcast. So it's time to get on with the show. And welcome to episode 108 to eight of the Writing and Marketing Show with author entrepreneur Wendy H Jones, and it's an absolute pleasure to have you with me here again today. It's I can't believe what episode 108 to eight of this show is just staggering. Far, far, so fast. I cannot believe it.
Speaker 1:Before I know where I am, it will be four years of the show, but I'm loving doing it. Today I'm going to be talking to Linda Mather about writing and compelling series characters that will last throughout your series, obviously, and I'm very much looking forward to that because it's going to be a cracking interview, I can tell you. And so what have I been up to? Well, as I say, I'm getting ready to go to the States, so I'm recording lots of podcasts so I can front load them before I go to the States and I can just settle down before I start recording again, and I'm sure I will meet many fabulous authors who we can actually speak to and I can write an interview for the podcast, and I'm looking forward to that. I'm almost ready to go to the States. I'm busy packing now because it's only five days to go and I will be on my way, in fact, a week. Today I will be waking up in Virginia, although I'll still be asleep at the moment because there are five hours behind us and I will still be asleep. Well, I hope I'll still be asleep, because it will be 5am and I would like to think I would be. So what else has been happening? Well, the new magazine Writers Narrative is absolutely storming ahead. Everybody's loving it and I'm so glad that people are enjoying it. Now, that's what it was for. It's a free magazine and I will put the sign up link in the show notes so that you can find them.
Speaker 1:So what of Linda? Well, linda is the author of the Joe and Macy Murder Mystery series featuring Joe Hughes, a private investigator who is also an astrologer. Joe is a determined and independent sleuth who uses her knowledge of astrology to give her insights into the people she investigates. Her boss, david Macy, is sceptical about this, but even he can't deny they work well together. The books are Forecast Murder, assign for Murder, murder as Predicted, the Handman and a Future Murder. Book 6 in the series is due out in August.
Speaker 1:Linda lives in Woostershire and bases the books nearby in the Midlands and Cotswolds. She once worked as a PI herself and although she was nothing like as successful as Joe, it gave her the idea for the series. In fact, having done many jobs, from working for the Coast Guard to organise and graduate schemes in Scandinavia, she often draws on her experiences at work and a strong sense of place to inspire her stories. She has written and directed murder mystery events, writes short stories and is currently writing a new police thriller. Linda is a qualified couch, enjoys yoga and walking and, of course, astrology. So what a varied career and I'm very much looking forward to chatting to her. So, without further ado, let's get on with the show and hear from Linda, and we have Linda with us. Welcome Linda, how are you today?
Speaker 2:Thank you, Wendy. It's great to be here. Thanks for the opportunity of doing this podcast and talking to your listeners. I'm good today, yes, and you.
Speaker 1:I'm very well the sun's shining, which is always a bonus in Dundee, I have to say.
Speaker 2:Yeah, here in Worcestershire as well. It's where I am, worcestershire, england, and here too, which it hasn't been for a while, so that's quite nice.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's what we like. I mean here we could all these poor countries that are losing the will because they've got bushfires, forest fires and we're wondering if we'll ever get any sun. But it seems to be in its own little system here.
Speaker 2:It does, doesn't it? Yeah, I'm quite glad not to be part of that. There's some terrible stories emerging from what's happening in roads and other Greek islands, but yes quite glad to be here in Wett, worcestershire, actually.
Speaker 1:Well that's great. Next week I'll be in sunny and warm Virginia in the USA, so in the heatway they've got over 100 degree temperature.
Speaker 2:Oh my goodness. So that'll be fantastic, though I know you're looking forward to it.
Speaker 1:So, anyway, we'd better get on with the questions, because I'm very excited to hear about everything that you've got to bring us today, because I know you're going to bring us a lot of value. So I want to start by unpicking your personal character, your main character, because I believe you have a secret ingredient. Please appease our curiosity and tell us what this is.
Speaker 2:Okay, well, this is a bit unusual, I think. So my character. I have a series of five books and the sixth one coming out next month. My character is a private investigator, female sleuth, but her sort of the secret, if you like, it's not very secret. It's on the covers but she's an astrologer, so that's not a secret because obviously it's part of what makes her interesting. She sometimes uses a bit of astrology to solve the cases, but it's a bit of a secret for me and even the readers don't really know that I actually use astrology myself a little bit to kind of give me a bit of a theme for the books.
Speaker 2:So I'm working through the zodiac and the one coming out next month is about Virgo, and Virgo has themes of like order and service. So when I'm writing it I think about that. And if the reader gets to know the series, well, there are little clues in there, if you, about the astrology which can give you an extra little bit of a hint to find out who the murderer is. So it's just a little bit of an insight into the characters and as we're talking about characters, I thought that was a good thing to start with.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. I think that's a cracking idea. Now, when you run out of star signs at book number 12, you could start on the Chinese year of the tiger, the ox.
Speaker 2:I heard that's a brilliant idea. I'm researching Chinese horoscopes at the moment because, if I'm really honest, I'm not an expert on Western astrology, but I certainly need to do some research on Chinese if I'm going to use that. What a fantastic idea, wendy, I'll use that.
Speaker 1:Well, I lived in Hong Kong for two years, so you couldn't move without hearing about these year of the whatever. I'm the year of the ox and I'm a Tarian, so I'm the most stubborn person on the planet.
Speaker 2:But very creative. You see you, Tarians, grab that creative stream.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. I can kill people in many different ways. I can talk beautifully. Oh sorry, I meant in a literary manner. In a literary manner.
Speaker 2:Of course it works.
Speaker 1:Whistly onwards before I have the police knock in my door. I'd like to ask what are the key attributes of a compelling series character that will keep readers engaged across multiple books?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so obviously my character, jo. Jo, she's lasted five books and we certainly have plans for the 12, as you say. So I've thought about this and I think, obviously your character. If she or he is going to last a few books, they need to have a degree of complexity, don't they? They need to have some layers to them, like an onion, which maybe in book one you might peel off the top skin of the onion but then, layer by layer, you're getting deep down into the onion. So maybe this could be, you know, some dark secret that you know is gradually revealed.
Speaker 2:They also have to have a strong motivation. So when my book Start, jo becomes a private investigator with a blatant reason that she needs to make some money, because astrology doesn't pay, let me tell you. So she needs to make some money and that's why she starts the job. This does change as it goes through the series. Their motivation does change, but it's one very clear thing for me is to be really clear about your character's motivation and check. It does change as you go through the series, but their motivation should always be very clear, in my view, and it's quite handy if there's an unresolved issue that you can come back to in the book. So this could be something about their past. We might say a bit more about that later.
Speaker 2:Or I have a thing which in my books, where Jo has kind of an off on relationship with her boss, her private investigator boss who runs a PI agency, macy. So they have, you know, sometimes they love each other, sometimes they hate each other, sometimes they hate each other and sometimes they fall out, and but there's always a kind of a bond between them and that gives you something you can go back to with each book, because readers, they kind of want to know what's going to happen to this issue. It doesn't have to be a relationship, but something that's kind of unresolved in book one and does not get resolved fully. You know, in each book it kind of is an ongoing thing. Does that make sense?
Speaker 1:Makes lots of sense. Thank you, that's a really good answer, thank you. And again, I'm curious because one of the things about and you've touched on this how can writer strike a balance between developing a series character's strengths and vulnerabilities to create a well-rounded and relatable persona?
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's a good one, I think each. I mean, obviously, even if you're writing a standalone book, your characters have to be well-rounded, so they have to have flaws. They can't be perfect None of us are perfect but they can't be all bad either. They have to be, like you say, wendy, relatable, don't they? With a series, actually, it's even more important, really, because you're living with that character. You know you, as an author, are living with that character for years, possibly. Think of Agatha Christie and Guaro. She got fed up with him, didn't she? Not that I'm putting myself on the same level as Agatha Not by any means. But you know you have to live with your characters, so you have to. Really. They have to be well-rounded, if only for the author's point of view, but also from the reader's point of view. They really have to live in your head. So I thought about this and I think the way that I see it is you have to know your characters as well as you know your best friend. If you think of a couple of friends or maybe family members that you know really well, you know they've got strengths. That's why you love them, but they also have things that will drive you around the bend. Maybe they're always late whenever you meet them or they're a bit challenging to you. On the other hand, you realise you welcome that challenge. So think about your characters as your best friends and also the way they go about life will be different from how you would go about life.
Speaker 2:Your characters need to be distinct from one another. So, to use an example, as I say from my series Jo, if she's suspicious about something, she will tackle that suspect with direct questions. She's good at questions and sort of rational logic. So that's just the way she. That's the way she rolls. So she will ask lots of questions and then she will apply logic and reason to it. She'll be very analytical in her approach, whereas Macy, who's a boss, is also a private investigator and often has his own cases, sometimes the same as Jo, sometimes different. He's much less direct. He would never go straight in for direct questioning. He more likely would have a more kind of do his background work. He'd research. He may even get someone else to do the job for him. Quite a different approach. So it's thinking about that, thinking about your characters how might they tackle things differently and also thinking about them as your friends. That's my suggestion.
Speaker 1:That's a good one, thinking of them as your friends. I like that, and you have to be able to live with them for that amount of time, you know if they start to annoy you and you've got problems. Yeah, and serious characters have to evolve and grow throughout the books or, like most of us, learn things as we go through life. What are some effective techniques for ensuring consistent character development while staying true to their core traits?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think it takes a while. The first thing to say is you don't have to know your character fully when you start writing about them. It's good to have a series arc We'll all be familiar with that as writers and a sort of overall plan for the development of your character. But let's not pretend that all series writers start out. We have a series that we watch and, you know, are familiar with ourselves. I bet those writers didn't set out with that arc clearly defined from day one. Yes, it's good to have it and to know where your characters are going. But it's okay to uncover it. Like I was saying about the onion earlier, your character does need to have enough depth that there is an onion there and it's not just a radish, you know. So she does have to have enough depth to start with, but it's okay, you don't need to know it all. It's quite nice if you can peel off a layer for yourself just slightly ahead of where the reader is, so you kind of know where they're going. You don't have to have the whole thing carefully planned.
Speaker 2:I think it takes time to recognize their portrays. I do think it's important that they do have portrays, but you know. So, for example with Joe. She's not a superwoman. That is one of the things that is clear right from book one. When she's desperate for money, she's living in a flat, she's not making astrology work, but she doesn't want to give it up. She's desperate for money. That's why she starts being a PI. This makes her very grounded. She always has that on her mind whenever she's doing anything, and that is, in a way, it's a portray to motivate her, isn't it Like we were talking earlier? And she knows she's not superwoman, so she doesn't try and take on things that she really can't do. She knows she's not the police, for example, so she knows where her kind of limitations are. So you need to sort of recognize those kind of traits.
Speaker 2:And I go back to the best friend metaphor. You might find out things about even your bestest bestest friends the more you know them. Well, hopefully you will. You know they will grow. You will grow and they may tell you things that they didn't originally tell. You See, your characters in the same way Doesn't mean that you have to know everything about them right from day one. You have to believe in them. They have to have layers Think of the onion but you don't have to know everything. But I do agree with you when the inferred in the question is implied in the question. They have to have some core traits which are instantly recognizable to you, to the reader, and you have to kind of stick with those. So you can change some things, you can add layers, but the core of the onion kind of stays the same.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I love that answer because it really lays out, and I love the analogy of the onion and the fact that you want to have an onion in a radish. I'm going to remember that for the rest of time. Now, that's a brilliant way of remembering it. So thank you for that. I want to move on slightly, but I want to talk about diversity and representation, because in modern storytelling, that is crucial in our characters. So how can writers create inclusive and authentic series characters? But they need to resonate with diverse audience.
Speaker 2:I think this is such an important question, wendy. I think it's essential. We tend to think that this is a modern question. You know, diversity, inclusion, engagement we hear a lot about it, but actually it was always the case because books would have been so dull for years if they've not had a diverse range of characters. You can't always be writing about people like you, or people, people who look like you or sound like you. It does sometimes mean I'll be honest here I made a mistake with this in one of the books I gave my.
Speaker 2:You know, I have, like a lot of people have a beta reader, don't? I'm sure you do. I have someone who reads the books there's actually a friend of mine, but she gives me very good feedback and in one of the books, the Hangman, it's set in the Cotswolds and I had a real cast of diverse characters. I had a Russian, who's still in the book, I had a Scottish lady, I had an Asian lady, I had a Polish man. I had a real, real huge range, much, much bigger than I'm giving examples of that. And when Glennis, my friend and beta reader, read it, she said Linda, this is Stroud, it is the Cotswolds. You know, you've got like the world's population and I had to scale back a little bit because I oh yeah, that is a bit unrealistic. So that's a mistake that I made, but it came from a good place. It came from the fact that I don't just want to be writing about people who look like me and talk like me. I think that would make the book very dull.
Speaker 2:So your question really was a how to question. It's all very well, that's my aim and you know I told about time when I kind of got it wrong, went over the top. Really, it's how do you do it? Obviously, you have to draw on you've only got yourself, haven't you? So your experience of life. The more you draw on your own experiences, I think that's helpful for a writer, but also to sort of enhance those experiences by starting to look out for things that look different to you, Things like eccentricity is different styles, different ways of speaking, different accents, different backgrounds so you can just use the experiences you have Put yourself out there. You know I'm a great believer in. Obviously, writing is a fairly solitary and there's no getting away from. There's a lot of time spent at the laptop indoors doing stuff on your own, but it's important that you engage with the world, and a wide world as well, and bring that experience into your books. Is that the sort of thing that you think will help Wendy?
Speaker 1:Absolutely yeah, it does help and I like it at the beginning saying not to bring in too many different diverse characters because you're just doing it for the sake of it. I mean my books, my detective inspector, Shona Mackenzie books have always had Indian sergeant in the police, a female and the Chinese one and that's representative of Dundee. I was brought up because we had the Duke Mills, we had obviously Scottish, we had Indian Scottish and we had Chinese Scottish, so that was representative of Dundee. Now we're now getting a bigger African population as well, so I've included a character that is from African background, but that's representative of where I am.
Speaker 2:Exactly. I think that's absolutely key. Yeah, I did. I think I did go slightly over the top in that, but it is the idea is to try and represent the world that you're living in as much as you can and keep it interesting for people, and diversity is interesting.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. I mean, if we all thought the same way, it would be a very boring book. Be very boring world and a very boring book, so you can bring things in.
Speaker 2:It worked for Jane Austen. She was famously wrote on a postage stamp, didn't she? Very small cast of characters, very small world, but let's face it, she was an absolutely brilliant writer and she was writing in the 1840s, when it was the smaller world. We live in a vast world now and we need to show those connections in our books.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. I mean to be honest with Jane Austen's books. It would take them days to get from another bit of Britain. So it was a really small cast of people just in that one little area, you know you should use that you should use that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, we can. I mean, we can fly to Australia in a day now. So we always look at back story, our characters back story, and I'm wondering what role does that play in shaping their actions and decisions throughout a series? I mean, you've got to reveal the back story slowly, I think as well. That's my thoughts. So how do you do that in each?
Speaker 2:book. Yeah, I've been asked this before and it really is, I think, one that writers do struggle with, because quite often a character has had some like harrowing event in their past. You know, maybe they've lost a loved one and something that really truly defines them. This is a little bit like we were talking about with portrays. Obviously, with portrays you might be born with, but they might also be things that you've learned because of experiences, and if that is a key experience for the character, then you do kind of have to get that in there somewhere. And you can look at lots of writers who do this well, like piece James, for example, whose Roy Gray's character has lost his wife and it's absolutely key to the plot that this is, you know, comes out early. So I think that is just a case. If it's a single fact like that that you have to get in, it's about being creative about it, and as writers we're good at that. But I think my best bit of advice on this I've thought about it and I think it's a bit like again.
Speaker 2:Imagine you met your character at a party, right, and of course you know the best place to be at parties in the kitchen. So you're chatting to them. They're not going to tell you their life story there and then, but they'll just tell you a little bit about enough to get you interested, enough to make you think, oh, I like this person. You know she's an astrologer, that's weird, what's that, what's that about? And then you might, she might reveal, oh, actually she's a private investigator. And so, okay, later on in your life you might be thinking, you know, you might have a problem with I don't know someone who's texting you and you can't get rid of them and you think it's some person and you might think about that private investigator you met at the party and go back to them. Here you've got the beginnings of a story you can tell because you've remembered. Oh, they told me they were a private investigator, and then you might hear more about this person.
Speaker 2:That, to me, is the way to kind of work the backstory into imagining you're meeting your characters. What are they going to tell you in the first chapter? What are they going to tell you in the second? They're not going to reveal everything straight away, so it's sort of bit by bit and always moving forward, so you get the news about the character, the background on the character, as the story develops. It's not always possible to do it that way. You do have to be a bit of a blunt instrument with it and kind of say, oh, you know, and there was this significant incident in the person's past. But that I think revealing layer by layer again. Maybe going back to the onion a bit, that helps me in thinking about it. I quite like the party metaphor. You don't find everything out about everybody straight away.
Speaker 1:Excellent, that's a great answer. You're right, you need to drip feed it and nobody tells you their entire life story the first time you meet them. So using it like that is a really good way of doing it. You're touched on, you know they might have harrowing backstories, but conflict and personal struggles they can deepen a character's journey. So how can authors introduce meaningful challenges for their series characters that enhance the overall storytelling?
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, again, these kind of challenges, these kind of do have to be built into your kind of overall plan. So, while I said it, it's not essential to have a series of with this kind of thing. It definitely helps a lot. So, what is? Where do you want your character to be going? What do you want her or him to be learning along the way? And then you create the challenges that is going to create that development. So, for example, one of Joe's kind of struggles, if you like, is to be independent. She definitely wants to be an independent woman. She wants to live her own life. She doesn't want to live the life of her parents who set out for her, and she wants to be, as I say, an astrologer, which is not the easiest career, and she wants to be self-employed. So all this requires money and independence, and a lot of the story is around the sort of underlying development, is around her building and creating that independence, including her off on struggles with her, with her boss, you know. Does she love him, does she not? Does she love him? Does she hate him? Some of that is about her being really quite an independent woman and disagreeing quite a lot and being quite challenging. So that's a clear development.
Speaker 2:I'm not saying I had all that planned right from the start, but I sowed the seeds of that in the first book and then just gradually kind of nurture that as it goes through. I know, kat, I know authors are fond of saying that you kind of characters surprise you and it's a nice thing. When that does happen, you get an element of that. And I don't want to take away the mystique of that, because when it does happen, most of us writers will have experienced it. It is really nice when a character surprises you, but I don't think they should surprise you too much. For example, joe sometimes surprises me with their actions. So I'll be a part of the book and I'll be thinking we've probably all got this in some books.
Speaker 2:You think not much, as you know, where am I going with this? What's going to happen next? And Joe will suddenly get up and go out and kind of attack the world. Is it where? Right, I'm not going to sit here and let the world come to me. I'm going to go out and ask some questions, I'm going to interview a suspect, I'm going to go to the house where it happened or wherever it might be, and that moves the action on. I can't you know. That is a nice kind of a surprise. You do not want your characters to be surprising you at deep, fundamental levels. These things, I think, have to come from you. You have to be driving the character. That's just my view. I know that it's. Some people get really pleasantly surprised when their character does like a 360 turn on them, but I like to be a bit more in control of mine.
Speaker 1:Excellent. Well, my character doesn't do 360 turns. She does surprise me. However, I have to say. This character has just stolen to the book without a buyer leaving there, and I'm like how did that happen? I never invited you in and they're there and they won't leave. You know, like, just get out of my book. You know, and one of my main characters did that. In fact it was. There's two main characters in the Cascaley More Investigates series and just this ex convict dwarf just strolled in and said I'm your main character. No, you're not. And when I am, everyone loves them. Everyone loves them. Everybody loves a bad boy. You know, all the women in real life love them. All the women in the books love them. I haven't seen them in there he was. Why did you come from?
Speaker 2:I know it is nice when something like that happens. I completely agree, and you get a real delight from that as a writer and also that slight sense of you're kind of growing into something that I didn't really expect. How did that happen? Yeah, it's a nice feeling.
Speaker 1:To be honest, if I'd realized that was going to happen, I would have called it the Cascan Quill Mysteries instead, because his name is Quill Cascan Quill Mysteries instead of the Cascaley More Investigates Mysteries, you know, but hey, what can you do? He just came there, he was. So I'm wondering are there any notable examples of series, characters from literature or other media that writers can study to better understand the art of crafting compelling ongoing personas? That's a long sentence. Where did that come from? Really, I never practiced that one before I sent it to you.
Speaker 2:Well, I'm really glad you sent it to me because these are very thoughtful questions. So they really did, you know, really get me to think and that's I really enjoyed it. But this answer is very personal. It's almost like desert island discs really. So I've chosen three that I look at and I really admire, from different sort of media Well, two different media.
Speaker 2:So I really like Beck. Is anyone the Swedish detective? There are books and plays. Indeed he's very famous and in Sweden, but the best portrayal of him, I think, is in the BBC Four, channel Four, bbc Four series on him, which is absolutely brilliant. And the reason why I like that is because it's a set of series characters, it's a whole team.
Speaker 2:This is a great example, by the way, of where you don't have to reveal the backstory of everybody in every episode. You don't. You know, in every book They've all got backstories and there's a, you know there's a big thing going on between his chief investigator and her junior which is clearly against all the rules, and you know, that's obvious to everybody right from the start. But even then you don't know all their history, you don't. You just, you just sense it. You can just just like you would like, I say if you met these people at a party you think, oh, there's something going on there. You wouldn't know it all. You don't need to know it all as a reader, in my view, or, in this case, as a viewer. So I love Beck. I think they're well written as books and plays and it's great on that series. So that's one. I think those characters have depth and they carry on from episode to episode, sometimes highlighting one of them, sometimes another, and it's a template I will admit that I use. I'm currently writing a police procedural and that's the team and I freely admit I have tried to emulate that standard and whether it'll be as good as that I doubt, but I'm doing my best.
Speaker 2:Second one is also very personal. So I'm a big fan of Louise Penny, canadian writer, inspector Gamash. She does write the books as well, but the Inspector Gamash series I really love. They have a kind of a message to them where they're a little bit even go sometimes into a bit kind of magic realism or a bit surreal. May not be to everyone's taste, but I think they're absolutely brilliant. Again, she has a cast of characters who have difficult, layered backgrounds. Again, you don't necessarily know all this, you could. Just she's written. I mean, there's about I don't know 15 in the series. You can pick up any of them, just like I hope you can with mine you can. It's a standalone book, you don't have to read the others around it, and I try to aim for that with mine as well. They're all standalone but they all have serious characters that develop all the way through. That's kind of she's my sort of role model for that.
Speaker 2:So really like Louise Penny, I think she does that brilliantly. And then outside of crime, I saw well, this is done elsewhere, very well too. So I would think of some of your favorite songas and I picked out one. I mean there are many, you know they're all foresighted saga. Or you know there are many books were particularly around families, family sagas, where you know characters go on from generation to generation. You get that real sense of continuity. You know these people.
Speaker 2:So the best example I've got here is if you haven't read the Casalette Chronicles by Elizabeth Jane Howard, amazing series of family growing up. I think it starts just before the Second World War and then goes right up to the sixties. Really really good in depth books, again, very layered characters, and although it is a very well-renowned series, I don't think she planned it all out in a series arc either, because they do surprising things, but they all stay true to themselves. So those are my three examples of series characters and in finding them I realized how much I like series and that's probably why I write a series. I do enjoy that continuation from book to book.
Speaker 1:Excellent, excellent examples, I have to say. So how can authors maintain continuity and avoid inconsistencies in their series, characters and their personalities, and motivation and arcs as the story progresses?
Speaker 2:Now this comes back to the other bit of writing which we know really well when we haven't talked about. So it's a good one, and that is to me. This is about the editing. So I know I've got a friend who is a writer and she says it's 20% writing, 80% editing. I absolutely agree, the writing is important, but I do a lot of editing and this is where this comes in.
Speaker 2:So we talked about the portraits earlier, didn't we? And I'd like to think that those are sort of so innate, like I know Jo, like I know my best friend, so I can write about her just as I could write about my best friend. So I'm not gonna probably get things wrong If she's always punctual, she's always punctual. If she asks great questions, she asks great questions. I'm not gonna get things like that wrong. But you might want to still edit, of course. You know how much of this do you want, how little? When is very important? When do these things come out about them? This is important, like about the backstory and so on. So a lot of things we've been talking about you would shine and polish during the editing.
Speaker 2:But sometimes the details are where the editing is absolutely crucial and where I might go wrong. I'll give you an example here. While I'm not gonna go wrong about my character's personalities and how they feel and kind of how they respond and they're dynamic with each other, but I do sometimes go wrong on details. And so I cannot get in my head the color of Jo's cat. She has two cats as we go through the series because she moves house at least once, so one cat stays behind and then she gets another cat when she moves to the cotswolds. I have to remind myself each time I write about or think about these damn cats what color they are and because for some reason that's a detail that does not stick in my head or the details so that and yet that's quite key to this series character Things like color of eyes Well, if you're a very visual person you're not gonna get that wrong, but they're things.
Speaker 2:Colors of the kind of cars they drive this is important as well. And the tight mate model of cars they drive this sort of thing is important. And these are the details that really good editing. So I don't think you're gonna find mistakes in your core trays or the way your characters behave, but you might find here that inconsistencies in the detail around them and obviously, as readers and we're all readers we know how important that is. So if it's a ginger cat at the start of the book, it needs to be a ginger cat throughout the book. Note yourself, linda.
Speaker 1:Well, there was one example, one very famous writer. I went to see when they were talking and they said that I mean there were on book about 12 or 13. And somebody wrote to them. A reader wrote to them and said do you realize? Your character had blue eyes for the first four books and has now had brown eyes for the rest of them. Yeah, and I didn't care, to be honest, they just left it. Yeah, yeah, I could see myself doing that.
Speaker 2:I could see myself doing that because I'm not terribly visual. So things like colors, I do have to check myself. I think I might be slightly color blind, but it's just not, it's not seen around the book because your character's eye color changes.
Speaker 1:To be honest, you could just say thank you for picking up. I did it deliberately in the hope that anybody would see it. I love that. I'll remember that. I don't know what that author did, but that would be my response. Well done, yeah, See you next time, because you're the first person to have mentioned that.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. I'll remember that when someone challenges the color of the cat, but I mean the sort of one word answer which I could have said really, is editing here really really good? Editing, is it the heart of any good book? I believe you have to be your, you have to get used to being your own worst critic and accepting also feedback from others with an open heart. Feedback is just a gift, an absolute gift.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so we're getting towards the end of it all, so what would be your top three tips for my listeners to take away from this episode?
Speaker 2:Okay. So this thing about knowing your characters as well as you do your friends, I think is important. So I'm really understanding that your characters have flaws, that they are well rounded, that they're 3D characters. I have done an exercise once, which was quite good, where you actually visualized your characters so you can kind of see them and walk around them, notice how they move their heads, you know how they maybe make gestures. So that's quite an interesting thing to do. If you've got a kind of a moment, of kind of meditative moment, you can actually kind of visualize your character walking towards you. So it isn't just a case of knowing them deep down like you do your best friend, but if they walk towards you, you would recognize them as you do your best friend with or family member if that works for you with all their flaws, all their history, all their habits. You just know that. So that's that's my first one. Know your characters like you do your best friends or your closest family members and try to love them in the same way with all their faults.
Speaker 2:My second tip about creating good series characters is create a dynamic. So set up characters who do not always get on and this is kind of a bit obvious really, I suppose but it helps to take the book. So, you know, takes takes people's interest from one book to another. So I have a team in the in the current series and in the series police procedural that I'm writing. I quite like a team of investigators and one of Macy's team that Joe works with. She really doesn't get on with. She sees him as a kind of middle aged bigot and they've got completely different views on everything. But he is quite funny and so he does make a laugh. He does get her out of a hole occasionally as well. So create an interesting dynamic.
Speaker 2:Don't just make them hate each other although that is also interesting, you know, and lots of good authors have done that, and you know that's. That's quite good too. You can have people who's you know like in a romance classic romance people start off hating each other but then they end up being very fond of each other or whatever. You can have that. That works, but I like it a little bit more nuanced. So you know, Joe and Alan, they're very different and there's some part of her that does respect him, even though he irritates her. He drives her mad and he's really different and he has irritating habits as well which drive around the bend. But she kind of knows that he's dug her out a few holes, so she also kind of rates him and they still get impatient with each other and that's a creative dynamic. That's just a very simple dynamic. Alan isn't even in all the books, but just create dynamics between your characters so they spark off each other and that's worth thinking about before putting pen to paper.
Speaker 2:And then that links into my third tip, which goes back to your great question about diversity of characters, and this is allow your characters to be very different from you. Make sure they are very different from you. This is not as easy as it sounds because fundamentally all our material has to come from us. It's not like a playwright whereby you can give your material to someone else and they can breathe new life into those characters. It must be wonderful to do that.
Speaker 2:I have written plays sometimes and seen people do it, and it is wonderful because they bring something different which you could not bring. You can only provide the words. But if it's a book and we're talking about books here it's got to come from you, and yet you must be as many different versions of yourself as you can get on the page. So they are all diverse, they're different from each other. They have this dynamic. They may not like each other and they are also from a diverse range of backgrounds. So make your characters as different from you as you possibly can and give them lots of creative challenges with each other. Those are my three things Know them well, create a dynamic and make them really different.
Speaker 1:Excellent, great tips. Now I know we've been talking about your books all the way through, which has been brilliant because it's given us examples, but can you, very briefly, is there anything else you want to tell us about your books?
Speaker 2:Thank you very much. Okay, so yeah, the series is published by Joffy Books and they're on Amazon. My name is Linda Mather, so it's M-A-T-H-E-R. Up in Scotland you probably say May there, but my family say Mather for some reason. But it really doesn't matter, because you can find me there on Kindle as Linda Mather.
Speaker 2:And there are five books. So the first one is Forecast Murder, and so if you want, if you're like a series and you want to start at the start, you can start with Jo, where she wakes up and thinks one day I need some more money. So that's the first one. So go right through to book five, which was published last year. They're all set locally to me in Worcestershire, so Midlands, birmingham, coventry and the Cotswolds, but they do bring in lots of other locations as well. I don't know, like you, wendy, I've moved around a third bit. In fact, we both lived in Southampton for a while, didn't we? We got that in Covent, yeah. And the latest book which was published last year Future Murder that uses Bournemouth as a location. So it starts in the Cotswolds, but her mission PI job is in Bournemouth, so I was able to bring in some of my recollectioners living down there.
Speaker 2:And then the new book. If you want to look out for that, that would be marvelous. It's called A Perfect House for Murder. It's set very locally in the Cotswolds and it is a real now that one is written, if you like, on a postage site. So it's got a small cast of characters and a mysterious killing amongst a small local community and the question is that Joe finds herself caught into it to help out her friend. And it's her first actual PI job on her own without Macy. So she's kind of set up on her own. By the time we get to this book and she's realized she does actually like she's not just doing it for the money, that she actually enjoys applying her analytical skills to investigative work. So it's a new venture for her to and that's Perfect House for Murder and is out in August. So hopefully we'll be able to get that quite soon.
Speaker 1:Excellent. Well, I'm hoping it will be out by the time this airs, because it won't air for a few weeks yet. So the book will be out. And my very final question where can my listeners find out more about you and your books?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I'm Linda Mather on Facebook and on Twitter. You can just search for me. I think it's I, linda Mather on Twitter, instagram it's Linda Mather, writer, and, of course, on Amazon I have an author's page and I don't have a website actually, although probably ought to get around to doing that, but busy, busy writing the new series, which is a police procedural. So maybe by the time you get this there might be a website, but I suspect we might have to wait till the end of the year before I get. I take my hat off to you, wendy. Wendy's involved in so many ventures. The magazine that's just come out is absolutely brilliant, I think, a great resource for writers, so I really ought to, you know, get a bit. I take a leaf out of your book, wendy, and try a few more platforms to get myself out there.
Speaker 1:Hey, thank you, and it's been an absolute pleasure having you here today. Thank you so much, linda.
Speaker 2:Thank you, it's been absolutely fun. They were great questions, really thoughtful, thought provoking questions, and I really hope that your listeners will kind of see that I've just been sharing my experience from the heart really, and keep writing is my best tip.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. I couldn't agree more. So enjoy the rest of your day. Bye.
Speaker 2:Thank you, bye. Bye, enjoy America, thank you, see you soon.
Speaker 1:That brings us to the end of another show. It was really good to have you on the show with me today. I'm Wendy H Jones and you can find me at wendahechjonescom. You can also find me on Patreon, where you can support me for as little as $3 a month, which is less than the price of a tea or coffee. You go to wwwpatreoncom. Forward, slash wendahechjones. I'm also Wendy H Jones on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest. Thank you for joining me today and I hope you found it both useful and interesting. Join me next week when I will have another cracking guest for you. Until then, have a good week and keep writing, keep reading and keep learning.