Category Archives: -Victoria Wright

Potty Mouth

14 Replies

Last November, one of my favorite cozy mystery authors, Ali Brandon, who writes the Black Cat Bookshop Mysteries series, blogged about her characters’ reluctance to use bathrooms. (Check out her blog here.) If you think about it, you don’t read about characters using the facilities. You don’t see this often on TV either. I mean how many times did Jack Bauer go during the 24 hours he spent saving the world?

Ever wonder why that is? After all, it’s perfectly normal to have to use the restroom. Considering how much coffee, baked goods, dinner, and alcohol are consumed by cozy characters, Ali Brandon points out that there’s no reason why an author can’t include a bathroom trip or two in her story as long as it doesn’t slow down the action.

During our last Deadwood Writers holiday dinner, a very nice lady asked me about my day job. I was happy to answer that I’m a janitor for a professional cleaning company and I currently clean at an institute of higher education. Then she asked me if I had learned anything from my job that I could apply to my writing. Hmm . . . how to answer that question, considering we were at dinner, and the biggest lesson I had learned was how gross people can be. My coworkers and I were constantly picking up half-empty beverage bottles, paper towels, discarded pens, and those little pieces that students tear off the edges of paper that’s been ripped out of spiral bound notebooks.

But the most disgusting thing I learned while doing my job is that a lot of people have absolutely no concept of restroom manners–I mean the basic things we were all taught during potty training. Things like flushing the toilet or urinal, washing your hands, and throwing your trash in the trashcan have literally gone by the wayside.

These activities are social mores we learned at a young age. They are not optional. Have you ever heard a mother tell her child, “You can skip washing your hands. Nothing bad will happen”? No. How about, “Don’t bother flushing the toilet. The next person will get it”? No.

That’s why I don’t understand how people can leave a bathroom stall in such dire straits. If they tried leaving such messes at home, their mothers would knock them into next Tuesday. Wives would turn husbands out of their bedrooms for some of the infractions I’ve seen. Bathrooms across the metro area would ring out with admonitions like: “Were you born in a barn?”; “Didn’t I teach you better than that?”; “If I’ve told you once, I’ve told you a hundred thousand times. . . .”

So writers, what does this mean for you and me? Pundits advise us to make our characters believable. I’m here to tell you that a believable character not only uses the restroom, but he or she leaves evidence of the visit behind. Either the facilities are just as clean, or cleaner, as they were when the user entered; or sometimes, the floor, seat and/or bowl is covered with biohazardous material. And believe me, you can’t get more graphic or gross than what I’ve seen in real life.

Take the potty break as an opportunity to reveal your character’s true self. After using the restroom and washing up, your character grabs a soap-covered paper towel and cleans the seat, handle, stall door lock, and the faucets. Why? Is he obsessive-compulsive? Is he getting rid of fingerprints–or DNA? Does your character have a disease that’s spread through contact with biological material which he hopes to contain? Is he a twisted bioterrorist spreading infected blood or urine throughout the bathroom instead of cleaning it?

Don’t forget the humorous aspect of bathroom use. A fish-out-of-water character, who is unfamiliar with motion-controlled facilities at an upscale restaurant or hotel, might do battle with the auto-flush toilet, or the self-dispensing hand soap. And if you write for middle grade readers, you can get away with a lot in the name of potty humor. Just ask Matt Stone and Trey Parker, creators of South Park.

So don’t fear leading your character into the bathroom, just be sure to put the seat down when you’re done.

YOU’RE TRASH! Sift Through Some Garbage and Find Your Real Character

9 Replies

Something I almost never read about in the cozy mysteries I love so much is trash. Refuse. The detritus of human life. Lots of my favorite series deal with cooking, pets, books, bookstores, libraries, and crafting, but none of the characters spend time throwing stuff out. Most of my favorite authors would probably say that’s because a character doesn’t move a story forward while she’s taking out the trash. Unless she comes across a lifeless body hidden in a dumpster. But writers, think about what a revelation examining someone’s trash can be.

At my house, for example, a trash raider will find many empty potato chip bags in my garbage can and empty sour cream containers in my recycle bin. (I’ve been stress eating.) (Don’t judge me.) The invader will also find about two boxes worth of used facial tissues (I hope he gets my cold), banana peels, beverage cups from McDonald’s, soy milk cartons, an empty jar of peanut butter, a flattened box of chili mix, plastic grocery bags, and wrinkled packages of shredded cheese with crumbs in them. What can the trash connoisseur deduce about me? Well, he can guess that I don’t eat well-rounded meals, I’m probably sick, and I buy food often, rather than stocking up once a week like a lot of other consumers. Is that information useful? Maybe, maybe not, but it shows my character quirks very well.

What’s not in my trash is also revealing. No shredded paper, no bills, no used check registers or cancelled checks, no newspapers, but a few magazines and lots of junk mail. What does that say about me as a character? Am I a hoarder? Do I live off the grid? Do I embrace an electronic lifestyle and get my bills and news via the internet? Perhaps.

If you’re struggling with a character that is important to your story but remains elusive, try touring her trash. It might help you nail down her personality and give her some pizzazz. “Normal” items like cat food cans, chicken bones, egg shells, and empty yogurt containers won’t help you, so it’s OK to bypass those. You’re after more telling garbage . . . like that mailer with a return address from Frederick’s of Hollywood, the empty Ativan prescription bottle that was renewed five days ago, or the used tampon applicator. (Ewww.)

Let your imagination wander through the wastebasket. If your character is shy or bookish, would she order lingerie? Why would she order lingerie if there’s a Victoria’s Secret in town? There’s nothing unusual about taking an antidepressant these days, but why is the bottle empty already? If she’s almost 55 years old, would she still need to use tampons?

Dumpster diving won’t often wind up on the printed page, and that’s as it should be. Just visualizing it is a creative exercise you can do to identify specific traits of a character who isn’t acting the way you want her to. Organizational charts and diagrams only help you so much. You’re looking for telltale clues, like a half-finished confession or a discarded suicide note, that give you a picture of her life and help you get to know her personally. Then it’s easier to make her actions match her personality.

Your hero, your villain, your victim, your recurring characters may be well known friends to you by the time you write them. You may never need to raid their trash to get a good sense of who they are. But the elusive ones can come to life if you look at the things they throw away.

What are your characters putting in their trash this week?

Bad Boys–Watcha Gonna Do

4 Replies

What is it about bad boys? Those loveable scamps who are utterly irredeemable but still attract us because their badness is so much more interesting than the good guy’s goodness. You can count on the hero to do the right thing because he’s the hero. You can count on the bad boy to be bad. Now, the bad boy may do the right thing if he feels like it, or for a selfish and egocentric reason. Or he may do the wrong thing and try to spin it as the right thing. But when he eventually does a bad thing, he can’t really be blamed because he’s “bad.” It’s in his nature to do bad and we should have expected it. Here’s an example.

SPOILER ALERT! I started thinking about bad boys after seeing the film Thor: The Dark World (IMDB) in November. My thoughts were prompted by the film’s fascinating bad guy, Loki (Tom Hiddleston – IMDb). Loki is a handsome schemer and magician who casts intricate illusions that fool even his brother, Thor (Chris Hemsworth – IMDb), who should know better than to take anything Loki does at face value. While Loki helped Thor do the right thing (Thor is, after all a hero), he still manages to twist appearances to suit himself and his ultimate goal. He steals a great scene where he repairs his relationship with his brother and perhaps squeezes a tear from the unsuspecting audience. *sniff* But watch out! Loki is, at heart, a bad boy, one might even say SUPERVILLIAN, who surprises the same audience within the hour. I left the theater totally psyched for Loki’s next film appearance, ready to embrace the badness.

From the author’s point of view the role of bad guy, or villain, or antagonist, can be a lot of fun to write. Most modern fiction writing guides suggest that the hero needs to grow and change in some manner by the end of the story, but the bad guy can get away with staying the same. No one expects the villain to be redeemed, only subjected to justice in some form. This means that an author can write his or her bad boy as sneaky, lying, and irredeemably bad as wanted–and most people won’t mind. What a rush that is, right? The antagonist doesn’t have to be sympathetic, yet he is. His backstory might include tragedy, drama, and loss suffered at a formative age, but remember you’re hearing the story from a bad boy. Can you believe any part of what he tells you? The author doesn’t have to make a charismatic villain logical or even give him a solid motive. The reader will accept him because he’s charming. The author doesn’t have to spend time researching the psychology of badness; he can make the villain sink from bad to worse to worst.

While the mindless and indestructible killing machine type of bad boy like Freddy or Jason may strike horror in the minds of filmgoers, a reader needs a different type of villain. A charming, cultured bad boy can heighten mystery and sexual tension in a story while fulfilling his role as someone for the protagonist to fight. Think about that the next time you’re writing a bad guy. Instead of writing him greasy and disheveled, try making him debonair. And then he can kill dozens of people, or sell the international secret, or betray the unsuspecting hero and we’ll accept him for it.

Oh, and apparently the makers of Jaguar automobiles agree with me. Check out the Superbowl commercial called British Villains Rendezvous (british villains rendezvous) which features Hiddleston, Ben Kingsley and Mark Strong. Then let’s have a spirited discussion about the bad boys you find irresistible.

P.S. I wrote my post weeks before seeing this ad, and I can prove it.

 

Tags: