{"id":124,"date":"2014-04-01T10:00:00","date_gmt":"2014-04-01T10:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/pelicanbookgroup.com\/blog\/blog\/2014\/04\/01\/tactical-tuesday-advice-for-self-editing-3\/"},"modified":"2015-11-25T12:22:16","modified_gmt":"2015-11-25T19:22:16","slug":"tactical-tuesday-advice-for-self-editing-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pelicanbookgroup.com\/blog\/tactical-tuesday-advice-for-self-editing-3\/","title":{"rendered":"Tactical Tuesday: Advice for Self-Editing"},"content":{"rendered":"
\nMy husband and I have experienced
\nan event that was sitcom worthy. Often we sit around and laugh about the mass
\nexodus from Florida that occurred with the near hit of the monster hurricane,
\nFloyd. We left town with three cars, two in-laws, two sons, and five animals in
\ntow. We had characters. We had mishaps. We had adventure. We had hilarity.
\nHowever, when we stop laughing, we always end with the same sentence: \u201cNo one
\nwould ever believe us.\u201d <\/div>\n
\n<\/div>\n
\nThis last week I was
\ninvolved in a discussion with a writer who was told that his characters and his
\nscenes were not realistic. This author declared, \u201cBut the characters are based
\non real events and real people.\u201d<\/div>\n
\n<\/div>\n
\nThus we learn that truth
\ncan be stranger than fiction.<\/div>\n
\n<\/div>\n
\nAuthors walk a thin
\nline when it comes to plausibility of character.<\/div>\n
\n<\/div>\n
\nOn one hand, fiction is
\ntruth on steroids. Readers will buy the fact that one man can be a spy one
\nmoment and a loving father another (True
\nLies)<\/i>. That a man can go deep into the jungle and rescue a reporter, return
\nto the states, and be sent on a mission to stop chemical warfare from killing
\nmillions (Deadly Additive<\/i> by Donn
\nTaylor), but then you put a character in a normal situation and the reader has
\nproblems with the story.<\/div>\n
\n<\/div>\n
\nWhy is that?<\/div>\n
\n<\/div>\n
\nI call it lack of
\ncredibility.<\/div>\n
\n<\/div>\n
\nIf a novels main backdrop is a hospital and the main characters
\nare doctors and nurses, there are protocols and medical jargon, there is a
\ncertain way a doctor will behave, how they will address a patient versus a
\ncolleague or a nurse. Place a doctor in an emergency room and have him speak
\nand behave like a store owner, and credibility is lacking.<\/div>\n
\nLikewise, portraying a
\nbait shop owner as if he\u2019s a medical doctor isn\u2019t very credible either unless
\nthe fact that the bait shop owner is a retired physician is layered into the
\nstory. And what an interesting story\u2014and character\u2014that could be.<\/div>\n
\n<\/div>\n
\nThat\u2019s the key. A
\ndoctor can act contrary to the way a reader believes a doctor should act, but
\nonly if the correct foundation is laid. For example, the doctor is a jokester.
\nOn the job, he treats everyone like his best friend. He jokes with his
\npatients. He addresses medical issues without medical jargon. Something,
\nthough, has led the doctor to this type of behavior. What could it be? Perhaps
\nwhen the doctor goes home, he has to live with the demons of regret and
\nremorse. Maybe the life of a doctor is too much for him to handle. He grieves
\nover each patient he loses. He can\u2019t forgive himself even when the fault is not
\nhis. At home, the walls close in on him. On the job, he has to cope. He does so
\nwith laughter. After all, wasn\u2019t it Mark Twain who said, after the death of his
\nbeloved brother, \u201cThe secret source of humor is not joy but sorrow; there is no
\nhumor in Heaven.\u201d While I only agree with the first part of Mr. Twain\u2019s quote,
\nit does lend itself to some thought, and that thought can lend itself to great
\ncharacterization.<\/div>\n
\n<\/div>\n
\nWhen examining your
\nnovel for credibility of character, make sure that the reader understands why
\nthe character behaves the way he\/she behaves. This doesn\u2019t mean burying the
\nreader under pounds of back story. It doesn\u2019t mean the reader has to know
\neverything at once. What it does mean is allowing the reader to meet the
\ncharacter a little at a time. If you have a character like our fictional doctor
\nabove, drop hints that he isn\u2019t quite right in the eyes of others or that there
\nis a Mr. Hyde to his Dr. Jekyll.<\/div>\n
\n<\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

\nHappy editing.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My husband and I have experienced an event that was sitcom worthy. Often we sit around and laugh about the mass exodus from Florida that occurred with the near hit of the monster hurricane, Floyd. We left town with three cars, two in-laws, two sons, and five animals in tow. We had characters. We had […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[504],"tags":[80,89,67,90,91,70],"class_list":["post-124","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-editing-writing-advice","tag-characterization","tag-credibility-in-story","tag-editing","tag-humor","tag-plausibility","tag-self-editing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pelicanbookgroup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/124","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pelicanbookgroup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pelicanbookgroup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pelicanbookgroup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pelicanbookgroup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=124"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/pelicanbookgroup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/124\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pelicanbookgroup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=124"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pelicanbookgroup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=124"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pelicanbookgroup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=124"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}