How I Cured My Ailing Main Character

Donna Huston Murray, author of Cured, offers us another post today, reposted from her web site at www.donnahustonmurray.com.

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The ride from Philadelphia to Ithaca, NY, feels especially long in bad weather. I spent the time with a yellow tablet in my lap playing with names for a Pennsylvania farmer’s daughter who would become a cop. As the main character of my new suspense series, I might need to live with the name for years to come—if I should be so lucky. Before my husband and I arrived at the Thomas Farm B&B, the birth certificate read, “Lauren Beck.” Who she was remained to be seen.

For November games Hench usually spirits me up to the press box where he does radio for the University of Pennsylvania football. That day, rather than cramming into the booth with the guys, I was invited into Cornell’s adjacent VIP lounge. There I laid about as low as an antelope in a lion den until I heard a woman talking about a recipe for pumpkin-pecan pie. With Thanksgiving coming I couldn’t resist. As usual, the recipe did me no good whatsoever–unless you count meeting the prototype for my new alter-ego.

After being cured of an illness that had her in and out of an iron lung for several years, Carol Brentlinger gave sky-diving a go–about forty-three times. She fed sharks underwater, and, as a colonel in the Commemorative Air Force, flew retired WWI bombers for fun. Her bravery awed me. What a fabulous heroine she would be!

Sadly, my then agent disagreed, and sadly she was more right than wrong. Readers ride on a character’s emotional coattails. Since Lauren Version One feared nothing, the tension I was working so hard to inject into CURED went unnoticed. I didn’t have a suspense novel, I had a grocery list.

For longer than I care to admit, I struggled to change Lauren’s personality, nearly reverse it, morph her into more of a wimp like me. For my seven previous novels the main character was me, and that had worked. However, I cannot carry a gun or bring off a swear word convincingly. I’ve seen the faces.

An author’s goal, among other things, is to sound like yourself. Finding my voice the first time took several years; but when I did, it was like receiving a lifetime railway pass. I could climb on the Ginger Barnes Main Line Mystery train and write without concern for the physicality of getting from here to there. Or, put another way, it was like touch-typing. Try changing that. Not easy.

Lauren was now both insecure and strong. She sounded like Carol Brentlinger one minute and Ginger Barnes the next. I stopped, wrote another book, then returned. What was happening to Lauren was also happening to me. We were emerging from difficulties together, feeling vulnerable but able to gather enough confidence to bypass the New York publishers and declare our independence. And yet the verbal merge remained incomplete. My daughter, who happens to teach creative writing, recommended that Lauren and I sit down with a glass of wine.

“Who are you?” I asked over my share of merlot, and finally–finally–Lauren told me.

Donna Huston Murray

Humor – The Secret Weapon

When I was newly married and struggling to learn how to write publishable fiction (my ambition from the age of ten), I placed some humorous articles in a local magazine called COUNTY TIMES. I only remember one of the topics – how to get rid of a pile of bricks – but I do remember the pieces were odd and silly and I was thoroughly delighted that an editor put them in print.

Unfortunately, one reader most certainly was not. He sent me hate mail telling me so and in the process taught me this: Comedy is without a doubt the most subjective sort of communication, so count on it at your own risk.

Not crazy about the odds of success, I haven’t written a purely humorous anything since. Instead, I write mysteries around a character who has a lighter way of looking at things. If readers think she’s fun – terrific! But if my jokes go over like another pile of bricks, there’s always that dastardly murder to solve.

Old influences were Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe series, Gregory MacDonald’s Fletch books (not the movies) and the film Charade starring Audrey Hepburn and Cary Grant. Another special favorite was Hopscotch starring the late Walter Matthau and Glenda Jackson. All of them old enough to have whiskers, I know, but they still hold up beautifully.

Which brings me to some of the curiosities I’ve run across regarding humor.

Asked when he planned to do some more serious work, Walter Matthau replied, “Humor is my serious work.” He claimed it was more difficult than “noncomedic or tragic or whatever you want to call it."

Comedian and motivational speaker, David Naster, concurs. “Humor is intellectual… It’s an idea you make funny… [s]ome more complicated than others.”

Street thugs take note: Making someone laugh gives you a certain power over them. Think about it. You’re causing another person to do something they didn’t expect, or perhaps even intend, to do, and usually they’ll thank you for it.

Historians credit the British sense of humor for helping the UK endure two horrific world wars. Our own Bob Hope, and others, did much the same for us. Yet if a funny movie – or book – were to be put up for a prestigious award, most likely it would be laughed off the docket. That subjective problem again.

My first agent may have said it best. “Nobody takes humor seriously.”

Donna Huston Murray