Yes, I
admit it. She is one of my idols. I bought her book new book, "The
Defiant Hero," on Saturday and finished it at 2 a.m.
My husband was not amused.
My keeper shelf is littered with her releases, "Frisco's Kid," "Getting Lucky," "Body Guard," "The Unsung Hero." So, I came on Saturday hoping for some guidance, some wisdom, and maybe some magic.
I got exactly what I was hoping for.
Ms. Brockmann is not only a good writer, but she's one of the few writers who is able to articulate what she does and thus, helps those of us still struggling to put it all together. Her workshop, "Tall, Dark and Believable," gave us a glimpse of how she puts her heroes together, how she finds story "seeds" and develops them into novels, and how she takes the bare sketch of a character and turns them into living, breathing people.
Suzanne started by telling us she has two rules for creating the "perfect" believable hero: 1) Don't make him perfect and 2) Make him really suffer.
In order to do this, we must delve into our hero's belief and value system. What does he believe about money? Family? His career? And what does he want? Love or success? Freedom or security? What does he avoid? Rejection? Or is he trying to avoid fear or jealousy?
A good writer needs to have an understanding of what makes people tick. One of the first people to analyze is yourself. What do you value? What do you believe? If you can understand yourself, warts and all, then you can move into figuring out the heroes and heroines that populate your stories.
Suzanne shared so many pearls of wisdom it would be impossible to write them all down in this short space. But she did leave us with two writing exercises that would help us begin to explore beliefs and values.
Part One: Create a list of your own personal positive values.
What do you value most? What do you value least?
Make a list of Negative Values: What do you wish to avoid most? Least?
Now do the same thing for the hero in your Work In Progress.
Part Two: What are some of your own personal strongest beliefs?
Our beliefs change. Think of a strong belief you held years ago that you no
longer believe today. Try to remember what happened to make you change that belief.
(was it one incident, or was it more gradual?)
What are some of your hero's strongest beliefs? How are those beliefs going to
change throughout the course of your story?
Use these exercises and Ms. Brockmann's own heroes to create your
"perfect" hero!
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