How did they become so flawed? How might their flaws affect the story and what will happen to them?
My main characters are always somewhat flawed, usually with a failing marriage or a blindness to the flaws of a boyfriend (or even husband). However in my current novel, there are two stories, the grandmother and the granddaughter. The grandmother has a child out of wedlock, and refuses to tell her daughter who the father is. The daughter's marriage produced a girl, but the marriage is short-lived, because she will never let up on her insisting on finding her father. The granddaughter grows up in a broken home and never comes to know her grandmother. When her mom is killed in a car wreck, she inherits her grandmothers house, breaks up with her stalking boyfriend, and gets a contract to write a history book, all in the same week!
She (Beth) is flawed from her mother's monomania about finding her father. She has never known her many Kansas relatives and her mother has spoken ill of them. The family are Mennonites, and although they have come into the modern age, there is still a "difference" between the family and the world Beth knows.
Beth moves to her grandmother's bungalow in a tiny Kansas wheat-farming town and tries to start a new life. She is wary of the large family she's inherited and she gets off on the wrong foot by associating with a man the family regards as not of a "good moral character." She misses the busy life of her old home in Boston. Her best friend comes to visit and brings disgrace on herself and Beth included. She lusts after the handsome harvest master. She avoids her father who wants to visit her and get to know her better. She thinks her wants her to do a DNA test because he wonders if he is really her father. Beth is torn between the life she knew as a busy Boston newspaper reporter and life in the small quiet Kansas burg. Are these flaws or just ordinary problems such a change in circumstances would cause? They are problems that Beth must overcome, which is a large part of her story. Will she write her book? Will she fit into her new Mennonite family? Will she find her grandfather? Will she adjust to this new quieter way or life?
Beth will struggle, and she will triumph and she will even find the missing piece to solve the murder that her grandmother struggled with many years ago. Beth will not only survive, she will thrive, but it won't be an easy process.
The folks below will have interesting things to say about this topic.
Connie Vines http://mizging.blogspot.com/
Skye Taylor http://www.skye-writer.com/
Anne
Stenhouse http://annestenhousenovelist.
Marci Baun http://www.marcibaun.com/blog/
Diane Bator http://dbator.blogspot.ca/
Dr. Bob Rich https://wp.me/p3Xihq-2wY
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The book sounds very interesting as family failings and conflicts are familiar to everyone. Finding solutions and a path to accord makes good reading leading to understanding.
ReplyDeleteYour post makes me want to read the story! Yes, we all have flaws, so Beth sounds interesting.
ReplyDeleteHi Judith, I think the attempt to move from one population with its social mores into another quite different one is a huge undertaking. It clearly offers lots of scope for plot as what one set considers normal, the other considers flawed. Also, the misuse of power (granny's refusal to disclose the name of her daughter's father, is ripe with possibility. Anne
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