I don’t outline my stories, something I used to never admit to because it felt like I wrote ‘wrong’. Now I know that everyone has their own unique style of getting words on paper. Plus a friend of mine said I wrote ‘organic’ and I love that phrase. In this day of expensive things labelled ‘green’ and ‘organic’ I feel stylish.

I also used to use character dossiers when I first started writing. I would religiously fill out all fifty pages for each character, and then never refer to them again. Recently I started wondering if there was a way to develop characters also organically, since I discovered that a dossier is, for me, a mini outline.

There are a lot of internet resources out there on organic character development. Some still felt like outlining though. For instance, one had you make lists of the significant people in your life, as those are who your characters come from. I love lists, but not with writing.

One thing I read about though was something I have always done. The resource suggested keeping a ‘faces folder’ where you collect photos of faces that fascinate you. I started doing that many years ago as personal writing exercises. I would find a face in a magazine or newspaper that caught my eye, clip it out, and try to describe it. A nose, a chin, etc. Then I would read the description and see if I could match it to the face. That evolved into using the folder to remind me visually of characters. I would lay photos out around my laptop. As I wrote, if I struggled with a scene and how a specific character would react, I could glance at the photo as a physical reminder.

I have learned that in organic character development, many people do this. Wow. I thought I was just weird.

My teenage son is a huge fan of McDonald’s. When I allow him to eat there, I have to avoid staring at one of the employees. She has the most amazing, non-traditionally beautiful face I have ever seen. As I wrote The Memory Keeper, her face became the character of Jess. When I struggled with the character, I’d allow my son a trip to McDonald’s. I could never figure out how to approach a real live person and ask to take their photo.

I would love to know how others develop characters. For me, after all my research, I have decided to return to what works best for me. Simply writing the story and letting the character tell me who he is.

There have been some amazing comments that have come in regarding my last post. Those comments, from one person in particular, have left me very humbled.

Pat  is the soul of our group and has been interviewed here before about her poetry (www.poetrypause.wordpress.com). She said something that not just made me pause, but made me stumble to a frozen halt, feeling like I’d just created a blog post that was nothing more than self-centered complaining.

Pat said (and I hope she doesn’t mind me quoting): “I will always stand for the comfort zone we all need as writers.  I could never agree that any writers are too comfortable or boring or repetitive.  The process itself is just too darn hard.  If we’re writing at all, let alone finishing stuff, that is miracle enough for most of us I think!!  We want and need support in all that.”

Did you catch that? I mentioned I worried that members of the group were too safe. Pat points out that just the act of writing means we aren’t in a safe place. While I have been worrying that people are too comfortable, too willing to sacrifice writing time for visiting time, I haven’t been giving them credit for simply showing up.

Pat then very gently said my dissatisfaction may not be from feeling like facilitating the group is as hard as pushing jello uphill, but more from me not getting what I myself need out of the group. Of course, being Pat, she said it a very kind way: “You need to think of what YOU need, because I can’t imagine with your level of imagination, as WELL as social finesse, you are limited in what you can do.”

In other words, if I’m not getting what I need out of the group, then it’s up to me to change that. Another friend, author Susan Schreyer, said basically the same thing, and gave me some wonderful ideas.

I think the lesson is starting to sink in.

Pat finished the email with this: “I can’t imagine I’m alone in knowing what I owe you in support and ingenious questioning drawing out.  I’m less than two years out in finalizing (as opposed to 13 years back at the start of this year) and my blog site is entirely at your evocation!  You have much power.   GO for that in your life!  I want to hear about it as I do the grungy detail work of finishing stuff, day by day, due to your own exemplary work. I am blessed to know you and to have been a part of the group.  I can’t imagine anything you have done is “over” – but I do hope you find what you want and need – so that you can HEAR all our gratitude.”

Okay, I hear you Pat. And I hope you hear the apology in these words. And I’ll see you the end of the month at the writer’s group.

What if you threw a writer’s group and no one came? Is it still a writer’s group if nothing happens between the writers?

Last night was the regular meeting of a writer’s group I have facilitated for several years. I really didn’t want to go. It had been a long day, I was tired, and to be brutally honest, the meetings lately seem stagnant. Don’t get me wrong; I really like the people who come, and have grown to think of them as friends. But here’s the thing. I think they (well, we) have become too safe.

The group was started after an upsetting event at a huge writer’s conference. I decided writers needed a place to meet that was safe and non-threatening, more like a support group than a critique group. Many of the people who attend, and have attended, have gone on to be published. We have poets, screen writers, non-fiction writers, fiction…and yet it manages to stay a small, safe place to be.

Over the years I have tried to stir members up. We’ve tried exercises, guest speakers, contests, adding time for critiques, etc. I even tried to get members to rotate facilitating. These things appear as a brief candle flame flare and then burn out. We end up back where it’s safe, with members talking about writing.

When I bring up that I worry no one is getting anything out of the group anymore, that we are all talking about the same things we talked about last year, and the year before, everyone jumps right in to tell me I’m wrong. They insist they leave the group wanting to write, that they get support and they learn.

Well then, maybe it’s just me. Which brings me back to last night. I went strictly out of obligation and responsibility.  They’d manage without me, and have, and I could have skipped it but didn’t. And only one other member showed up. So there we sat, me drained emotionally, listening to familiar words, feeling like I had nothing new to add either. And then in comes a stranger. A young man who’d heard about the group, who is making documentaries and writing screenplays.

We had good discussions but it was hard for many reasons. I kept thinking, he’s not going to get anything out of this group. We’re all asleep. I don’t know that he’ll come back. I’m not sure I feel he should. I don’t think we’ll be any help to him.

So tell me. How do you wake people up, shake them up, move them out of ruts, challenge their thinking, make them quit speaking the same words, make them write? I include myself in those questions. How do I challenge myself as a writer? I no longer want to sit in the group and speak variations of the same themes over and over and over throughout the years.

I want my friends to soar as writers, but I don’t know how to help them, or me, find the needed wings.