How I became a writer Part VIII

Title: How I became a Writer

Part VIII

A lady I didn’t know, who was new at our church Grace Gospel Chapel, invites my family (mom, Rich, and me) over for dinner.  We walk in and this glass table is full of food!  I couldn’t believe it!  Dad had left and mom struggled to keep up, so having a table full of food was not the norm.  This lady was alright!  The best thing I ate that day?  Deviled eggs!  They were amazing!  The lady was Bev Wrisley and she had two daughters Bonnie and Barb.  I was just a young kid then and had no idea how important this family would become in my life.  I also had no idea that those two girls and I would be plays together just a few years down the road. 

When did I realize I wanted to be in plays?  I didn’t.  I was recruited thanks to my mom.  Did my mom realize that I had acting talent and pester the school’s drama director Mr. Henninger about me?  No, like me that was the furthest thing from her mind.  She made me memorize scripture in the car:)  What?  Mrs. Tilack, my Bible teacher, had us memorize Bible passages and my mom took that very seriously.  I remember looking longingly out the window at the kids playing in the parking lot and whining.  It did no good.  Mom would make me repeat the verse again.  Some people thought I was a memorizing genius but my Awana leader could have set you straight on that!  I was very lazy when I had to do it myself!  I don’t think I got very far in my PALs book but I sure liked game time!  (Awana is an international Christian ministry that has a Bible lesson, a scripture memory time, and a game time.  Ironically, I am an Awana Commander and have worked in Awana for 19 years now.)  I guess Mr. Henninger, my future drama director, approached my mom about me at a game.  He told her his interest in me as an actor had something to do with the verses I had memorized.  Mom said then he sat down next to me and talked for a bit.  At the end he asked me if I wanted to be in a play and I said, “yes.”  I don’t remember that, but I was in second grade at the time.  I remember little from that year except for which classroom I was in, that we didn’t have to do Abeka curriculum anymore (yes!), that we had to do timed math tests with tough problems like 9 + 9 (No!), and we raced our match box cars over ramps!  I also remember the summer drama program that Mr. Henninger taught.

Fred Gribbin.  He was in my summer drama class and I thought he was very cool!  Our drama class did a little production called “The Servant of All” and I did the balcony scene from “Romeo and Juliet”.  I have no idea who was Juliet, but I remember the words I memorized because they were kind of catchy:)  Like Barb and Bonnie I had no idea the importance Fred would play in my life from the soccer field, to the stage, and even as a friend.

In third grade I was asked to be in Rags to Riches as character named Mark the Matchboy.  This was a high school play and it was full of big kids and adults.  I remember I liked the star of the play, a girl named Trisha Decker, who played a boy named “Ragged Dick.”.   She was very nice to me and was easy to act with!  I also remember the woman that played...I don’t know what her character was but I’ll never forget her.  The first time we did a scene together, she threw herself into her part as a fierce, drunk woman!  I got so scared I burst into tears.  Suddenly that angry, drunk woman, became a very kind woman.  The metamorphosis was amazing!  I would see it again and again over the years.  The stage changed people I knew into other people.  My friend Marc would transform into a clueless modern drunk one year into the smartest man in the ancient world the next.  A quiet, stately man named Bruce would turn into a homicidal king!  At that moment though, all I knew is I really liked being in a play!  I didn’t really realize I was an important character or what a costar was, all I worried about is would I be able to cry on cue looking at a picture of my dead mother (fictional character’s mother...my mom is fine:)  After the play nights were all done I got to go to a place called “Duddleys!”  It was the most awesome ice cream place in the whole world! 

As a writer, I think I learned about character development from the stage.  I watched actors and Mr. Henninger work together to transform themselves into someone different from who they were.  These characters working in concert could transport you from a little gym with a stage on West 38^th street to far away places!  From the street scene from the 1700s in a play named, “Ride Ride,” to a family being raided by the Gestapo in “The Hiding Place,” to a hoedown in the hills in the play “Macaroni at Midnight,” and on and on.  Different characters working together made the plays exciting.  Take a play named “A Family Portrait” written by Mr. Henninger.  What would the play be without Mira and Stan, the ultimate horrible next door neighbors?  Doddie played Mira, a middle-aged woman who had let herself go.  Doddie was so athletic they had to stuff her into a fat suit.  With make up, out of fashion clothes, and an over the top stage personality, she was amazing.  Marc’s character was thin, but make up and clothes made him look like a drunk and he really sold it!  When the play got too dark they came in and lightened things up!  Then there was Fast Eddie’s (my character) father, the car salesman, a colorful character to be sure. A twenty something guy named Danny nailed it, with outlandish clothes and a fast talking voice different from his regular one.  I don’t remember who played my character’s mom but she was a student ahead of me in school and she nailed it too!  If a play only has outlandish characters though, it will get tedious quickly without normal characters for them to push off of.  In this play those characters were a nuclear family with their extended family. The mom was introduced with a catchy song about her work life, with snappy choreography!  I’ll never forget that song!  “She’s busy, busy, busy, her life is in a tizzy, her priorities are jumbled in a mess,  busy, busy, busy everything is dizzy as she searches for her peace and happiness!”  The mom, played by Mary Beth, breaks in here with a line about how between work, driving her kids around, and being a mother she is swamped, fainting into her coworkers arms.  It introduced the mother’s issues in a fun way without a lot of exposition, an important lesson for any writer!  The dad (played by the director) was too caught up with his work too, even though he clearly loves his family.  The kids have normal issues.  The little one played by a girl named Stephanie Radaker (she was so adorable!) has little problems like being kissed out of the blue by a boy.  She tells the audience she “nailed” him and he’d better not try that again.  The character finishes the story by complaining “It’s a kiss like grandma gives!”  It is the perfect problem for a young girl character to have and endears her to the audience’s heart!  Then you have the older daughter Heidi, the star of the play, trying to find her way through high school.  Every good story needs a villain and that was my job.  A job I wasn’t very good at for a long time in practice but that is another story for another time:)  My point is that if all these characters were similar, the story would be boring.  What makes you buy stars’ plight is the family all around her is so real and likable with the wider cast being wild, uncaring, or downright evil.  It gives her character great support to reach the heavens as a star.  The family, including her wise and venerable grandfather, played by an adult man named Bruce, and her older brother, all come through some very stressful things to become a much better family!  It was such a good play it ran several weeks in the spring and then came back in the summer for a few nights!

As a writer, you become the director of a play in people’s minds.  You supply the story and they imagine it as they read.  How interesting your story is has a great deal to do with how interesting the characters are.  My first book in print, “An Assumed Risk,” was “epic sci-fi” genre, which means the series has more than one main character.  An example of “epic” literature is “The Lord of the Rings,” in that who is the main character is unclear.  Is it Frodo, Gandalf, or Strider?  All three are critical to the story and seem more equal co-stars.  After “An Assumed Risk” had been out for a few months, I asked fans who their favorite character was.  The answer was always the same, “Risk Xie.”  I was surprised that every single person felt the same way.  As I reflected on it, I realized that what makes Risk such a loved character are the characters around him and his interactions with them.  This seems obvious but some action writers focus on the action, instead of the characters.  The action is boring until you love the characters and my readers love Risk.  They were shocked he was not the star of the series and only a supporting character.  I lost at least one reader over that going into Book Two.  Falling in love with the heroes is so important in any novel.  In an action story, when the bullets start flying, the reader needs to care about the heroes safety!   

I think part of my ability to write novels came from my years on the stage and all the books I read.  Unfortunately, the first book I started writing as a teenager did not have interesting characters in it.  Oh, it had an interesting premise, a great hero, fair plot, action, but it lacked something...at the time I wasn’t sure what.  I slaved away for hours, hand wrote over 250 pages in high school, and realized it wasn’t any good.  Sighing, I started writing the book again figuring my skill had improved and the next attempt would surely succeed but I was wrong.  To my frustration the second attempt and the third would fail.  In the third attempt I made the mistake of making the hero more dark and it made the story even worse!  In hindsight, I realize the story was good but my main character had little to push against.  Unlike Heidi in the play “A Family Portrait”, my star, Glen W. Cannon, was the most interesting character in the book.  Poor Glen had only the plot to push against with some okay characters to support him.  Okay characters do not make for an interesting play or novel.