Showing posts with label great book. Show all posts
Showing posts with label great book. Show all posts

Monday, June 25, 2012

A matter of point of view

How many times have you been in a situation where something happened and everyone who witnessed the event told a slightly different version of events?

Ground zero, or the incident itself, is at a physical location. Witnesses range from nearby to further away. They also may or may not have a personal relationship with one of the individuals involved.

Both proximity and "insider knowledge" greatly affect how someone sees an event. For instance, if you observe a person running through the grocery store that knocks displays over and makes a mess of the store, you're upset with that person. But if you know his dog jumped out of the car and is dying in the parking lot, you're less likely to  paint his action in the grocery store in such a negative light.

That point of view, or how you see the world, is greatly influenced by what you know and what you see. One problem with this is that what we know may not be the entire truth. In most cases, knowing something new about a person changes our opinion of that person, shading it anywhere from less favorable to more favorable.

And let's not forget perspective. If you stand on a deserted road, the margins of the road at the horizon will converge to a vanishing point, making the road wider looking where you're standing and narrower the further away you look. The road doesn't change shape, but your point of view does.

In the same way, different characters in a book will rarely have the same perspective. The issue of what's at stake will be different for each person. Each person will have goals, dreams, agendas, flaws, and personal vendettas. That's the nature of humanity.

Pouring all of this into a character infuses life into a story. Point of view is a craft element that's more than one entity narrating the story. POV brings us into the mindset of the character on center stage. It grants us access to his/her knowledge, physical location, and personal history with the other characters in the scene.

Take the instance of two sisters. Molly has the family that Clarice wants. Molly has a handsome, successful husband who adores her. When Clarice can't obtain those things for herself, she goes after what Molly has.

Not such a nice sister, is she? But these situations happen in real life. This particular rivalry of Molly and Clarice is played out in my murder mystery, Murder in the Buff.

By making the stakes matter, readers empathize with Molly and despise Clarice for her interference. I write mysteries in first person POV, which makes Molly my only POV character, but through actions and dialogue, the perspective of the other characters come through.

This marriage-wrecking scheme of Clarice's affects more than the three people involved; it includes the whole family - from Molly and Hadley's son, to their parents and grandparents, to Molly's workplace. A ripple in the pond is more than a ripple when the stakes are high.

Point of view.
It makes us care.
It makes us want to know what happens next.
It makes us demand justice.

Maggie Toussaint
www.maggietoussaint.com

Murder in the Buff is available now.
Buy links:


Tuesday, June 5, 2012

The cabana boy


Admit it. We all have secret fantasies. In these moments, we stretch beyond our fears and limitations. We become the person we always knew we could be.

Successful. Brazen. Powerful. Rich. Seductive. Unblemished.

In private inner thoughts, our potential unfolds without boundaries.

Let’s consider Molly, a woman whose marriage is on the rocks. A woman who has always felt inferior to bustier types. A woman who needs reassurance that someone loves her unconditionally. A woman who needs an escape from reality.

Molly might have this dream:

Gentle waves lapped the pristine white sand. The sun warmed my bronzed skin as a muscular cabana boy walked toward me carrying a tray of umbrella-topped drinks. He was much too young for me, but he seemed riveted by my svelte body, his dark brown eyes boring into me with animal-like fascination.

I flushed under his rapt attention. He caressed my cheeks with long languid stokes, and my heart rejoiced. His breath came faster and faster, and it thrilled me that he was so attentive to my every desire.

There was something familiar about his scent. I inhaled deeply, freeing all the pent-up tension in my lungs, straining toward his heat. My eyelids drifted shut with pleasure at his repeated caress.

+++
We are all cheering for Molly, right? She’s inhabiting a world where everything is exactly as she wishes. A world where good things come to her by virtue of her existence.

Her rich fantasy of a cabana boy who worships her body with his eyes and hands is likely a near universal ideal among women of a certain age. Having a fantasy like this, particularly in light of a horrible mess in real life, provides an escape into a world where happiness reigns supreme.

However, Molly’s liaison with the cabana boy is in question. Read on:

Something hard, cold, and wet touched my face. I startled awake, surfacing from my cocoon of sleep. I shoved the object away, blinking against the blinding sunlight filling my bedroom. As my brain booted up from dream mode, I was filled with a sense of profound loss.

I wanted to be back on that tropical island with my handsome cabana boy.

“Five more minutes,” I murmured, scrunching my eyes closed and burrowing into my fluffy comforter. The heavy object rolled up to my nose with a thud.

My eyelids popped open at the unexpected impact. Goldie’s slobbery rock lay on my pillow. I groaned and then shoved the rock away, blinking against the bright sunshine. I squinted over at the clock. Seven.


By now you may have guessed Molly is a character in a book and that the snips above are excerpts from Murder in the Buff. The book is a campy, offbeat mystery in which her father is accused of murdering a nudist.

Molly’s dream of adoration by her cabana boy, in this case, her son’s golden lab, link back to her deep-seated feelings of betrayal. Those play into her fears of physical inadequacy, giving a double wallop to this flawed character.

In addition, she’s blindsided by the entire situation. Molly’s a woman in jeopardy of falling apart at the seams.

I wrote her that way because so many times in life, women get caught up in a double boiler of balancing career and family. We know we aren’t keeping all the juggling balls in the air. We can’t. It’s physically impossible. But we try it anyway.

Molly gets a happy ending, but she has to work for it. She has to process her feelings and learn to trust her reactions again. She has to decide what she wants and then she has to go out and get it.

In finding herself again, Molly becomes empowered. Gosh, we could all use a bit more of that!

Maggie Toussaint


Murder in the Buff e-book buy links:

Monday, April 23, 2012

What would you do?


What would you do if you saw your husband kissing your sister? Really kissing her with his hands in all the wrong places?

In my new mystery, Murder in The Buff, Molly Darter handled that scenario by throwing everything that wasn’t nailed down at her husband. She kicked him out of their home. She quit speaking to her sister.

She knew what she saw. Her eyes didn’t lie. Worse, her husband looked guilty. He tried to talk to her about it but she couldn’t stand to be around him. Every time she saw him that kiss of betrayal flashed in her head again.

Molly and Hadley’s marriage is a rich vein of conflict in this mystery. It echoes the theme of broken relationships that come into play in the murder plot. Love and murder – it just doesn’t get any better than that in my mind.

I write about people who make mistakes because I’m curious about human behavior. Love can be very messy.

Some people honor their romantic commitments. Some people cheat. Some cheaters fall apart when they get caught. (What were they thinking?) In real life, these things never end well. Arguments get nastier. Lines get drawn in the sand. Hurt pride rears its ugly head. Outsiders take sides. No one can back down.

This type of emotional conflict is great fuel for a story, plus as an author, I get to create the ending I want. That’s the beauty of fiction.

But I’m curious as to how you might handle a situation like this in real life or in the pages of a book. Would you go all ballistic? Would you withdraw and cry out your hurt all alone? Would you get even? Would you listen to what your spouse had to say?

Would your answer have been different twenty years ago?

What would you do?

Maggie Toussaint
Puzzling her way through life