Recipe for a Heroine
By Guest | June 21, 2011 |
Kath here. Please welcome contemporary women’s fiction novelist Daphne Uviller to Writer Unboxed today. Daphne’s made a splash with her irreverent mystery series, which is an adorable cross between hardboiled crime fiction and Sex in the City. Her latest novel, HOTEL NO TELL, is garnering buzz and great reviews:
ALA’s Booklist calls Hotel No Tell an “irrepressible sequel…Snappy crime fiction with a sensitive side and a loving look at the Big Apple.”
We’re so pleased Daphne is able to post with us today. Take it away, Daphne!
Let’s get something straight. The heroine of my two novels, Zephyr Zuckerman, is not me. She lives on West 12th street, and my apartment is on West 13th street. Please, people, respect the writer’s imagination.
Seriously? She’s really not me. More accurate to say there’s a bit of me in all my characters, from the Japanese yenta (I recklessly engage in cultural crossbreeding) to the male love interests to the hard-living detectives. We all have dialogues in our heads as we weigh the pros and cons of any situation – whether to have kids, what to order in for dinner. A writer – or this writer, anyway – builds characters around those debating voices.
Zephyr combusted into being after mixing together a few explosive elements. When I created her, I was mulling over what David Brooks, writing in The New York Times in October 2007, aptly termed the odyssey years –a professional paralysis that grips many educated people of my generation. It’s an inability to pick a career and stay the course – it’s not laziness, but rather, an overabundance of opportunity, and it interested me as a battle.
That flitting and flirting with different professions and imagining oneself in a variety of roles in turn made me think of 
one of my favorite literary characters, Walter Mitty, the titular hero of James Thurber’s 1929 short story. Mitty is prone to flights of heroic fantasy; in the space of just two thousand words, he imagines himself as the captain of a navy hydroplane, the heroic victim of a firing squad, as a world-class surgeon. I began to think that maybe the odyssey years were not such a new predicament.
And then I thought about how I hate doing research. So much so that when I tried my hand at real journalism, I failed miserably because I wanted to make the facts just a little more interesting. (NB: this is not okay.) I knew I’d have to be an author who fell into the write-what-you-know category.
So then I thought about what I knew and it amounted to just two things. One: the real New York City, the one with the natives who have inherited their apartments, making us real estate rich and cash poor, the one where you’re not afraid to schlump around in ugly sandals and no makeup. Two: I knew about being the super of a building in Greenwich Village, something I did for ten years in exchange for a fabulous apartment and low rent.
I poured all these into my cauldron, spiced with an array of vibrant supporting characters, mixed vigorously and thus was born Zephyr Zuckerman: a new millennial, odyssey-generation, female Walter Mitty who (in the first book) is the super of a Greenwich Village building.
She shares some of my DNA, but really, she’s entirely her own person.
Follow Daphne on Twitter @DaphneUviller. Hotel No Tell is out now, while Super in the City and Only Child are both available in paperback
Many thanks to today’s guest.
You can read more WU guest posts by visiting this link.
Beautiful post. This is so true.
Every so often I have to clarify to someone in my non-writerly circles that fiction is fiction. I am the writer, but what I write isn’t *me.* Not completely, anyway.
Love reading about the genesis of your main character! Also, this line is so true / brilliant:
“A writer – or this writer, anyway – builds characters around those debating voices.”
Great post! I’m just learning how to make my main characters better and more believable, and knowing that they do take on a life of their own is reassuring. It would be boring if I just plunked myself into every story. I also really like that you “build characters around those debating voices.” I’d never thought about it like that, but it’s a good way to get to the heart of characters.
I had to laugh at you wanting to “make the facts a little more interesting”. I think that’s what I love so much about writing fiction. Everyday, mundane things can be spruced up and made into something entertaining. It sounds like you’ve had a lot of fun doing this too. :)
I love your angle on the New York super-heroine, Daphne. Interesting, upbeat, and sassy– perfect for your genre. Congratulations on your novels, and may there be many adventures to come out of your, er, Daphne’s New York City.
Love this. And it’s so true.
Thanks for this fun post! I like your comment about hating research, I can relate to that. I added your books to my list of to-reads, I would love to read about ‘authentic’ New York.
Haha! I had the exact same trouble with journalism.
And many of my friends refuse to believe the heroine of my upcoming novel isn’t me. Their eyes glaze over when I say many characters are composites of lots of people from my past. And then they say, “yeah, but it’s still you, though, right?”
Wow! I feel like we should start a support group for writers whose readers just will not believe that we are not our protagonists!
Thanks for all these great comments!
Hi there! I find that most of my characters have little bits of lots of people I know in them…both the good and the not-so-good. For example, I asked my husband if he saw any of himself in the hero of my latest ms. His response,”Uh, yeah…but I also see some of myself in the other (not-so-heroic) guy.”
Yikes! I had to go back and think about it…but I guess he was right. Maybe a few of my marital gripes came out in crafting that character! I always see lots of my own faults in my characters as well, and I applaud him for his honesty!
Thanks for this post!
“She shares some of my DNA.” I like that!
This is just what I needed today to spark my imagination. I, too, will add your book to my TBR list because it sounds fresh and quirky and I’m bored with the same-o, same-o. Yes, there’s a piece of us in everything we write but by that it could mean just a smidgeon of a thought we had about something trivial, something we made up or dreamed about – still us, but that doesn’t make what we write an autobiography!
Thanks for the post.
Patti
I followed the link to the Odyssey Years article, and what a great read that was! Kinda shed light on some things for me. On that note, your post just made me add your books to my reading list. Thanks for sharing your path to creating characters and stories that click.
@Stephanie Alexander, On that marital note, in the first Zephyr book, Super in the City, her love interest is an exterminator. After the book came out, lots of people said, “oh, that’s so funny, because your husband is an entomologist?”
Holy moly. I hadn’t even thought of that, but apparently, my subconscious is on a tear!!
Thanks for sharing how you created Zephyr! She’s one of my favorite new fictional characters. I often recommend Super in the City to patrons (my day job is as a reader’s advisory librarian).
Your thoughts on “writing what you know” hits home with me. After years of trying to be someone else, I now write from the viewpoint of a small town girl from Missouri.
Great post – not entirely true for my non-fiction narrative ‘Girl Meets Boys’, but “writing what you know” is so true. Stick with it, I enjoyed this post! The DNA reference was fabulous!
Mind if I link to this on my website?
Louise Gibney
http://www.facebook.com/louise.gibney.writer
[…] is a great guest post from Daphne Uviller on her novel HOTEL NO TELL discussing how her heroine Zephyr Zuckerman was […]