Clemency: The Saint Chronicles, Part 1

~ The Official Book Blog of Charles G. Turner, III

Clemency: The Saint Chronicles, Part 1

Category Archives: Discovery

Unique Voices

11 Tuesday Sep 2012

Posted by charlesgturner3 in Book, Discovery

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characters, Clemency, details, development, draft, plot, reader, story, writing

You may remember that I said in a prior post that I spent time walking around with my Molskine book taking notes before I finally sat down to write Clemency. Much of that time was spent responding to the characters as they followed me around and spoke their minds. But you might be interested to know that a significant amount of time was spent NOT writing at all, but rather, LISTENING. In my view, an author is only a small shard of glass in the kaleidoscope of his or her world. That is to say, I constantly keep in mind that I bring a very limited view to the world because, as much as I may try and tell myself otherwise, I myself have a very limited life experience.

I am a pilot, but I have never scaled Mount Everest. I am a SCUBA diver, but I have never cycled the Tour de France. There are many things that I have never done which produce life perspectives from others that they share and that I, as an author, can draw upon to deepen my characters. While I must admit that I had created all the characters before getting to this step, I knew that, written by me they would all SOUND like me. So I set out to listen to other people and draw from their personalities those things which would give each of my characters their own voice. After all, they each had to have their own unique voice to be able to contribute to the story in their own way.  Isn’t this actually research?  Absolutely!  But I wouldn’t call it research of the traditional kind.  It would take countless sources and sound bites from people who are perfect strangers.  Although I would never directly interact with most of what I was exposed to, it took all those voices to be able to puzzle together that single voice for that unique character that wasn’t me.

In the end, as power as the pen may be, perhaps my ears are my greatest tool for creating the voices of my characters.  Oddly, their words come from the mouths of strangers every day.

The Exploration and Discovery of the Shipwreck Clemency

06 Monday Aug 2012

Posted by charlesgturner3 in Book, Discovery

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circumstance, Clemency, discovery, exploration, research, ship, truth

The research for developing the back story of Charles Turner’s shipwreck Clemency is described for the reader in chapter seven of the book.  Here, our lead characters and the reader are openly exposed to the facts surrounding the demise of the ship, and the conditions under which the operation is about to take place.  I haven’t hidden anything.  Why?  Because I believe that there is a difference between research and discovery; between fact and circumstance.  One can spend all the time they want researching what a Liberty ship looks like, and make all the plans they wish for dissecting it.  But to be in its presence is a completely different matter.charles turner shipwreck 1

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Recent Posts

  • 10 Polishing Characters
  • 11 Clemency – The Bigger Picture
  • 12 What I Don’t Read
  • 14 – The Allure of the Sea
  • 9 Research versus Access

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