by Ane Mulligan  @AneMulligan

Every writer has their own way of writing. I’m a conglomeration of several writers’ methods. As I learned (and I’m still learning) new tricks and tools, I will take some and add them to my toolbox. I hope y’all will find a tool or two you can use from this.

For this post, I’m using my character(s) from In High Cotton, a Carol Award finalist.

I’m a visual writer, so the first thing I do is find a photo of my characters. I Googled women of the 1920s & 30s. I download those I like.

For In High Cotton, it didn’t take long for me to find my heroine. I study the photo and give her a suitable name. In this case, Magnolia or Maggie.

You can learn a lot about your characters from interviewing them, especially if you’re a SOTP writer. I’m a Planster, meaning I know my beginning, a few scenes I need, and the end. The rest, I let my POV characters guide me. To allow them to do that, you really need to know them well.

When I started Maggie’s interview, I used a list of questions I’d refined over time. Let me take you on that interview with me.

Ane: Maggie, what is your full name?

Maggie: Magnolia Byrne McBride Parker

Ane: You’re married?

Maggie: I’m a widow.

Ane: How did your husband die?

Maggie: Of the Spanish flu, at the tail end of that epidemic. I was devastated. I discovered I was pregnant a couple of weeks after he died. It’s amazing I didn’t lose the baby. But I was sorry Jimmy never knew about him.

Ane: So you have a child.

Maggie: Oh yes, may darlin’ boy Barry.

Ane: How old is Barry?

Maggie: 7 or 8. (Ane here. I still had some dates to solidify)

Ane: What do you do for a living?

Maggie: I run the grocery my husband left me. And I write children’s bedtime stories and a household hint column for the newspaper.

Ane: What do you want, Maggie?

Maggie: It’s the great depression. I have to keep the store from going under to support my son. What did you think?

Ane: Why?

After learning Maggie is a bit feisty, this is where she stopped talking to me. I knew I had to do something else, so I set aside the interview and started writing what I call a stream-of-consciousness backstory. I began with her birth.

I, Magnolia Byrne MacBride, was born 10/29/1899 on a small farm in outside Baxley, GA in the southeast part of the state, to Julia Davis MacBride. Daddy was a sharecropper. I was a tomboy, much to mama’s dismay. Why couldn’t I be like my sister, Duchess Kennedy MacBride? Mama constantly badgered me over it. Though Daddy always tried to make up for mama’s complaints about me, but I knew I was a bitter disappointment to her.

I learned quite a bit from that first paragraph. Maggie was a tomboy, a rarity back then.

She also has a sister named Duchess. It was not a nickname. I wanted to stop and explore her sister, but Maggie had started talking, so I kept writing.

I ended up going back three generations to find out what happened in their family to make these sister as different as chalk and cheese. To condense this long backstory for you, Maggie’s great-great-grandmother was born on her father’s plantation.

BINGO! Southern royalty.

After the War of Northern Aggression (that’s what Southerners called it) Maggie’s grandfather came home, but they lost the plantation to Carpetbaggers over unpaid back taxes. To survive, they became sharecroppers. Maggie’s grandmother was bitter and unhinged by their change in circumstances. She lived with the family and spent her days trying to relive her upbringing.

Maggie loved animals and being outdoors, so she trialed after her father and wanted no part of crazy granny’s stories. They meant nothing to Maggie. Her sister, however, was entranced by the stories, and grew up at her granny’s and mother’s knees.

What did I learn through that process? The lie Maggie believes (she’s a disappointment) and I can see why she’s determined to succeed.

Armed with this backstory, I could compete the interview, where Maggie revealed everything I needed to know her intimately. Her sister’s backstory was as fascinating and very romantic. If you want to know more about these ladies, you’ll have to get the book, In High Cotton.

If anyone wants my character interview, go to Facebook and DM me.

Ane Mulligan lives life from a director’s chair, both in theatre and at her desk, creating novels. Entranced with story by age three, at five, she saw PETER PAN onstage and was struck with a fever from which she never recovered—stage fever. One day, her passions collided, and an award-winning, bestselling novelist emerged. She believes chocolate and coffee are two of the four major food groups and lives in Sugar Hill, GA, with her artist husband and a rascally Rottweiler. Find Ane on her website, Amazon Author page, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, The Write Conversation, and Blue Ridge Conference Blog.