J.K. Coi

GUEST AUTHOR: Deborah Cooke

JK Coi: I'm so pleased that Deborah and I are sharing guest blogs once again (Come visit me at her blog tomorrow). It's worked out well because we seem to be sharing release dates too, and this February it is the third book from each of our series.

I asked Deborah if she wouldn't mind telling us about her writing process a little bit, especially with respect to this series. What surprises did she have in store for her as her characters changed from just a name on a page to men and women with hopes and dreams, pains and baggage?


There are essentially two kinds of writers in the world (at least for the sake of this post). There are writers who plan out every detail of a book before they write it, and create very intricate outlines in advance. These writers are often called "plotters" because they work out the plot ahead of time. Then there are writers who wing it, who make up the story as they go. The second type of writer is often called a "pantser", as in, creating by the seat of the pants.

Editors, however, expect authors to write synopses before writing books - contracts are typically negotiated on the basis of a synopsis, especially after the author has sold a few books to that editor. And pantsers have a hard time with this part of the business, because their minds just don't naturally work in a plotting kind of a way.

I know, because I've always been a pantser.

Part of the reason for that is the magic. For me, there's magic in a book when the characters come to life. This can happen at any point but usually means that the characters do something unpredictable, or refuse to do what's in the outline, usually because they have a better idea than I do. This sounds weird and it is weird, but essentially the characters that have come out of my imagination become themselves - they leave my control and become entities in themselves. (This explains why so many authors have conversations or even arguments with invisible people.)

I love that moment when my characters find their autonomy. I love when they become like people in my mind, like people I know, even though it usually means that they run off with the plot and change it to suit themselves. This can be annoying, but the fact is that they always have really good ideas about how things should work. Over time, I've come to wait for that moment.

And although I've learned to write the synopses required by my editors, I'm always reluctant to plot too much - an extensive and detailed outline means for me that writing the book is more like filling in a spreadsheet, and it means that my characters are less likely to "flesh out" and become opinionated. Maybe they dislike outlines as much as I do!

So, when J.K. suggested that we talk about whether characters surprise us, I laughed. The whole point for me is my characters surprising me, of them seizing the plot and changing it. When that happens, the book comes alive for me and I know it will also come alive for my readers.

These Pyr in the Dragonfire series, are particularly bad - or good, depending how you look at it - at doing this. They have changed the stories I thought we would tell over and over again. They, typically, leave me in the dark, then cough up the most intriguing details, details that change everything just when I thought I knew where I was going with the book. Erik (KISS OF FATE) does this to me over and over again. I knew right from the beginning, when he walked into Sara's bookstore in KISS OF FIRE, that he knew more than he was telling. He wouldn't confide in me, but boy, did he tell Eileen a lot that I didn't know! I guess he was motivated to win her trust. (I guess he knows he already has mine.) Erik shares a lot of the history of the Pyr with Eileen in KISS OF FATE, as well as big chunks of his personal history. I didn't know what would happen with Sigmund until it did, and I certainly didn't realize what Sophie had planned. Phew! They shocked me over and over again in this book.

This is really exciting to me. To me, it's a sign that the story is vital and that the characters are lifelike - even if it means that I look like I'm arguing with myself all the time. Did they do it again? You bet. I thought in KISS OF FIRE that Delaney was dead - didn't you? Then he turned up in KISS OF FURY, drawn to Donovan's firestorm. Hmm. And he's in KISS OF FATE, too, fighting Magnus's subliminal command to do evil to the other Pyr. He's definitely interesting and definitely facing a lot of internal conflict with those nightmares -- guess who took the starring role in Dragonfire #4, in a development that completely surprised me?

Right. Delaney's book is WINTER KISS, coming in November, and my editor says it's the best Dragonfire title yet. I think it's because the characters stole the script and replaced it with their own.

Do you think you can tell when characters have come to life for an author? What makes a book seem more vivid and real to you as a reader? If you're a writer, are you a plotter or a pantser? And do your stories ever get away from you?

Deborah Cooke