Some years back I tried writing a novel about Anita Ray but it just didn’t come together—there was something wrong in the voice of the character and the way she operated, moved through the landscape of people and the country. I had tried several times to capture Anita’s essence—and I was sure it was there, just beyond me, drifting toward me like a fragrant breeze but not quite reaching me. I was dissatisfied and I couldn’t resolve the feeling. I knew something was wrong, and in some of the reactions of outside readers I knew at the time, I thought I sensed the same lukewarm response to Anita.
Frustrated with these less than successful attempts at a novel featuring Anita, I tried writing a scene that could be the beginning of a short story. My idea was to give her exactly what she has to deal with, no distractions, no elaborations, no subplots. I did and it worked. Anita emerged at once with her irreverence, insouciance, and independence. I had her.
Without realizing it, I was using a technique that I often recommend to students when beginning a story. If you’re not sure about the protagonist, or about whose story this is, try writing the opening paragraph from different points of view—first, third, close and omniscient, the main character, a peripheral character who tells the story of another, more important figure. Each opening paragraph will be different, but one will resonate with you the moment you hear it being written or read. You have found the voice.
F. Scott Fitzgerald would have written a very different novel in The Great Gatsby if he had used a different narrator instead of the young man slightly in awe of the character of the title. And the pleasure of Sue Grafton’s series is experiencing the world with Kinsey Milhone. Raymond Chandler’s Marlowe could hardly have any other voice and be the same.
Anita’s voice sounded true the minute I heard it, but there was more. I loved the way the short story form revealed her. She reacted to the people around her but also edged past them to find her way through the crime. She pushed the other characters, defining them and their behavior. And through her I got to talk about a traditional culture in India that I admire and also deeply care about. I wrote one story and then another and another and another. The stories were fun to write and fun to read. I loved them. And, fortunately for me, Linda Landrigan at Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine loved them too.
After a while I realized this wasn’t going to be enough. Anita needed a novel, but I had tried so many times I wasn’t sure I wanted to fail again. I spent about half a nanosecond on that thought and jumped into thinking up a larger story line. I am something of a compulsive writer—I just keep at it, even if it isn’t going well, until I collapse exhausted or finished. So, I set out again.
I had tried a character, female and living in India and more or less part of the landscape and culture, in different voices—first person, close third, omniscient—none of which had worked. I had long ago forgotten about them, and concluded back then that I had tried too hard to shape her personality, but the person who emerged in the short story lived vividly every time I started writing. Would she translate into the longer form?
She did.
Anita is her own person, and when I pick up the hardcover with its perfectly thought-out cover design (I wish I could take credit for that too, but no) I feel the weight of her as a separate person, someone who can’t be forced to follow any plotline or story arc or anything else I might require of a character. I’m just as curious now to find out what she’s going to do next as would any other reader be.
So, yes, she has arrived, in more ways than one.
Under the Eye of Kali, by Susan Oleksiw (Five Star/Gale/Cengage, 2010).
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