The Character of Michael in the Dancing Priest Novels

After Dancing Priest was published in late 2011, I received an email from a reader in Seattle. He liked the book. He liked the book so much that he said it should be required reading for young men under the age of 20.  

He said this, he said, because the character of Michael was all about standing firm and true in the face of adversity. “There’s a nobility in the character of Michael Kent that we should all aspire to.” That character is demonstrated in large things, like an Olympic tragedy, and in smaller things, like taking in a motherless eight-year-old boy.

 

By the second Novel, A Light Shining, Michael Kent has become Michael Kent-Hughes, husband of Sarah. He wears his wealth lightly. Finding his family in Italy, instead of doing the legal thing, he does the right thing. And he faces the great personal adversity of any in the five novels, when he nearly dies. In fact, for a significant section of the book, Michael is unconscious, and the focus shifts to Sarah. 

To continue reading, please see my post today at Dancing Priest.

Top photograph by Benjamin Rascoe via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Giving a Minor Character a Bigger Role

The character of David Hughes, twin brother of Sarah Hughes, has been a part of the Dancing Priest series from the beginning. In Dancing Priest, the first novel, it was David who had decided to do a study year abroad in Scotland, dragging his sister along with him. David was the scholar in the family, and at the University of Edinburgh he was studying Scottish history. Because of a fire at his dormitory, David ends up rooming with Michael Kent and Tommy McFarland, even though they’re two years older. And it’s Tommy’s girlfriend Ellen who fixes David up on a blind date with Betsy, whom he’d eventually marry. 

The character of David Hughes served as something of a counterpoint to Michael and Tommy. They’ve been friends since they were six years old and have roomed together at St. Andrews during their entire time at university. David is the quiet American, the scholarly outsider, contrasting with the outgoing McFarland and the self-confident and often-quite-candid Michael. McFarland is an outspoken champion of Scotland and Scottish independence; David is the young man who’s been in love with Scotland from afar and is now living exactly where he wants to be.

 

To continue reading, please see my post today at Dancing Priest.

 

Top photograph by Shipman Northcutt via Unsplash. Used with permission.

From "Dancing Priest"

“This young man was more than just David’s roommate, wasn’t he?” Gran said.

Sarah nodded.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“I love him Gran. I love him and I can’t love him. He has this enormous faith in God. He’ll be ordained a minister when he returns from the Olympics and then he goes to Africa.”

“Is it the religion, Sarah?” Grand said.

Sarah nodded again. “I just don’t have it. It just doesn’t work for me. But it’s everything about him.”

     - From Dancing Priest 

Photograph by Brooke Cagle via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Dancing King Stories: Master of the Household

In Dancing King, Michael Kent-Hughes has a recurring problem – finding the right people for his key palace staff positions. 

A wide array of people is considered for the communications job; Michael doesn’t find the right person he’s looking for until a resume arrives unsolicited. A similar problem occurs with his chief of staff position – he finds capable people, but the chemistry doesn’t seem right. What’s happened there is that Michael has been consciously and unconsciously comparing them all to Josh Gittings, the prime minister’s chief aide sent to help Michael and his wife Sarah in San Francisco. That problem is solved when Gittings directly applies for the job.

A third key position is an operating job – Master of the Household at the palace, or as Michael shortens it, “Master of the House.” Today, the position is responsible for all of the operational positions for all of the Royal Households in the nation. In addition to Buckingham Palace, that includes Windsor Castle, Kensington Palace, and the staffs charged with managing the activities of many of the members of the royal family.

To continue reading, please see my post today at Dancing Priest.

Dancing King Stories: Josh Gittings, Chief of Staff

In my second novel A Light Shining, Josh Gittings is a special assistant to Prime Minister Peter Bolting. And in his case, “special” means “political.” Gittings does what Bolting needs him to do, and much of that is ruthless. 

He’s a character who understands what his value is, what his role is, and what’s expected of him. He knows he’s often called “Rasputin,” and he’s self-aware enough to understand that it’s a justified nickname. He watches everything. He pays attention to small details. He can deal with political friends and enemies alike, and he sees little difference between them, because who’s your political friend today will be your political enemy tomorrow. 

Josh Gittings is a man of the political 21^st century.

To continue reading, please see my post today at Dancing Priest.

Characters or Story: What Drives Your Writing?

I was having an email exchange with a writer and poet who had just published a novel. Specifically, we were discussing how each of us wrote fiction.

She had trouble, she said, with multi-viewpoint novels. Her stories tended to be character-driven, and especially lead character-driven. She said she found multi-viewpoint novels confusing.

Multi-viewpoint novels are what I write. But I don’t call them “multi-viewpoint.” I call them story-driven.

This isn’t to say that character-driven novels can’t have a strong story line, or that story-driven can’t have strong characterization. But you know when you’re reading a novel that is character-driven and one that is story-driven. One is not superior to the other. They are simply different ways of writing.

To continue reading, please see my post today at the ACFW blog.

Photograph by Alessio Lin via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Darrell Vesterfelt’s “Unblogger”

Darrell Vesterfelt, editor of the online magazine Prodigal, has a story to tell. And it’s his story, a story that he will tell you he was called to bear.

Darrell is a writer. Like most writers today, he did what every publisher on the planet will tell you to do – and that is to build a platform. What publishers mean by that is having enough people who follow you on social media, read you blog, and engage with you that they will buy your book and recommend it to others. Publishers want the assurance that your book will sell, and you have to build a platform to demonstrate that

Millions of writers are out there, dutifully building their platforms. They do everything they’re supposed to do – follow people on Twitter and retweet the important ones, find the cool people on Facebook, and watch their blog statistics like a hawk.

Vesterfelt was one of them, until he unblogged. Having built a successful blog (and platform), he unblogged – pulled the plug and walked away.

His reason was simple. He felt himself in danger of losing himself for the sake of his platform.

He describes what he did and why in a short book (or long essay) with the title of Unblogger: Discovering the Power of Story in a ‘How-To’ World.

What he did, and why, and what happened, is the story he tells. He discovered that an unblogger is first and foremost a person, a human being. The unblogger writes from experience, sharing good stories with people. And an unblogger “lives a story worth telling,…a life of meaning, and then just happens to write about it.”

And goes on and says “we’re called to bear a story, our story.” And we are a character, perhaps the main character in the story. And that’s the story we bear, and the story we write.

This idea of story and character is a post-modern one. An individual like me who is, on an average day, decidedly modernist has to consider the ideas of story and character carefully, that is, consider the idea that he or she is a character in a story. It works if you write the story you live. That doesn’t mean everything you write is demonstrably autobiographical, but is does mean you write from your experience.

I liked this little book (or long essay). Vesterfelt has much to say. And he’s actually doing what he says to do, and is writing his story from experience, as a character in his own story.

He unblogged.

Photograph by Larisa Koshkina via Public Domain Pictures. Used with permission.