Backstories & Character Development

"Mildred" with Zuts, the Bolduc House Museum's mascot at the MOMCC workshop on first person interpretation, March 10, 2010 in Madison, Indiana

I attended a wonderful workshop last weekend on first person interpretation that was conducted by Mike Fallin, who is in charge of interpretive services at the Ohio Historical Society. We also spent time at lunch during which I probed his process of creating solo skits designed to involve museum visitors in experiencing aspects of social history. I watched one of his actors present her skit, "Mildred", whose husband lost his job in the 1930s and nearly killed himself because he could no longer support her per his marriage vows.

Mike's process is a lot like that of developing a novel. He spends at least a month researching, looking for documentation to support each anecdote. His goal is to identify 3 big ideas that the audience will go away remembering. Then he spends a week or so writing the script before he involves the actor. This is for a 30 minute show.

His three musts are accurate costuming, appropriate usage of language and gesture, and documentation to back up everything. Then his actors are responsible to draw the audience into the scene through dialogue and eye contact within the first 30 seconds. The sterile classroom immediately transfixed to Mildred's kitchen and we were all there- each of us believed we had come back to visit an old neighbor after having been gone for many years. It felt like being consumed by a good book.

Mike and "Mildred" answered some key questions about how to move my staff at the Bolduc House Museum towards adopting first person interpretation as part of our transition to living history. They also influenced how I will think about developing fictional characters for my novels from now on. I am so glad to have met them both.

I am still working on the backstories for each of the characters in Stuck in the Mud. I think I added another one over the weekend - not sure.

I am beginning to believe that writing each book is as different an experience as raising each child. Not one moment is the same and I speak from experience! I raised seven children.

Multitasking to Make the Book Richer

Some of my time as the director of the Bolduc House Museum is spent researching various aspects of life in Ste. Genevieve, Missouri, during the late 18th century. Because I decided to set Stuck in the Mud at this museum and in this town, it seems efficient and fun to incorporate what I am researching and discovering now into the story. Hence the 500 year old Native American female corpse that got unearthed in the story. No such thing happened on our site - you would definitely have heard about it in the media if that were to have happened. But I learned of a similar discovery plowed up by accident long ago in a farmer's field across the river nearby as the crow flies and then a colleague explained that some tribes, Chickasaw was one, sometimes buried bodies and skulls in separate graves. Another scholar claimed that this kind of burial indicated that the woman was a slave. So when Aileen, the new fictional museum professional in Stuck in the Mud, is assigned the task of liaison between the museum and the various entities that must respond to the discovery of a corpse buried in the lawn for centuries, she will need to know even more than I have begun to find out. It will add a sub-plot. Equally relevant to the story is an exhibit I have on display right now of ten significant engravings and mezzotints from our collection. Aileen's uncle, John, a professor of art history at Webster University in St. Louis, will be a valuable consultant to the museum in the book. This provides a natural way to link the characters from St. Louis to the ones in Ste. Genevieve and, at the same time, incorporate nerdy information to make the book much richer, I think.