When I first engaged in the task of writing my new novel, ZION'S WEB, I really had no clue what kind of book I intended to writeâ€"other than I wanted my novel to be a thriller. Despite involving Mormons in the book, I really wasn't making an attempt to write LDS fiction, nor do I think I succeeded in doing thatâ€"at least not in the conventional view of things. But what I did write, in my viewpoint, is absolutely uniqueâ€"and, more importantly, it's mine.
This naturally goes for the hero in my novel, Zachariah (Zack) Burton, an ex-FBI-Agent-turned-private-investigator who lives on a 50-foot sport fisher in San Pedro, California. In figuring out precisely how I wanted to develop Zack, it may be useful to inspect the roots of detective fiction which is where I got my cue. In researching private detectives, I learned that many of these charactersâ€"at least those of the male variety set in the twentieth century and laterâ€"seemed to have at least some similarity to the hard-boiled investigators made by the likes of Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett. These men were all hardened, basic types of individuals, with a somewhat cynical view of the world.
My lead personality Zack fits this profile in more than a few ways due to some the events that have occurred in his life. Zack recently lost his wife to cancer, for example, an event that caused him to begin drinking too much. This behavior ultimately made him lose nearly everything he had in life, including his job with the FBI. The one thing he was able to hang onto was the Kajiki, his sport fisher berthed in a marina in San Pedro. True to his hard-boiled image, Zack starts out as a loner and a near-total recluse but through the progression of the novel grows as a person until by the end he is much more approachable and sympathetic.
What makes Zack different , however, is the Mormon tie-in. Because of the nature of the case he is entangled withâ€"the rescue of a female escapee from a polygamist compound run by so-called fundamentalist Mormonsâ€"I thought it was vital to differentiate these individuals from the mainstream Mormons housed out of Salt Lake who gave up the practice of polygamy over a hundred years ago and excommunicate any of their members who continue practicing it. For similar reasons, I also believed it was necessary to include some details about mainstream Mormonism in my story.
The girl Zack was married to as an example was a Mormon, although he is not. His ex-brother-in-law is also a Mormon and supplies the main vehicle through which assorted historical elements about Mormonism are presented, though these are never allowed to interfere with the key story line.
The bottom line on all this is to assert that your lead character in detective fiction should be crafted around something you identify with personally, which is how you'll make him or her your own. If I had copied Dashiell Hammett's character, or Chandlers, or any one of a half dozen others, my character wouldn't have been unique, which would have influenced my book and made it somewhat unremarkable . And if your story is not unique, it has little chance of developing a robust audience or distinguishing you as a writer.
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This naturally goes for the hero in my novel, Zachariah (Zack) Burton, an ex-FBI-Agent-turned-private-investigator who lives on a 50-foot sport fisher in San Pedro, California. In figuring out precisely how I wanted to develop Zack, it may be useful to inspect the roots of detective fiction which is where I got my cue. In researching private detectives, I learned that many of these charactersâ€"at least those of the male variety set in the twentieth century and laterâ€"seemed to have at least some similarity to the hard-boiled investigators made by the likes of Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett. These men were all hardened, basic types of individuals, with a somewhat cynical view of the world.
My lead personality Zack fits this profile in more than a few ways due to some the events that have occurred in his life. Zack recently lost his wife to cancer, for example, an event that caused him to begin drinking too much. This behavior ultimately made him lose nearly everything he had in life, including his job with the FBI. The one thing he was able to hang onto was the Kajiki, his sport fisher berthed in a marina in San Pedro. True to his hard-boiled image, Zack starts out as a loner and a near-total recluse but through the progression of the novel grows as a person until by the end he is much more approachable and sympathetic.
What makes Zack different , however, is the Mormon tie-in. Because of the nature of the case he is entangled withâ€"the rescue of a female escapee from a polygamist compound run by so-called fundamentalist Mormonsâ€"I thought it was vital to differentiate these individuals from the mainstream Mormons housed out of Salt Lake who gave up the practice of polygamy over a hundred years ago and excommunicate any of their members who continue practicing it. For similar reasons, I also believed it was necessary to include some details about mainstream Mormonism in my story.
The girl Zack was married to as an example was a Mormon, although he is not. His ex-brother-in-law is also a Mormon and supplies the main vehicle through which assorted historical elements about Mormonism are presented, though these are never allowed to interfere with the key story line.
The bottom line on all this is to assert that your lead character in detective fiction should be crafted around something you identify with personally, which is how you'll make him or her your own. If I had copied Dashiell Hammett's character, or Chandlers, or any one of a half dozen others, my character wouldn't have been unique, which would have influenced my book and made it somewhat unremarkable . And if your story is not unique, it has little chance of developing a robust audience or distinguishing you as a writer.
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About the Author:
Michael Snow is the writer of ZION'S WEB, the first in the Zachariah Burton detective series. In addition to writing books, Michael maintains a blogsite which incorporates some useful and highly interesting blogs including info regarding making a fictional detective.
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