Wednesday, April 3, 2013

Building a Team by LM Pruitt Author of Winged

One of the funnest—and hardest—things about writing a book is creating a cast of characters. I’ve never been a writer who wanted their main character to exist in a vacuum. I mean, even the person who dislikes people has to interact with them to some extent—that quirk alone would open the door to tons of interesting possibilities. But I’m about to go off on a tangent, so let me reel myself back in.

The supporting cast of the WINGED series changed quite a bit over the course of the writing. Initially, Poppy and Lucy were going to be the main character’s confidantes—after all, the three of them were sharing a tent. In the beginning of the book, when Joanne is still finding her feet, this worked beautifully. But as the book continued and the training process and exercises came to the forefront, Joanne needed people who were facing the same obstacles she was—and so the friendship with Danielle was born.

Danielle is an interesting character in her own right. She wasn’t originally intended to be anything more than a minor antagonist, somebody to annoy Joanne. But over the course of WINGED, she proves herself to be resourceful, intelligent, loyal—and one helluva fighter. And so the first member of “the team” was born.

James and Angus were also never meant to be more than minor characters. Two men—one from the early 1900s and one from the 1600s, one a lawyer and one a simple clansman—who both somehow wound up doing the same job for all of eternity. They each have their own unique way of facing problems—Angus likes to go in guns blazing, so to speak, while James tends to be more subtle. They’re just different enough to be valuable on their own—and so “the team” gained two more members.

You may be wondering why I keep referring to them as “the team”. It’s mainly because I don’t want readers to get in the habit of lumping them together. Sure, the four of them work together, they laugh together, they bleed together—but that isn’t all they are. They each have their own lives, their own pasts—some of which readers get to discover in UPRISING. They have their own wants and desires, their own grief. They are their own characters, despite being a team.

Or—maybe because they’re a team.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Coming  in April

I fell from the Talmadge Bridge the week before I turned thirty.

I was given a choice: Go to Heaven. Go back to my life in Savannah. Or spend eternity fighting evil under the direction of the archangels.

I chose the demons--and the angels.

I chose the Winged.

About the Author:
L.M. Pruitt has been reading and writing for as long as she can remember. A native of Florida with a love of New Orleans, she has the uncanny ability to find humor in most things and would probably kill a plastic plant. She knows this because she's killed bamboo. Twice. As a result, she's not allowed to walk in the gardening department of any store without supervision. She's also not allowed in the card aisle of any grocery store without an escort since she'll spend thirty minutes opening cards and laughing for no good reason. She is the author of the best-selling Jude Magdalyn series, the Moon Rising series, and the Frankie Post series. She continues to make her home in Florida in spite of the heat and mosquitos and shares her home with two cats--one of them smart, the other not so much.

Connect with her at:

Facebook:    L.M. Pruitt
Twitter:                  lmpruitt
Website:       www.lmpruitt.org


 

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