When I first engaged in the task of crafting my new novel, ZION'S WEB, I actually had no clue what sort of book I intended to writeâ€"other than I wanted my story to be a thriller. Despite involving Mormons in the book, I definitely was not 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 opinion, is totally uniqueâ€"and, more importantly, it's mine.
This of course 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 determining exactly how I wanted to develop Zack, it may be useful to inspect the roots of detective fiction which is where I got my ideas. In researching private eyes, I discovered that many of these charactersâ€"at least those of the male variety set in the 20th century and laterâ€"seemed to contain at least a passing similarity to the hard boiled investigators made by the likes of Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett. These men were all rough hewn, basic types of individuals, with a somewhat cynical view of life.
My lead personality Zack fits this profile in many ways due to many of the events that have occurred in his life. Zack recently lost his wife to cancer, for example, an event that led him to begin drinking excessively. This behavior eventually led him to lose almost everything he had in life, including his job with the FBI. The one thing he managed to hang onto was the Kajiki, his sport fisher berthed in a marina in San Pedro. True to his hard-boiled image, Zack begins the story as a loner and a near-total recluse but through the flow of the book develops as a person until by the end he is significantly more approachable and sympathetic.
What makes Zack different , however, is the Mormon element. Thanks to the nature of the case he's entangled withâ€"the rescue of a female escapee from a polygamist compound run by so-called fundamentalist Mormonsâ€"I believed it was vital to differentiate these folks from the mainstream Mormons housed out of Salt Lake who gave up the practice of plural marriage over a hundred years ago and excommunicate any of their members who continue practicing it. For similar reasons, I also felt it was important to include some details about mainstream Mormonism in my story.
The lady Zack was married to as an example was a Mormon, although he is not. His ex-brother-in-law is also a Mormon and provides the main vehicle by which assorted historic tid-bits about Mormonism are presented, although these are never permitted to interrupt the primary story line.
The take-away from all this is to say that your lead character in detective fiction should be based on something you identify with personally, which is how you'll make him or her your own. If I had copied Dashiell Hammett's personality, or Chandlers, or any one of a half dozen others, my character would not have been unique, which would have influenced my story and made it somewhat ordinary. And if your story is not unique, it has little chance of developing a robust audience or differentiating you as a writer.
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This of course 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 determining exactly how I wanted to develop Zack, it may be useful to inspect the roots of detective fiction which is where I got my ideas. In researching private eyes, I discovered that many of these charactersâ€"at least those of the male variety set in the 20th century and laterâ€"seemed to contain at least a passing similarity to the hard boiled investigators made by the likes of Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett. These men were all rough hewn, basic types of individuals, with a somewhat cynical view of life.
My lead personality Zack fits this profile in many ways due to many of the events that have occurred in his life. Zack recently lost his wife to cancer, for example, an event that led him to begin drinking excessively. This behavior eventually led him to lose almost everything he had in life, including his job with the FBI. The one thing he managed to hang onto was the Kajiki, his sport fisher berthed in a marina in San Pedro. True to his hard-boiled image, Zack begins the story as a loner and a near-total recluse but through the flow of the book develops as a person until by the end he is significantly more approachable and sympathetic.
What makes Zack different , however, is the Mormon element. Thanks to the nature of the case he's entangled withâ€"the rescue of a female escapee from a polygamist compound run by so-called fundamentalist Mormonsâ€"I believed it was vital to differentiate these folks from the mainstream Mormons housed out of Salt Lake who gave up the practice of plural marriage over a hundred years ago and excommunicate any of their members who continue practicing it. For similar reasons, I also felt it was important to include some details about mainstream Mormonism in my story.
The lady Zack was married to as an example was a Mormon, although he is not. His ex-brother-in-law is also a Mormon and provides the main vehicle by which assorted historic tid-bits about Mormonism are presented, although these are never permitted to interrupt the primary story line.
The take-away from all this is to say that your lead character in detective fiction should be based on something you identify with personally, which is how you'll make him or her your own. If I had copied Dashiell Hammett's personality, or Chandlers, or any one of a half dozen others, my character would not have been unique, which would have influenced my story and made it somewhat ordinary. And if your story is not unique, it has little chance of developing a robust audience or differentiating 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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