(Also posted on One Bite at a Time.)

Murderati’s two most recent posts (by Tess Gerritsen and Rob Gregory Browne) have dealt with the fine line between persistence and stubbornness. Each is worth a read. Both are timely for me.

The detective in my PI series was intended to be a pretty normal guy. The arc of the series showed how the violence he kept encountering wore on him, made him more violent himself, and what he did about it. My critique group liked him. My agent liked him. Editors said he was boring.

I've taken a break from him to work on something else, but later this year I'm going back to his books and changing him just a bit. Since most of the stories deal with parent-child relationships at some level, and he is very close to his daughter (who lives with her mother), I decided he and his ex had another child, older than the daughter, who was killed in an accident when he was small. The detective wasn't at fault, but some decision that seemed insignificant at the time could have prevented the child’s death if decided differently. This broke up his marriage, and he still can’t get past it, so the cases that keep presenting themselves to him are that much more painful. He can’t really avoid them, as he’s usually well into them before he recognizes the parent-child element of the case he’s working.

Maybe this will work. Maybe it won’t. I’m hoping I’ve taken persistence right to the stubborn line, but not crossed it. We’ll see.

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Comment by Dana King on May 8, 2009 at 1:02am
Thanks, all. This is on the back burner while I finish a draft of the current WIP and another manuscript circulates, but I'm definitely going to make the changes to Book One of the series and see what comes of it. Your comments have been very encouraging.
Comment by Jack Getze on May 7, 2009 at 5:38am
I like the idea, too, Dana.
I've heard Donald Maass and other agents talk a lot about bigger than life characters. Unforgettable. Scrooge. Sherlock. Philip Marlowe. Not sure how to do it, however. Carolyn Wheat (in her book, Killer Fiction) talks about looking at the characters in fables and cartoons.
Comment by John McFetridge on May 7, 2009 at 5:08am
I like the idea of looking for the point at which persistence becomes stubborness and starts to work against itself.

I've always been interested in the point at which ambition becomes greed....

But these are sometimes vague concepts for editorswho are looking for a hook or some clear selling point. The kind things you're talking about doing with the character will definitely make him a more layered character and give him more depth which will really help in the long term. It's that messy short term that's tough.

Good luck with it.
Comment by I. J. Parker on May 7, 2009 at 4:44am
I like the idea very much. Do it. Also, I found it helpful to have a sidekick who gets into a lot of fights. The demand for constant action chapters was a bit much to handle with just one fairly reserved character.
Comment by B.R.Stateham on May 7, 2009 at 2:42am
It's a crap-shoot, Dana. Change this because someone thinks a character is boring and you run the possibilities of alienating others. So what do you do? Here, I think, is the perfect example of writing characters that satisfy you. Of course you have to listen to others . . . but then you have to decide on your own what's best.

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