Make-Believe Monday with Tina Donahue

Today on Make-Believe Mondays my guest is Tina Donahue.
Tina, welcome.
Is there a point when your characters begin to come alive and you can see and hear them?

Tina:  Generally by page five of the story my characters take over and I’m just an observer, recording what’s happening. It used to be page 50, but the more I write, the quicker the characters begin to come alive. I’m still hoping that they will someday take the reins on page 1, making things very easy for me. 

Debra: Wouldn't that be wonderful?  Mine haven't ever done that before chapter three.  It would certainly make the re-writing easier. 

Some very famous authors have played with language, creating words for people or places that no one has ever heard of.  Have you ever played with words in that way and if so how?

Tina:  I’ve played with places that way. I wrote a paranormal a long time ago where I created a new universe for the lovers. It was a lot of fun and I thought it would be easy plot-wise because there weren’t any rules like in the real world. I learned quickly, that wasn’t true. If you give your character the ability to let’s say walk through walls on page 20 and then on page 50 he needs to escape the villains, but you don’t want him to (in order to build tension/suspense) you have to figure out why he could walk through walls at one point but not at another – kind of like Kryptonite stopping Superman. So even make-believe worlds have a ton of rules in order to make sense.

Debra:  Sometimes I think the make-believe worlds are harder because of that.  With the ordinary mundane world we already know the how and sometimes the why of things. 

As a child did any particular book or author pull you into their imaginary world?

Tina:  I still recall reading “Mystery in Old Quebec”. To this day, I can see the peeling wallpaper in the room in my mind and the way the firelight flickered over the furniture. I got so hooked on the story and imagery, everything else faded away.

Debra:  That's a lovely image.  It's wonderful to be pulled into a world.

If there were no categories for books, no reader expectations to meet, and you could create the wildest work of imagination that you could think of what kind of story would that be?

Tina:  The paranormal I was speaking about earlier. I actually rewrote the history of mankind in it, beginning with creation. Maybe someday I’ll go back, polish the ms up and see if it sells.

Debra:  Yes, I think if it calls to you, then you should!  Tina, thank you for joining us here on this Make-believe Monday to share a little bit of the magic of writing with our readers. 

Readers visit Tina at www.tinadonahue.com

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Debra's News/ Debra is Watching:

I've been away for a few weeks.  Celebrated my birthday with a birthday luau, been researching for the Scottish historical romance I'll soon be writing.  Not quite ready to start that one yet, so I'll be working on some of the other stories I've started to keep the writing muscles in shape as well as submitting one of my completed novels to agents.  The great agent search is on and this takes time to find a good one.

It's been up in the 100's today here in the south.  Till next week, stay cool, stay safe and healthy.

Love and light,
Debra

www.debraparmley.com