As I noodle a new book, I’ve been thinking about the lens, or lenses, through which I’ll tell the story. This matters for a few reasons. I’ll be spending a lot of time with these characters. I don’t necessarily have to like them. In fact, I’m playing with an unlikable protagonist and having fun. But I do need to enjoy sending them on adventures and watching their reactions.
My last series, the Garden Squad series, featured several characters, but centered on Lilly Jayne, a 65-year-old master gardener. I enjoyed writing about someone who had lived a full life, who couldn’t run because of achy knees, and who didn’t care what people thought of her.
What if that woman were unlikeable, but rarely wrong? Efficient but a pill? Smart but a social outcast? Bored and therefore reckless?
Do you like older sleuths? I’m reading them more and more. Richard Osman’s Thursday Murder Club series, Deanna Rayborn’s Killers of a Certain Age. Wonderfully rounded characters full of life and adventure despite or, or because of, their age.
She isn’t fully formed yet, but a character is emerging, moving in. Her knees will be as creaky as mine. And she’ll be cranky. The rest is to be determined.