Building Character and Interpersonal Relationships in a Novel Series
The Ravenswood series will consist of seven books, four of which—Remember Love, Remember Me, Always Remember, and Remember When (January, 2025) have already been written. I find that readers like book series, and I like the scope a series gives me to build a Regency world and people it with recurring characters. Ravenswood is the English estate of the Ware family: the Earl of Stratton and his countess, their five children, ranging in age at the start from nine to 23, and his illegitimate son, whom he brought to Ravenswood after the death of his mistress, when the boy was three and his first child with the countess had just been born.
(How to Write a Romance Novel: Keys to Conflict.)
The characters include the numerous people who live and work at Ravenswood, the inhabitants of the nearby village of Boscombe and the surrounding countryside, and family and friends from more distant places. The seven-part format allows me to individualize a good number of these people as they develop over the 15-year span of the series and interact with the main characters. Consistency is important here. They must remain essentially the same people in each book.
This is especially true of the family members, each of whom will be a minor character in six of the books and the romantic lead in one, a tricky balancing act. Devlin Ware, the earl’s heir, is hero of the first book, followed in the second by his sister Philippa, then by his half-brother, Ben Ellis, then by his mother, the now-widowed Clarissa, Dowager Countess of Stratton. Nicholas, Owen, and Stephanie’s stories remain to be told. As the series grows, I have to take particular care over the development of these characters. It will be too late when it comes time to write their own love stories to change anything significant in their past, no matter how much I wish I could do so, for those details will have appeared in already published books. Although I have little idea of their stories in advance, I need to shape them into the people I believe I want them to be in their own love stories. It is all part of the endless challenge (and joy) of writing.
The whole of the writing process is stimulating, especially as it relates to the couple at the heart of each book, for the development of character and the growth of a powerful love relationship always go hand in hand with me. Two people, very different from each other, must grow from indifference or even hostility, through liking and friendship to falling in love, and ultimately to the fullness of lasting and unconditional love. Happily-ever-after is not enough in itself. The reader must be left with the conviction this couple shares the sort of bond that will last a lifetime and even beyond.
How do I set about accomplishing all this convincingly? Readers must be drawn into the world of the story and into the lives and minds and hearts and very souls of the two lovers. They need to be emotionally engaged to the degree that the real world recedes around them, and in imagination they almost become these lovers—both of them, for the hero and heroine are of equal importance to me.
The characters, then, must seem like real people with whom the reader can relate and empathize. They cannot simply be cardboard figures with little depth beyond some life history and personality traits I have given them in advance. They must have all the complexities we know from ourselves and the people around us.
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One way to delve deep into character and pull the reader in emotionally is through a careful use of point of view, that is the eyes and mind through which a particular episode of the story is being told. It is possible to narrate the whole story in the first person, told by one of the lovers, though in that case the events can be experienced only through the mind and emotions of that one character (just as in our own lives). I prefer to use what I call third person deep interior point of view. I alternate between the hero and heroine, telling one episode from his point of view and another from hers. This way the reader gets to experience the story through the minds and emotions and viewpoints of both main characters, though not at the same time.
If you think about it, everything that happens in our lives has an emotional component. We are the ones who experience everything that happens to us and in the world around us, and everything that happens is colored by our own character and values and background and emotions. Especially our emotions. Very little happens to us that does not carry some emotions with it. They are everywhere! My aim as a writer is to duplicate this reality with my fictional characters. If their story is told from deep within them, then the reader will be there too, experiencing everything with them and feeling what they feel—living and suffering and loving with them.
Creating this emotional connection of writer, character, and reader is one of the greatest challenges in the writing of a love story. I need to make readers laugh and cry with the characters and feel the whole gamut of human emotions with them—and fall in love with them, as individuals and as a couple.
I find repeatedly as I write that I must stop, go back, and rewrite certain episodes because I have learned more about one of the main characters and need to make the necessary adjustments. I find it impossible to know either one of them well enough until they come alive in the narration itself. Crafting a whole story never comes easily to me, because I am not satisfied until I feel I have a complete understanding of the hero and heroine. I constantly struggle with them until I feel I have uncovered everything there is to know about them.
Sometimes this means discovering where their deepest pain lies hidden. Once I know, then I can set about bringing the characters healing so they can reach the point of being able to both give and accept love in a meaningful relationship. But this must happen for both main characters and involve both. One must never be simply a prop for the other.
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Let me illustrate these points with Remember Me, Book 2 of the Ravenswood series, Lady Philippa Ware’s story. In Book 1, Philippa, as a minor character, is a pretty, sunny-natured, uncomplicated girl who is looking forward to leaving the schoolroom, being presented at court during a London Season, marrying a man of suitable rank and fortune, and living happily ever after. But then her father is involved in a public scandal during a summer fete at Ravenswood, when Devlin, his eldest son, discovers him under compromising circumstances with one of their guests and refuses to keep quiet about it. As a result, both Devlin and Ben leave home abruptly and stay away for six years, the countess becomes reclusive, and everything in the seemingly charmed lives of the Wares changes for the worse.
Philippa tries to keep her focus upon the future of which she has long dreamed, but, during a dance in the neighborhood, she overhears the very handsome house guest of one of her neighbors insult her horribly when he learns that she is the daughter of the Earl of Stratton. The guest disappears the next day, but the damage has been done. Philippa loses her confidence, and all her dreams are shattered as she imagines that the family is forever disgraced. She refuses to go to London for a come-out Season and becomes even more reclusive than her mother. Remember Me begins three years later, when Philippa has finally been persuaded to gather up her courage and go to London after all with her now-widowed mother and Stephanie, her younger sister. She is not the sweet innocent she once was. Her dreams are more modest and practical, but she is determined to meet society and perhaps make a decent marriage.
Lucas Arden, Marquess of Roath, has been heir to his grandfather, the Duke of Wilby since the death of his father when he was in his mid-teens. He has been carefully educated to take on the responsibilities of the dukedom when the time comes, and he has remained obedient to that commitment. He loves his grandparents and his sisters, the elder of whom is contentedly married while the younger, Lady Jennifer Arden, has been effectively crippled and wheelchair bound since suffering a severe bout of polio in her childhood. Now the old duke is ailing and has demanded that Lucas marry and produce an heir before he dies. He and the duchess are going to London for the Season to choose an eligible bride for him.
Lucas does not like the plan, but he accepts it. He does, however, go to London ahead of his grandparents in the hope of choosing a bride for himself before one is chosen for him. He is a pleasant, quiet man, who always does his duty but acts from a position of love. When he meets Philippa on the very day of his arrival at a party his aunt and sister are giving, he is strongly attracted to her. It is only when she asks him rather icily when they are alone together for a few minutes if he remembers her that he does remember how he once insulted her, how the friend with whom he was staying was outraged, and how he left abruptly the following morning.
And so begins the love story of these two, against the backdrop of a social Season in London and with the addition of Lucas’s relatives and associates to the cast of characters introduced in Book 1. There is much to know about the characters of Philippa and Lucas and how they will react to circumstances—especially after the stubborn Duke of Wilby sets his heart upon Lucas’s marrying Philippa and will not take no for an answer. There is much Lucas and Philippa must learn about themselves and about each other. Almost everything that is wrong with their lives concerns the other, yet the obvious solution—to stay away from each other—proves to be not so simple, for they seem strangely destined for each other.
In the course of the book, then, they must work out who exactly they are and what they want of life. They must work out what can be forgiven and what cannot. They must learn when capitulation is weakness and when it is strength. They must come to a point at which they not only love each other but trust each other too and are able to give and receive with no conditions and no doubts.
Perhaps most important of all, I have to convince readers that Philippa and Lucas really do belong together. Readers may find it hard to forgive Lucas even after the truth behind that long-ago insult has been revealed. They may consider Philippa weak for forgiving him and marrying him anyway. It is my job to make the reader understand that Lucas is no villain and that Philippa is no weakling. They must be shown that this is indeed a powerful and convincing love story in which two flawed, but basically strong and worthy individuals come together in a love relationship that will stand the test of time.