It’s parent-conference week at school, and I’m a little stressed …
On the island of Luzon in the Philippines, there’s a freshwater lake called Taal Lake. The active Taal Volcano lies in the middle of that lake, and inside the volcano is a smaller lake (called Crater Lake) which contains its own tiny island, called Vulcan Point. That’s right: an island in a lake in a volcano in a lake on an island. Have you got it?
In 1844, while traveling in the Philippines, the impetuous young Kane descended by a vine rope into the gaping maw of Taal Volcano to investigate the chemical composition of the lake within. Once he reached the interior …
No, I’m not going to tell you the whole story. Elisha Kane tells it himself in We Hear the Dead, but I will let you know this much: Readers have told me that this is the point in the story when they fell a little in love with the dashing explorer. The same goes for my heroine Maggie Fox … and probably for me, too.
More importantly, this was also the point in my writing where the character of Elisha Kane developed his voice and his personality. Up to that point, I’d had trouble wrapping my head around this man. He was my romantic lead, but the real Kane had some traits that were going to be hard to portray sympathetically. Not to worry – Elisha burst onto stage, fixed his sights on Maggie Fox, and firmly took control of the story, steering it in a direction I never intended to go.
He was a strong-willed young man in real life. His fictional version ended up no different. I wasn’t able to complete the writing of this novel until I let Kane take me where he wanted to go.
Where are your characters taking you?
Good luck with the P/T conferences. Doesn’t it feel like you just had them? I swear we just spoke about that. LOL
I get tense about p-t conferences, too. I hope yours goes well! That volcano reminded me of one in the Azores I visited. Have you been to this volcano? It sounds so cool.
Good luck with your conferences. Hope you have a super week.
Love the story behind the volcano! I always have a hard time with a new WIP until I reach what I call the tipping point — when the characters take over the story for me. It’s always such a relief when it happens. Carrying the whole load myself is too hard.
Good luck with those p-t conferences. That’s one thing about teaching I don’t miss at all. 😉
Funny they call it Craker Lake. Same name as the lake inside the volcano in Oregon. I think Mount Mazama is played out, but you never know in the Ring of Fire what mountains will decide to go active.
My books have taken me to the arctic, Norway, Siberia, and Scotland so far. My WIP (if it ever progresses) takes me to the Carpathian Mountains to a lovely little place called Transylvania.
One of the other blogs I visited today talked about that same volcano. Quite intriguing the way it’s structured.
And you’re right about character development. No matter how much we may want to, we simply cannot “force” a character’s behavior; it has to ring true.
hi miss dianne! i love geography and now i got more i learned. i like how a character could lead you places you didnt know you were going. i got that happening in a story and its cool. i just hope he could lead out of the mess he got him and his friends into. ack!
…hugs from lenny