Tag: The Funny Sisters

Encouragers: The Chaos Of Joy Mother

Encouragers: The Chaos Of Joy Mother

October 9, 2022

I’m sitting at the desk at gym, taking payments and checking liability waivers for our open gym one Friday at noon (every Friday noon to 1pm is Open Gym – basically, allow your kiddos to expend all their energy just before naptime!).  She pulls up into the handicapped parking space.  I smile. 

This woman is such an amazing encourager to me!  She has overcome more physical and medical challenges in her life than I could ever understand.  She has five little ones all five or younger and normally is accompanied by at least one nephew in the same general range.  She is such a blanket of calm mothering in a sea of chaos – and her smile!  Such joy!  She chooses joy!

I call her the “Chaos of Joy Mother” because you’d think her life with five littles zero to five years old would be chaos.  (I see some of her posts on Facebook and yes, it’s laughable, amazing, lovable chaos!) Add in farm animals, countless stunt-double-training apparatuses in their kid-ninja-warrior yard, kids turning the house into ninja training course, and homeschooling… I love her beautiful chaos!  She’s the type of calm mother I hope I am.  Minus the goat and stretching births out a bit, one of my girls pointed out that there were some family tales we turned into “The Funny Sisters” stories that are probably relatable. 

She encourages me by her love of life!  She is always doing something new or allowing her daughter to try something new.  They grow in love, life, and faith by expounding on the adventures life hands them.  This is such an encouragement to me.  I pray for them and thank God that I see her.  She probably doesn’t see herself as an encourager, but she totally is by the joy she shares!

Sometimes chaos is where you find your joy.  I know some of the craziest moments in my life are where I felt I couldn’t do anything else BUT find joy in Jesus and look up. 

While I’m driving to my first school on our afterschool pickup route, I happen to hear “Season, a Joy Bringer” and I smile at her anecdotes.  She is always focusing on how to share joy.  I feel the Chaos of Joy Mother is always sharing something she finds joyful with us – some see it as joy (like me) and some as craziness (are you kidding, you did/allowed what?!).   In our journey of life, I am super thankful for those who encourage me.  I pray I am an encouragement to others. 

I’m super thankful for the Chaos of Joy Mother because she and her little angels always make me smile with their love, wildness, and crazy adventures! 

Type at you next time,

~Nancy Tart

Creating Characters: Ann, Mary, and Susan

The secret to staying young is by having someone base a character on you!

February 10, 2018

Creating Characters: Ann, Mary, and Susan

Just like in the creation of the characters in Five Alive: Stories of the Funny Sisters, the characters in the Ann, Mary, and Susan Mysteries are based on real-life people.

These stories were originally oral stories told for my little sisters.  Thus “Ann” and “Mary” are my baby sisters at the time of the series origin.  “Susan” is a compilation of several friends they had visiting our home.

Ann is the serious one.  Older than her sister, Mary, and her cousin, Susan, she is often the one who discovers the answer to their mystery.

Mary is the baby of the trio.  She is giggly, fun-loving, and mystery-seeking.  Anything at all that she can’t instantly see the answer to is “a new mystery!”

Susan loves following Mary around and joining her adventures whenever they are found no matter how small the mystery appears to be.

Developing these characters was another easy task as they are based on actual people.  The challenge when a writer has a continuing series yet the people they base their characters on grow faster than the series progresses is to keep the characters in their “time capsule.”  Sometimes I have to reread my books to refresh myself and “reenter” my characters.

Thanks for reading!

Type at you next time…

~Nancy Tart

 

Creating Characters : Brantley Station Saga

February 8, 2018

Creating Characters: Brantley Station Saga

One of the last set of characters I created were for a youth adventure series called “Brantley Station Saga.”  This entire set was built off of one comment by my Dad.  He was helping develop a website when he observed, “all of your series stuff is for girls.  Have you ever thought of writing for boys?”

Thought about it?  (Yes!  Web of Deception, The Living God, many other single stories, and most of my “in progress” works are aimed primarily at boys in middle and high school levels.)  However, he was right about one thing.  Outside of my rooster in the Adventures of Long Tail, there isn’t a main male character in the Ann, Mary, and Susan Mysteries or in Five Alive: Stories of the Funny Sisters.  Even in my Melacotia Saga books, although Jeremy Scott is a primary character, the books were written for my sisters to read and Sarah is the primary character.   

From there, I dove into the adventure world I’d dreamed of writing.  I developed Brantley Station using my futuristic model from the Melacotia Saga.  I created a narration storyline following an underappreciated unclaimed youth, Ethan.  (I started him at 14, with The Protector.  This changed when Rebeccah wanted the “Pirate Baby Story” in full.)

This jumping backwards did give me an opportunity to illustrate the origin and development of Ethan’s character.  (In these two first books, the spotlight is shared by Jamie, a young submersible pilot.)  Ethan is a shy boy who aims to please.  His melancholy personality pushes him to perfection, which makes him a good worker, and enables him to be content to be invisible.  Ethan’s goal through his life is to keep unnoticed.

I imagined this child whose traumatic early childhood is scarred with death of his mother and the distance in grief of his father.  He had a close cousin who tried to fill this gap and cheer him up, but only a few months afterward, Ethan is kidnapped by pirates.  He becomes essentially a slave.  Because of several injuries while he was fighting with his captors and Ethan’s shoving his “dream-memories” of his earlier life away as a coping measure, Ethan doesn’t remember anything before the  pirates.  He manages to live through this for a long unknown amount of time – a few years – until he’s trying to hide from an abusive pirate in the captain’s docking sub.  This providential hiding place sends him to Brantley Station.  Here he ends up trying to fit in because he has a primal desire for the deep.  He is scared by wild stories of “topside” by the military police at the station.  Ethan finds himself taking up the lowest position and hiding from most people by keeping himself busy with work.  He works diligently and easily learns new tedious tasks; by nature he hates disorder so many of his tasks end up being cleaning jobs.

I imagined how his character and personality, originally Melancholy-Phlegmatic, could have changed with experiences and time.  Was he distanced from people by his mother’s death when he felt his father’s dealing with grief by retreating?  How did he keep his people-pleasing, obedient, truthful, positive character amid the abuses of being held captive?  How does being forced to live in the guard barracks affect him?  Ethan chooses to stay honorable because of voices he hears from his past – he calls them “dream-memories.” I gave Ethan an inner strength that helps keep him grounded.

I created a memory that would connect him with his past – using a book read nightly by his older cousin from which Ethan recites passages and a song Ethan’s mother used to sing which the boys created their own new words for.

In creating Ethan, I wanted to craft a believable, dynamic character.  Each of the secondary characters like Bria Addison, Corey Skitter, Makayla Ervin, Chef Brummen, and Victor Potter are also carefully designed to be as realistic as possible.  You can read about these members of Brantley Station in the young adult series, Brantley Station Saga.

Thanks for reading!

Type at you next time…

~Nancy Tart

 

Character Creation: The Funny Sisters

February 7, 2018

Creating Characters: The Funny Sisters

One thing I love about reading is meeting amazing characters!   I’ll be feeling the same betrayal and hopelessness that twists into revenge alongside David Balfour as he watches his uncle get smaller as his prison of a ship carries him into unknown waters. (Robert Louis Stevenson’s Kidnapped)  I’m puzzling out the mystery with Nancy Drew in dozens of fun chapter books – and I scream at Bess, “Don’t open that door!” but she doesn’t listen.  When the rough man beats and drags Buck into the cold shack, I’m crying and praying for his release. (Jack Loudon’s Call of the Wild) Vivid characters make a story real to me.

I’m one of those crazy readers who actually talks to her book people.  I think about them as real people even though I know they are fictional – and when I find (or raise!) another crazy reader, we can discuss these characters as if they were real people for hours!   (This makes for interesting conversation: I’ve been part of discussions about characters’ psychology and conjecture regarding how they would handle said modern situation.)

Because of my reading quirks, when I write, I want to create believable characters.  (And I’m a nut for continuity, so I was very irritated when my first publisher cut my ending ceremony and didn’t add my 13 error-correction edit!)  But that’s a story for another time.

My first step is to figure out who I’m writing for.  For example: “The Funny Sisters” Series.

The Funny Sisters Series began as a few fun stories for my daughters.  They wanted stories about sisters like them.  Each character reflects the distinctive traits of each girl at the time the series was started.

Tina is an avid reader who likes to try to lead her younger sisters.  She sometimes gets irritated, but usually laughs it off.  She ends up in all kinds of odd situations caused by her younger siblings.  Tina is bouncy, fun, and at the age where she is trying to be grown up but also loves to do goofy stuff with her sisters.

Becky, another character, doesn’t like to get up in the mornings.  She gets cold easily, laughs a lot, likes to tell jokes and make puns, loves animals, and makes up cool pretend games.  Becky gets mad at people sometimes.  She is a perfectionist and likes things to run smoothly.  Becky and Ellen have a special understanding because they are so alike.

Kim is rambunctious.  She almost never walks or seldom does anything slowly.  She runs.  She jumps.  She cartwheels.  She slides into the oven and pulls on the handle so it falls on top of her.  Kim has a boisterous personality.  Kim almost never gets mad at anyone.  Kim is friendly.  She laughs loud and lives life boldly.

Ellen’s quiet personality hides her inner dragon.  She is always thinking, always contemplating her next move, always observing everything around her.  She usually knows where everyone else is and what they are doing.   She carries a blankie. (This just had to be since Jaquline wouldn’t have the stories without her blankie-that-went-everywhere.)  Ellen is determined, thoughtful, and factual.  She says what she sees.

Jill is the baby of the family.  She’s a typical two-year-old who loves fun, dancing, running, and keeping her sisters and parents guessing as to her next demolition target.  Of course, she doesn’t mean to decimate things, she just sometimes does.  Jill would rather not wear clothes.  She loves to sing!

These characters interact together to create funny family situations.  Most are copied from real life.  (Some events in the books are exaggerated while some are toned-down!)  Once these books became a “for sale” series, each character was tweaked just a touch to make sure they could entertain various age groups.  They are made to be read-aloud like bedtime stories.  The inclusion of the spread of ages gives the Reader an ability to say, “she’s just about your age!”  The thread of clean humor is woven through to make these books fun for the Reader as well as the bedtime audience.

This is the simplest example of my character creation.  Each of my books or series has its own backstory: some were created to reach a specific audience and characters created to meet that need (Brantley Station Saga) while others were created around a character I liked (the Adventures of Long Tail) or a story I created characters around (Web of Deception).

I’ll write about the different character creation method I use at a later time!

Thanks for reading!

Type at you later…

~Nancy Tart

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