This morning after commenting on the warming days and the fact that the dog was so much calmer after getting her shots, my mother and I discussed the latest book she read. While sipping our tea and coffee as the sunshine poured in and onto our grateful shoulders, she complained about the author not keeping with the main character’s personality for the third book. A huge frustration for many readers.

It was a series my mother had enjoyed up until then. The story had everything: WWII, spies, intrigue, France, female main character. It was well-written and she looked forward to the third book coming out. Immediately upon it’s launch, my mother had the book on her Kindle app and started in on the story, only to be disappointed. The kick-ass, karate black belt female spy made so many rookie mistakes in the story before reacting to a dead body in a way that was completely unlike her character, all of which just made my mother mad as the reader. There isn’t anything worse than connecting with a main character only to have them change completely without reason.

What happened?

I think the author fell into a few holes.

First, i think it’s possible that she wanted to make the female character a “good” person. And a good person would care when she kills someone, despite the fact that she killed someone who was trying to kill her. It’s hard for good people to write characters who are overly flawed, but overly flawed characters tend to end up being memorable characters. Despite that fact, many of us writers tend towards the milk-toast character because we want them to be ‘good’ and likable’. It’s one of those strange conundrums of us knowing we shouldn’t do it, but we tend to do it anyway.

The truth for this story is, whether man or woman, a spy during a war doesn’t have time to feel bad about killing someone who was trying to kill them. That isn’t to say that they won’t reflect back after the war about how the killing changed them, but that wasn’t the story for this book. This book was about a spy in the middle of a Nazi take over of Europe. She shouldn’t care so much about killing a Nazi. Not when it’s her life or his. She should have been more preoccupied with getting out of town.

Second, she didn’t research fight scenes and spies and guns and death enough. While she probably did a lot of research about WWII and female spies, it sounds like she didn’t do the research she wasn’t really into but needed. I know male writers who write primarily war or thriller books and they are obsessed with the details of their guns, fight scenes, hand to hand combat scenes, etc because their readers will rip them apart if they aren’t. This author should have spoken to one or two of these male writers. it would have enriched the character, the scenes and drawn the reader deeper into the story.

What could have prevented this outcome?

Leaving a reader dissatisfied is an author’s nightmare. This author had my mom hooked, buying all of her books as they came out and now has lost her completely. I encouraged my mother to kindly write to the author who could still make changes to the book or make sure she cleaned it up for the next book. But that might not convince my mom to buy the next book. The trust between her and the author to stick with the characters is broken. And trust is always hard to mend.

All of this could have been avoided. The author should have found beta reader who would tell her the truth, asked other writers about fight scenes, gotten a better editor who would have pointed out the discrepancies and searched for true critiques of the book before publishing. If the author was part of a group of writers who were committed to each other’s success, she could have found most of these resources in one place. If she had been a part of a community of writers who would have willingly read the book in beta mode and asked these questions before she published it she could have avoided losing my mom as a reader. And if she’s lost one person, how many more has she lost?

So many writers write completely alone. And while you have to do the actual writing alone, the reviewing and brainstorming and questioning and editing shouldn’t be done alone. It should be done with other people who know the craft and love it as much as you do. People who are willing to gently nudge the writer to produce the BEST story they possibly can.

Where can you find that community?

The Pencils&Lipstick Creative Writing Community was set up to give writers the most success possible. In the end, it’s the author who must decide which changes to make in their story, which editor to chose, what cover to use, etc, but having some input and advice, some place to learn from other’s mistakes and successes, can help ensure that the author makes the best choices.

If you’re looking for a place to connect with other writers, to have live hangouts where you get to talk about your WIP as though they are real life people (and not hear your family groan), if you want expert advice from people who can help with your newsletter, social media, book covers, formatting, editing and more, if you’re looking to collaborate with other authors to have the best book launch possible, then you should check out Creative Writing Community. It is all this and more!