Finding Anna--the Doctor Who Connection (More about Call Me Zhenya)

When I write, I find it really helpful to find real people to "play" my characters while I'm spinning the story in my head. Sometimes I base them on pictures I find in magazines, but in most cases I cast an actor or another well-known personality, and incorporate some of their quirks into my characterization. It helps the characters come to life for me, and makes it easier to write about them.

In this post, I talked a little about how I tuned in to the character of Evgeni. It was finding my Evgeni that got this version of the story moving along. But I also had to find Anna before I could really get underway.

Anna was a shakier process. Originally, I had pictured Faith from Buffy the Vampire Slayer (Eliza Dushku), but as the story changed into its current form, that didn't quite work. While I was doing my initial work, the news arrived that Elisabeth Sladen had passed away. Elisabeth played Sarah Jane Smith in Doctor Who back in the 80s and also in some of the more recent incarnations of the show. She was the first companion I saw, when I started watching Doctor Who with Tom Baker's first story, "Robot," back when the original series was being broadcast on PBS.

Right away, I wanted Anna to be a sort of tribute to Elisabeth Sladen. But she herself didn't quite work for me in the head canon of the role. I named Anna Slaten in her honor (yes, I changed it a little--it just seemed like the right name for Anna although, as an aside, for some reason I kept also calling her Stanten, and had to weed out those typos in the last few drafts), and then started looking at other Doctor Who companions to fill her role. I tried Karen Gillan for a while, but that didn't work. Finally, while I was catching up with some episodes, I hit upon "Planet of the Dead," and the one-time companion Christina, played by Michelle Ryan. She was a kickass type who liked to wear black, and she immediately felt like the right face to put on my Anna Slaten.

I also "cast" Delgrado. This was a strange process, because I had him pictured very clearly in my head, but then couldn't place the face of the actor who had taken him over (this isn't the first time this has happened...). Finally I realized he was Clark Gregg, Agent Coulson from the Marvel movies and now Agents of SHIELD.

You can take a look at all my "casting" photos as well as some other research materials I used for the book on my Pinterest account. And please take a swing by my Kindle Scout page and drop me a vote!

Why I'm Learning Russian and Why You Should Learn Urdu or Maybe Tagalog

I’ll be one of the first to admit that I can go overboard when it comes to research. I like to follow trails wherever they lead and can spend months just reading when I should probably be writing the story.

One thing I’ve done under the umbrella of book research is learn languages. Languages have always fascinated me. When I was a kid, I remember spending hours poring over my mom’s college Spanish texts and even dipping into her text of Beowulf in the original old English (I guess it runs in the family). So when I decided to write about a Russian spy, it seemed natural to come home with a stack of Russian language books from the library, including the entire CD set of Pimsleur’s Russian courses, one of the best ways to get pronunciation and syntax drilled into your brain.

So why would I need to learn a whole new language just because my hero is from another country? I gave this a lot of thought because, let’s face it, learning a language is time-consuming, and there are all kinds of ways to handwave that kind of thing in fiction.

But I decided to pursue the venture, as much as it seemed like overkill. And I discovered that, yes, learning the language made me feel more comfortable with the characters.

My heroine is American but knows Russian, so knowing how the language feels in the mouth helps me add verisimilitude when she exercises her bilingual skills. That might sound weird but give it a try. My college Spanish teachers said to smile when you speak Spanish—it helps keep the words at the front of the mouth. Irish Gaelic seems to depend a lot more on the tongue. And Russian seems to be either way in the back of the throat or about to fall right out on your chin, depending on the word.

Another issue is syntax and word choice. Without knowing something about the language, I wouldn’t have known why Russians tend to drop articles (there are no articles in Russian). I also wouldn’t know what English words are difficult for Russians to pronounce. (As far as what Russian words are difficult for English speakers to pronounce, the answer is all of them.)

Of course I could figure out a lot of this listening to Russians speaking English on YouTube. (Which, by the way, is a great reason to watch hours and hours of Evgeni Malkin and Alexander Ovechkin interviews and call it work.) But knowing the reasons why they speak like they do makes it easier to remember what my personal Evgeni will sound like when he speaks English.

There are also scenes when both characters are speaking Russian. In these cases, it’s easy to fall into a pattern where they talk as if they were both speaking English, idioms and all. But it’s more realistic to reflect some of the natural syntax and idiomatic usages of Russian. I want there to be a distinct “feel” to the dialogue based on what language is being spoken and who’s speaking it. I think it’ll add something to the story.

So I’ll keep plugging away with my Russian lessons. Maybe down the road I’ll know it well enough to follow the KHL. In the meantime, here’s a challenge—if one or more of your characters speak something other than English, see if a bit of study of their native language gives you different insights into how you write them.