Mabel’s Musings - Birth of a Character
One of the great questions readers have is how do authors come up with their characters. A character often comes to me in a flash of inspiration or from an observed behavior or characteristic. Mabel was both.
In the first version of my story Mabel was an older adult who had grown up in the 1950’s and 60’s so I needed a name that reflected that time period. As I researched popular names for that time, Mabel was the name that leaped off the page for me and I knew it would be the perfect name of my protagonist.
After getting some awesome feedback from several beta readers on my first version, I realized having Mabel as an older adult wasn’t working for the story I wanted to tell. I thought it would be more fun to make her a teenager growing up in a time where the world was changing for women and homosexuality was listed in the DSM as a mental illness.
Developing Mabel I wanted her to be different than her friends and the people in her community, but I didn’t want it to be exclusively based around her sexuality. I saw Mabel not really as an outcast in her high school, but someone who didn’t really fit in with the other girls around her. Mabel wants to study astronomy - a science field - something unheard of for girls in that time period.
In order to follow her dream she has to leave the familiar behind. In the 1970’s the University of California-Berkeley was one of the few astronomy programs that actually accepted women. Mabel is desperate to leave the abusive household she was growing up in and wants to be bigger than Wheatonville. Her father thinks education is a waste of time for women, so she has to make her college plans in secret.
Just as we each face challenges in the pursuit of our dreams, Mabel is no different. One of her biggest challenges was figuring out just what made her so different from the other girls in her town. It wasn’t until Bonnie showed up and pursued her, that Mabel realized she was attracted to girls instead of boys. Mabel now has two dreams and she needs to determine which dream she wants the most - to study the stars and planets or build a life with Bonnie after graduation. She believes she can have both until Bonnie rejects her offer of going with her to California.
Mabel realizes she has to let go of one of her dreams and she fights against letting Bonnie go. By stubbornly hanging on to one dream, she actually loses both dreams. I hope it is an interesting read for you the reader, as Mabel grows through the loss of her dreams and begins to realize over time our dreams change.
Follow Mabel’s journey in more detail in A Scent of Lilac, due for release on July 6, 2021. You can pre-order your copy at citylimitspublishing.com
