by Mark Zvonkovic
I think of novels on a spectrum, one end of which is Pop Entertainment and the other end being Art. The categories are not intended as criticism. They are only meant to help me choose what kind of book I want to read. And that will generally reflect how I’m feeling: pensive, distracted, studious, energetic, you get the picture. And, of course, an important consideration will be whether I am going to read or listen to the book.
Character development is what really interests me in a novel. Some readers may not find characters as engaging as fast and exciting plots, where the background of a protagonist is not as interesting as the action taking place. These novels would include thrillers and romance, generally, although there are plenty of genre blended novels with very well developed characters. Readers who want to make deep personal connections with a story often enjoy novels with mixed genres and complex characters. In E.M. Forester’s words, one must “only connect” to find meaning in relationships, and how wonderful can it be for a reader to make a strong connection with a protagonist. In my writing I work hard to put myself into the heart and soul of the characters and then create a plot around them to make an observation about life.
In my third novel, Belinda, I took a lot of time putting myself in the place of the protagonist Lyn Larkin. Of course, this was particularly difficult for me for no other reason than that Lyn was a woman and I a man. But I had the advantage of working for almost forty years in a law firm, where a lot of the novel’s action occurs, and I was very lucky to have mentored a number of young women associates during those years. It made a tremendous impression on me that these women in a professional setting always had to overcome the fact that the prevailing ethos around them was so male slanted. It wasn’t the blatant misogynistic attitudes, like the ones displayed so prominently in my novel by the antagonist, Patrick Brashner. The more difficult obstacles grew out of subtle attitudes and proclivities of many men, which often made the women feel as if their bodies were being evaluated as much as their brains, if not more. And for me this is what Belinda is about, how dedicated this woman was to her profession and how elegantly she managed to make herself a success despite the male ethos she encountered daily.
My novel Belinda is written from several points of view, all but Lyn’s being those of men. I know that a good writer shows, doesn’t dictate. It was hard for me to learn this after so many years of drafting contracts, but I’m making progress. It was the men’s points of view that I used to display the male ethos in Belinda, particularly the subtle attitudes that some of the men were barely conscious of. It was the character Will Baines, a decent young partner in fact, who displayed how a man’s actions and thoughts can create an uncomfortable environment for women. Through Will’s thoughts the reader sees how his unmanageable, even adolescent, observations about two women colored his attitude toward them. Of course, sexuality can have tremendous power in social settings, particularly those arising in a professional context, where it is combined with competition and ambition. And, as Lyn demonstrated in several of her actions, the repercussions are not all on the male side.
For me, women characters are some of the most enjoyable people in fiction. And some writers are very adept at creating them. One such writer is Erika Robuck, who writes about women in historical settings. She is brilliant at casting an engaging picture of a historical event by creating deep, complex women, as she did in Sisters of Night and Fog, her most recent novel. Would that she’d been my creative writing teacher before I started writing. My novel A Lion In The Grass is a historical novel that includes World War II events and I know how much work it takes to make a character fit into an earlier time and place.
Readers often ask me, What next? I don’t have a ready answer. I’m a recovering lawyer and I have no intention of ever again filling out a time sheet. Whatever the next story, it will of course focus around a complex protagonist. One of my favorite characters is Larry Brown in my novel The Narrows. In that story Larry is a young man who deals with difficult personal circumstances in the early 1970s. A lot has happened in the world since those years. Perhaps it would be interesting to see how Larry has made his way to the present day.
Mark Zvonkovic is a writer who lives in Rosarito Beach, Baja California Mexico with his wife Nancy and their two dogs. Finn and Cooper. He has written three novels, and he also writes book reviews and essays that appear in online publications. Before retiring to Mexico, Mark practiced law for thirty-five years at three multinational law firms in Houston, Texas and New York City. He attended college at Southern Methodist University and Boston University, and his law degree is from SMU School of Law. Mark grew up as an oil company brat and lived in Latin America, Texas and New York.
