Mid-Life Crisis

Have you ever wondered where all the mid-life crises come from? I figure it has to be a recent phenomena. I mean, how often did you hear about a turn-of-the-century farmer shaving the family mule into something rakish and ambling off into the sunset to find himself?

According to Wikipedia, the term was first used in 1965 (the 60s—why am I not surprised?) as a time “where adults come to realize their own mortality and how much time is left in their life.” Some attribute the concept to Carl Jung, while others say it all goes back to Freud.

Most often, a mid-life crisis includes making significant changes—career, work-life balance, marriage, romantic relationship, large expenditures or physical appearance. Reassessing your goals and priorities from a more mature perspective sounds like a good idea, doesn't it? So why does “a mid-life crisis” smack of selfishness and immaturity? 

Much as we enjoy laughing at the old dude in the hot red sports car chasing a long-faded youth, research shows about 10% of 40 – 60 years-olds have a true psychological crisis. 

The rest? Well, maybe it's best described as overwhelmed by one too many of life's daily stressors.

It seems the Western culture of youth may play a role in the situation and that it hits men longer and harder than women. I can't help but wonder if part of that statistic is due to the age of the study—the 80s--when fewer women were far enough along in their careers to have big regrets...but I digress.

In For Love or Money, Holly Price's dad followed the all too typical pattern—dumped his spouse, walked away from career and responsibility, and basically did whatever he wanted, without thinking about the impact on the people affected by his decisions.

Ouch. That was harsh.

How about: Holly's dad questioned the life choices he made and the validity of decisions he made years before.

Either way, Holly took a sabbatical from her career and came home to run the family business, staging it to sell. The last thing she expected was to face her own career choices and have to deal with her own emotional baggage—a six-foot hunk of testosterone, AKA her former fiance--and a friend's murder.  

So what about you? Are you ready to toss in the towel and try something else? Know someone who got trashed in the wreckage of a mate's crisis? Or is it all a pipe-dream?

For Love or Money recently released by Entangled Publishing and is available at online outlets. 

WHO TALKS LIKE THAT? by Kathy Ivan

Okay, I'll confess. I love to eavesdrop on other people's conversations. In line at the grocery store, lunch or dinner at a restaurant, it doesn't matter to me. I freely admit I'm a card-carrying snoop. Little snippets of conversation take place all around us and sometimes you can learn the most amazing things. But what I really love is listening to HOW people talk. Not just the accents but the way they construct their sentences, the whispered inflections of speech. You can tell a whole heck of a lot about people by listening.

Which got me thinking about how my characters talk. I love to immerse the reader deep into the story, suck them right in so they forget they are reading and become truly involved with the people and places that I've tried to bring to live on the page. How they people in your story talk speaks volumes about who they are.

Let's do a little test. Pretend you're at a friend's house and overhear a conversation between Lisa and Frank, the couple you're visiting.

EXAMPLE #1
Lisa: "I need to go to the market. Is there anything you need?"
Frank: "Let me think about it. We need things for Saturday night when the fellows are coming to the house."
Lisa: "Oh, of course, dear. I will pick up some things for your friends."

If you read that in a story, you'd be yawn, boring, put the book down and never pick it up again (although the stilted conversation above where never get past any editor, believe me.) Instead, you want Lisa and Frank to come across as real people having a real conversation.

EXAMPLE #2
Lisa: "Honey, I'm going to the store. Need anything?"
Frank: "Snacks. Yeah, get snacks for the game Saturday night. Chips, dip. Oh and don't forget the beer."
Lisa: I won't forget, it's on the list. Where you wrote it—and underlined it—and put a big star next to it. Anything else?"
Frank: Um, don't forget toilet paper.

Not great examples, I know, but can you see the differences? Example #1 is very formal, stiff. No contractions, no emotion. It's blah, boring. Most real people don't talk like that. Example #2 covers the same basic conversation but hopefully these people seem more realistic. It feels more like a real conversation between two people who know each other well.

Make the people and conversations in your books feel more alive, more realistic by using contractions, accents, even foreign words when they're appropriate to the scene. Adding in dialog tags, emotions, inflections in tone and volume can all play an important part in making characters words flow and come alive.

Eavesdropping on conversations between your characters is a great way to hear the dialog, the conversational flow. Does it feel real? If you were sitting at the table next to your hero and heroine, would they sound like real people or the stilted formal Lisa and Frank from example #1?

The next time you're writing dialog, read it out loud, perk your ears up and eavesdrop. If it sounds like real people talking, having a real conversation, you'll never have the reader say, "Who talks like that?"