Character: The true essence of a Being

An exclusive Authorlink Interview with
Susan Gregg Gilmore, author of Bezellia and more

By Paige Crutcher
March, 2012

Susan Gregg Gilmore infuses southern panache and small town reality into her engrossing novels. From Catherine Grace to Bezellia Grove, her protagonists are both genuine and relatable. Like Flannery O’Conner before her, Gilmore is an architect in building southern landscapes, and presenting readers with pockets of truth and snapshots of forgotten heartaches. Gilmore’s novels are guaranteed to whisk the reader out of time and mind, and stay with them long after the final page is turned.

AUTHORLINK: Your characters spring from the page, real and genuine; they are full of heart, wit and honesty. How do you define character – what do you believe is the root of great character?

GILMORE: Character is the true essence of a being. When everything else is striped away - appearance, skills, talents, etc. - character is what remains. The root of good character, hmm, I wish I knew. Is it part DNA, part upbringing, part life experience? I really don't know. But I do think character has to be embraced, valued, admired to grow.

AUTHORLINK: How important is character to a work?

GILMORE: Very! My novels are relationship driven so character is of the utmost importance. My characters must be well-developed, genuine, and good or bad, believeable. During the process of writing any story, I often become so convinced of my character's reality that I forget that they're actually fictitious. In fact, when I finished Looking for Salvation at the Dairy Queen, I became really depressed. I thought I would feel great, finishing my first novel and all. But that lasted for a moment, and then I felt very alone, abandoned by all the people that had been living in my head!

GILMORE: I think so. I think setting is often a character, at least in my writing it is. I remember once hearing some writers talk about a class they had taken in graduate school. It was titled, Setting as Character, or something like that. Wow, I thought to myself, we need a class to figure out the obvious?? People are so often defined by and bound to their land, it's hard for me to imagine geography not playing a significant role in a story.

AUTHORLINK: Do emotions ever become central themes in your works? How important is feeling to writing a story?

GILMORE: Absolutely. Anger, passion, frustration, anxiety, joy - it's these feelings that often ignite a character, define a character, and set a story in motion.

GILMORE: Just like people, it's easier to get to know some characters other than others. I usually write some simple, short notes about each one along the way. Things like, Catherine Grace Cline loves to eat Dilly Bars but not ice cream sandwiches. She loves pleated skirts and penny loafers but won't wear a dress unless she's forced to. It's the little things that allow me to really know the people living on the pages of my books.

GILMORE: No, but I think that is a brilliant idea and I might start. I do listen to them though. I listen to their wants and desires, their sadnesses and their joys. Sometimes I even hear their cries for the simple things in life, like a really ripe tomato! It's amazing what all they have to say when you really listen to them.

AUTHORLINK: What inspires you? How do your kernels of story come to be – by a moment, a thought or an observation?

GILMORE: Usually, but not always, it's a name and a place. For The Improper Life of Bezellia Grove, it was very much a name! And then it was also a moment in a beautiful Nashville home when I had the opportunity to peek down in the basement and found six rooms with cinder-block walls, no windows, heavy doors with locks set high on the door panels. All of that came together like a perfect storm of sorts and out of that was birthed a book.

Susan Gregg Gilmore was born in Nashville, Tennessee. Her mother is a painter, and her father was the son of a revival-bred preacher, a rich storyteller, and an insurance executive whose work moved his family across the country. But every summer, he brought his four children back to their native Tennessee to fish, swim, catch lighting bugs and grow the perfect tomato.

After graduating from the University of Virginia, Susan worked as a secretary for the Smithsonian Institution. And after graduating with a Master's degree from the University of Texas, she birthed three babies, whipped up cookies for bake sales, chaired community fundraisers, taught Sunday School, and somewhere along the way free-lanced for newspapers like the Los Angeles Times and the Christian Science Monitor. Then one afternoon, she decided to write a screenplay. And when she sat down at her desk, she began writing a novel.

Susan now lives once again in Nashville, Tennessee, on the same street she lived on as a young girl. And although she has tired of sweet tea, she continues to write about her beloved South.

Visit Susan Gilmore at: http://www.susangregggilmore.com

Paige Crutcher is a wordie, writer, book addict, blogger, National Authors Examiner and columnist for authorlink.com. Visit her articles at: http://www.examiner.com/authors-in-national/paige-crutcher, her blog: http://paigesprose.blogspot.com/ or follow her on Twitter: @PCrutcher.