Finding the Form with Tricia Dower

When I started writing fiction, I went to school on Alice Munro— eleven volumes of her stories sit on my shelves. Although I’ve written two novels, I love the shorter form’s power to encapsulate a character’s complexity in relatively few words as well as the freedom it allows me to isolate a voice and perspective. In Complicated, I use a close third person point of view to portray Ladonna’s gumption as she recovers from her husband’s suicide and her own troubled past. She hasn’t knuckled under to life, despite all she’s suffered and, for all her toughness, she has a decency that makes you want to root for her—at least that’s my intention. Ladonna first showed up in my collection, Silent Girl, then went on to play a major role in my novel, Stony River. She’s not the only one who makes encore appearances in my work. I find it hard to abandon characters I’ve spent months or even years creating. I have explored Ladonna from the ages of thirteen to forty, so far, in a running narrative that takes the form of random notes stuffed in a manilla folder and entire scenes in electronic files. Some of the material may find its way to publication, like Complicated has. Some of it may not. What matters more to me is getting Ladonna right. Although she is only eighteen in Complicated, I’ve tried to portray her with the self-respect I imagine her continuing to gain as she matures. I do hope that comes across.