How four characters were born from a single afternoon of People watching
Joy Don Baker
The four young women in the Nurseketeers series were born one afternoon at the movies. I arrived early for a chick flick, although I no longer remember its title. With a journal in hand and time before the show, I found something else to watch.
Four women entered the theater and sat several rows below me. The five of us were the only people in the theater. As they talked amongst themselves, I took notes. I identified each woman by her hair color or clothing. Ms. Brown, the blonde, wore a yellow top and a brown skirt. Ms. Red was a redhead, and Ms. Gray had gray hair. Ms. Blue wore blue shorts. As I watched them, they became the characters in the fantasy I created.
A Note and Four Lollipops
Ms. Blue sat at one end of the group. She seemed to want more room, so she moved one seat farther over and settled into the end seat of the row. Ms. Gray reached into her purse, pulled out a checkbook, and tore out what looked like a deposit slip.
Ms. Gray scribbled a note and sent it down the row to Ms. Blue, who leaned over, nodded, and tucked it into her shorts pocket. I could see the exchange, but I had no idea what the note said or what they were saying.
Then Ms. Blue lifted her purse into her lap and pulled out four Dum Dum lollipops. She leaned toward her companions and offered one to each. The lollipops passed down the row, each woman taking one. About then, the movie began, and I put away my journal.
I knew nothing about these women beyond what I had observed. Still, their small exchanges gave me the beginning of a story. I imagined that they were nurses who lived in the area and met once a month for a girls’ day out.
They seemed about my age, so I imagined they graduated from nursing school in 1974, the same year I did. Those four women in the theater became the starting point for a series of novels.
From Colors to Characters
Later, I gave the characters names associated with the colors I had assigned them. Ms. Brown became Frannie Braun; Ms. Red became Robin Hart; Ms. Gray became Katie Grayfox; and Ms. Blue became Leslie Bleu. Their names stayed with me long after that afternoon.
Years later, when Terri Goodman and I took car trips together to Austin, San Antonio, and Houston for operating room nursing meetings, we discovered that we both wanted to write fiction. However, neither of us had pursued that endeavor independently. We also learned that we shared an interest in mystery and detective stories. Although we enjoyed reading whodunits, we decided to begin with a subject we knew intimately: nursing.
On one road trip, we talked extensively about the four characters I had imagined years earlier and named the Nurseketeers. As Terri and I plotted their adventures, we decided to use that name for the series. Those long-ago strangers inspired the central characters in the Nurseketeers series, with each book featuring one young woman during their four years of nursing school, culminating in graduation in 1974.
During the next trip, we developed Leslie Bleu’s character worksheet, building her background beyond the brief glimpse that inspired her. We then created worksheets for all four young women, each with her own history, personality, relationships, and challenges.
Finding a Place to Write
We began meeting for a full day each week to work on our first book. For our first meeting, we chose P.F. Chang’s China Bistro in Grapevine, midway between our homes in Dallas and Fort Worth. We always requested a table near an electrical outlet, away from the main crowd, a temporary office with fewer distractions. We would arrive at 11 a.m., and the staff seated us in the empty bar area. Around 6 p.m., after two meals and a full day of writing, we packed up and went home. We did enjoy checking out a variety of restaurants in the area that neither of us had been to before.
Terri later drove to my house for our meetings. That gave us the quiet and space we needed. We spread flip chart paper and sticky notes across the room as we worked through characters, events, and the story's sequence. We worked until lunch (my treat!), then scrambled to finish before Terri had to face rush hour traffic.
Together, we crafted the first novel around the hurdles Frannie would face in her freshman year. We introduced the other three characters and mapped the semesters and courses the four young women would take during that year. Their personal stories needed to fit within the demands of their nursing education.
Writing together also meant agreeing on the setting, where the story would unfold. We created a campus map for the fictional Crestmont University in Dallas, using the layout of Oklahoma Baptist University in Shawnee, Oklahoma, as a starting point. We rotated that layout 90 degrees and adapted it to a convenient spot in Dallas, establishing streets and campus landmarks. With our character sheets and a shared map, we could write independently and keep the characters’ activities and descriptions consistent.
We also selected images for Frannie, Robin, Katie, and Leslie. Along with the character sheets, these visual references helped us keep the same person in mind as we wrote each scene.
Why We Chose College
A college dorm let us bring four young women from different backgrounds together in one place. Having our characters live together as suitemates created opportunities for friendship, disagreement, support, and growth. Their differences gave us material to explore as they learned about one another.
Our plan let us explore one year of college from each young woman’s point of view, following the group's progress through the series. Their journey would ultimately take them through college graduation and the registered nurse licensure examination. Nursing provided a shared goal, but each character followed her own path toward it.
Our own personal experiences contributed details along the way. During one writing session, we named Leslie's 1956 Chevrolet Nellie. In high school, I drove a 1956 Ford I called Nellie, and that memory found a home in Leslie’s fictional life.
The Nurseketeers books are fiction. The four women in the theater inspired the characters, and our personal experiences supplied details, but we created the girls, their relationships, and their stories. I never did learn who those women were or what Ms. Gray had written on that slip of paper.
An afternoon of people watching gave me four color names and a few pages of notes. Years later, through conversations, character worksheets, and days of writing together, Terri and I turned that beginning into Frannie, Robin, Katie, and Leslie: the Nurseketeers.
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