... a method to get a story to break out ...
June 8, 1999
5:32 a.m.
So I went to lunch by myself yesterday--something I do quite often anymore, as I like to use the time to do simple line editing or story generation. I took a small journal notebook with me to piddle with. My goal was to understand more about one of the two characters in the story I'm working on now. He's been really bugging me, you know. He's just there, doing a couple important things, but not really knowing why. So I figured I would change that. After eating my sandwich, I took a pen in hand and wrote "Mark is twenty-eight years old and is afraid of life at its core." Interesting, I thought. I never knew that about Mark. Then I realized his name was really Michael. And quite a few other things, too. I went through the required "hummms," and "oh, mys." My pen flew over the page, making me wish I had one of those big feather quills so it would flourish with every looping movement. Next thing you know, I had six journal sheets filled with the guy, his family, and more importantly, how he relates to the main chacter's problem. I could hear the puzzle piece click into place. I do this a lot, by the way. I write a narrative biography of one of the characters that I think is misbehaving, and it almost never fails to work. In the recent issue of Locus Frank Robinson said that his mother (I think it was his mother, anyway--I'll look it up here if I get the energy up to walk across the room) used to remind him that "The villain is the hero of his own story." And I think that's important to remember about every character in a story. They have to be the hero of their own stories. So it behooves the writer to know what those stories are, even if you're not going to tell the entire thing. I consider the process of writing this type of thing to be a writer's diniving rod. I guess for me it's similar to when Lisa Silverthorne says she writes a letter to herself before every story. It settles my mind, and let me focus on the thing that's important. So, try it some time. If nothing else, it's kinda fun.   See ya tomorrow.  Daily Persistence is © Ron Collins |
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"We prove what we want to prove, and the real difficulty is to know what we want to prove." Emile Auguste Chartier [Alain] |
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