In Today’s Journal
* My Quotes of the Day
* Sticking to Writing (and Teaching Writing)
* On Character Types and WITD
* Of Interest
My Quotes of the Day
“The Autobiography: Birth was not only my entry into life but a foreshadowing of how it would all unfold. I was surrounded by pressure, pain, hesitance tinged with fear, and screaming, and I was saturated with the certainty that I had both caused it all and would always have to defend myself against it. None of that has changed in 74 years.” from the fictional Thoughts on Myself: An Autobiography (Chapter 1, Page 1)
“The Lesson: Always smile, but project calm, not arrogance. That will put even your enemies off their guard. Make them love you. Then listen, and watch.” from the fictional Thoughts on Myself: An Autobiography (Chapter 18, Page 288)
Sticking to Writing (and Teaching Writing)
As I reported yesterday, my primary focus for a while will be recasting The Wes Crowley Saga into The Wes Crowley Saga: Author’s Cut | The Story of a Texas Ranger.
I also wrote that I would be posting less often to TNDJ. To elaborate a little on that,
- I’ll continue my longstanding habit of reading email and various newsletters each morning to begin the day.
- As always, should I happen on a topic that I believe will help other fiction writers cut their learning curve, I’ll work up a post and publish it.
- Likewise, should I encounter some new technique or realization during my own writing, I’ll share that as well.
- So the only change, other than frequency—On days when I only have what I believe is a valuable Of Interest section, I’ll publish that alone.
This topic is one of those in which I’m reporting some of the realizations that have occurred so far during the cycling and recast of the saga.
On Character Types and WITD
I easily get bored when I remain inside myself or talk only with like-minded folks.
That’s one reason I love writing authentic fiction. It’s also why I advocate so strongly for writing into the dark.
An integral part of that non-process is taking characters as you find them and letting them be who they are instead of trying to force them into a mold via a character sketch or outline.
By extension, it’s no surprise that the flat, one-sided characters who shoulder their way into many short stories and all novels might naturally be killed off more easily and without the slightest fanfare.
In fact, when anything bad happens to one- or two-dimensional characters, I’m at least apathetic and at best pleased. If they’re killed outright, I’m glad the story world will no longer be cluttered or plagued with that character.
Such characters are uninteresting and boring to the bone. They exist in fiction only to provide cannon fodder or to foreshadow—almost always through a slipped snippet of memorable dialogue or a particularly heinous or otherwise memorable action—a future event of the story.
Of course I write into the dark, so I have no way of knowing in advance what that event will be, but then, that’s the fun and excitement of WITD. I trust the process, and it rewards me.
The characters I enjoy most, of course, are those who are not one- or two-dimensional, the ones most pundits call “well-rounded.”
Unlike the all-but-unnoticed demise of flat characters, when anything at all “bad” happens to well-rounded characters, there is always great fanfare.
One example of that fanfare might be a fully explored and described segment illustrating what happened to the character.
Another example might be an equally explored and described segment illustrating the beloved character’s physical or emotional healing.
The extreme example might be a thoroughly examined and meticulously presented funeral or memorial scene, always in a setting, and always including the physical and emotional reactions of the attendees, etc.
Unfortunately, the situation I described in the previous four paragraphs—a well-rounded, major character coming to some degree of harm—sometimes occurred during the Wes Crowley saga. Hey, that’s life.
As I read (present tense) through the saga (cycling), at times I’m tempted to change the events that led to the unfortunate harm to the major character and the resulting outcome. That’s my conscious, critical mind trying to horn in.
But because I’m a proponent for WITD, I don’t allow myself to change anything. As much as I and some eventual (and even past) readers of the saga would like life to be all rose-scented butterflies and the perpetual singing of “Kumbaya,” that simply isn’t the reality of either “real” life or of the authentic fiction.
Thank goodness. How boring would that be?
Talk with you again soon.
Of Interest
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