Characters Can Show You The Way
I was dreaming last night about my WIP, which woke me, which made me think about my dream, which had my characters in it talking about something that had nothing to do with my manuscript. But then that got me thinking about a scene, and anyone who has insomnia from time to time knows that once you start thinking in this way, sleep is not coming back.
I blame it on the characters.
Our creations can be quite vocal sometimes. You can hear them grumbling and moaning and laughing. I’m just glad they can’t talk to us directly, or I would get no sleep at all. I can imagine many conversations:
“Dude, are you going to leave me there with this guy talking about Forrest Gump? Just kill me.”
Or someone else would complain about how they’re not getting enough page time. Or someone else would complain about how I’d made him or her less kind, more kind, weaker, less intelligent, mean, not mean enough.
Characters are demanding. A writer has a hard time getting them out of his/her mind when they start making noise. Which is a good thing because we need interesting characters, and if a character is demanding to be heard, that’s a good thing for a story because the truth is nothing is more important that characters for a story.
SO HERE IS A TIP, especially for you discovery writers: freewrite your characters and then, as you’re writing your novel, keep thinking about the most interesting scenes you can put them in to develop them the way you think they should be developed. You’ll likely be able to build scenes and so plot just from your characters.
If you pay attention, you’ll figure out a large part of your story this way. Not all of it, but enough. From there, you’ll still have work to do, but you will find your way. Keep letting the character guide you through the story.
Characters Can Show You The Way.
