Do you ever wonder, perhaps, what would have happened if Alice hadn’t helped paint the roses red, as Lewis Carroll wanted her to do as he wrote about her in “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland”? How might the tale have changed if, instead of following the author’s commands Alice instead decided that she enjoyed the white roses, and couldn’t be bothered to fix them?
Following along that train of thought, how do you suppose “Treasure Island” would have unfolded had Billy Bones never touched a drop of alcohol? What if he had chosen to be sober, instead of a drunkard like Robert Lewis Stevenson had wrote him? Would he, possibly, have become a ship’s Captain himself? A pirate hunter, perchance, who tracked down and arrested Captain Flint before he was able to make it to the island?
For writers the struggle is real, and the problem may seem foreign to those who don’t engage in crafting the written word. From time to time all authors fight with their characters. Sometimes we want them to do one thing, only for them to do something else. We stamp our feet, slam our fists, and pretend to give up on ‘this infernal story!’ once and for all, only to come back to it minutes, hours, days, or even years later. Rare is the author who’s characters do exactly what they want them to do the first time they write them. However, as authors is there a chance we’re coming at the problem from the wrong angle? I know I was.
Recently I picked up my pen (or, more appropriately, booted up Microsoft Word) and continued writing book three in my “The Order of the Chaotic” series. The new iteration, tentatively titled “Convergence,” was giving me some trouble. The issue I faced was in having one particular character, my main female lead, react in a specific manner to a certain situation. Sound vague? Good. Because it was meant to be. For months this problem has been dogging me, gnawing at the back of my brain, stopping me from moving forward. Why? Why couldn’t I get her to do what I wanted her to do? The situation was simple enough. Wake up here, do that, say this, and the story continues. It should have been easy, but it wasn’t. She just wasn’t listening! Then again, neither was I.
And that was the point, that I soon came to realize. How could I possibly expect her to listen to me, when I wasn’t listening to her? Slamming back my third cup of coffee for the day I grabbed my earbuds and turned on my white noise soundtrack. Laying on the ground I closed my eyes and did something I should have done months ago. I asked her what the problem was. In my mind I pictured us sitting in my living room, cups of coffee in our hands, just talking.
So, the conversation appeared to be the key. The whole time I had been writing this scene I failed to realize that what I was trying to make her do, was something she wouldn’t do. I was writing her counter to her nature! I wasn’t listening to her, at all! Once we talked in my mind, once I allowed her to use her voice, to show me her point of view, the scene came into focus. At last the blockage that had stymied me for months was gone. All it had taken was some empathy for my beloved character.
Writers are weird.