So My Character Said…

December 7, 2024 by Harvey

In Today’s Journal

* Quote of the Day
* A New Short Story
* Reminder
* So My Character Said “Hold My Beer and Watch This!”
* The Numbers

Quote of the Day

“I outlined one novel. Took well over a year. Never wrote it. I lost interest, because I’d already written the novel in outline form. [Why tell a story I already know?] [But] I’m not a ‘pantser’ anymore than you’re a ‘plodder.’ I simply run through the story with the characters as it unfolds around us. Youi know, like we [all] do in our own story in everyday life.” Me, in a comment on Writem’s “Outline Like a Pro”

Note: If I’d known the guy was so steeped in the myths, I never would have recommended Writem. He still offers great advice on marketing, though.

A New Short Story

“Desecration” went live yesterday at 10 a.m. on my Stanbrough Writes Substack. Go check it out.

As always, if you enjoy this very strange story, please tell Everyone. If you don’t, shh! (grin)

Reminder

Today is Saturday. Just a reminder to get your Bradbury Challenge story info in to me before the Journal goes live on Monday. (I still have to write my own story too.)

Remember, if you finish a story earlier in the week, you can send the info to me early too. It never hurts to avoid pushing the deadline.

So My Character Said, “Hold My Beer and Watch This!”

Those of you who have known me awhile and attended some of my seminars have heard me tell the story of my old Texas friend, writer Don Johnson.

Don and I first met when I was presenting sessions on poetry at the Craft Of Writing (COW) writers’ conference at the University of North Texas in Denton, near Dallas, in the late 1990s. (Robert S. I think you and I met at that conference too.)

So that’s the background. Well, once upon a time around the turn of the century (ca. 2000), Don called me for help with a character.

I suspect that phone call and what happened as a result of it served as a catalyst for my eventual success as a fiction writer, although I didn’t start writing fiction in earnest until some 14 years later.

Don had an old great-grandfather character, a modern but grizzled old Texas working cowboy, who was supposed to fly to California for his great-granddaughter’s wedding.

Only every time Don wrote the scene in which the old cowboy’s wife drove him to the airport to catch a flight, something went wrong.

Don said, “Harvey, I mean it went really wrong: one time the pickup had two flats but only one spare; another time a passing semi threw a rock through the windshield. How do you reckon I can get him on that plane?”

Now when Don called me, I had written a ton of poetry and articles, but only a few short stories.

I had never heard of writing into the dark or handing the reins over to the creative subconscious.

So in a halfway flippant response—as I said earlier, Don was a friend—I chuckled and said, “Well Don, think about it. Has the character ever been higher off the ground than the back of his horse?”

Don thought about that for a moment. “Nawsir. Nawsir, he hasn’t.”

So I said, “So why force him? Why doesn’t his wife take him to the train station instead of the airport?”

The excitement in Don’s voice was palpable: “Thanks, m’friend!” and he hung up.

A week later, he called me back. He said he’d just finished the novel.

As it turned out, Great-Grandpa had taken the iron horse to California, attended the wedding, and even managed a smile. (grin)

• This is why I preach writing into the dark.

• This is why I preach getting down INTO the story, down in the trenches with the characters, instead of ‘directing’ them as the all-knowing, all-seeing, almighty Writer On High. (Hear the angels? They’re fake. You are not God.)

When you’re down in the trenches, running through the story with your characters instead of being the ultimate control freak, your characters will show you who they are.

They’ll live their authentic story for your entertainment. All you have to do is write it down.

As an example, years later, as I was writing Book 7, The Marshal of Agua Perlado [of what eventually became the 22-volume Wes Crowley Saga], the character Maria Elena appeared.

Maria Elena, who is being groomed to become the matriarch of the next generation of the family, is a sister to Miguel and Marisól and Julio and Coralín.

In a snippet of dialogue, Maria Elena said she has a ‘very good friend.’ She never called her friend by name, and later in the story, she referred to her friend only as her ‘special sister.’ My assumption at the time was that she was a homosexual.

Now, the book didn’t necessarily ‘need’ a homosexual woman in the cast. There was also zero chance that I, the writer, was trying to make any kind of politically correct statement in my fiction. I don’t see that as my (or any other fictionist’s) place.

As the writer, I could have simply ‘changed’ her. I could have removed or changed what she said in her dialogue. I could even have had her take a husband, bear children, etc. But none of that would change who she truly was. And to this day, only she knows that.

I also could have simply deleted her. But then the family would be lacking one member, and neither the family nor the authentic story would be complete.

This is yet one more lesson regarding the use and care of your creative mind. Give your creative subconscious control over all creative matters. We encounter all kinds of people in our lives. So do our characters.

So write the authentic story. Let the characters be who they are. Let the story go where it will.

But what if the story takes off in a direction you didn’t expect?

Count on it. It will. Um, hello! Welcome to real life!

Because that’s exactly how real life happens, isn’t it? It simply continues to unfold, sometimes as you expect it to and sometimes in a different direction. And consider how boring your life would be if everything went strictly according to plan.

Yes, if your fiction went strictly according to plan, it would be boring too.

You cannot plan spontaneity. Even in fiction.

The only difference is that in fiction, it’s your characters’ life, not your life, that’s unfolding. But that’s no reason for you to force your will on their life anymore than you should try to force your neighbors’ life to unfold as you want it to.

Instead, relax and run with it. Enjoy it. And be glad you can experience the exhilaration without suffering the effects.

Maybe the best aspect of writing into the dark is that you WON’T see everything coming. Why is that a good thing? Because if you don’t see it coming, neither will your readers.

Talk with you again soon.

The Numbers

The Journal…………………………… 1190

Writing of Blackwell Ops 32: Harry Tidwell

Day 1…… 3528 words. To date…… 3528
Day 2…… 3136 words. To date…… 6664
Day 3…… 4540 words. To date…… 11204
Day 4…… 6376 words. To date…… 17598
Day 5…… 3196 words. To date…… 20794
Day 6…… 3763 words. To date…… 24557
Day 7…… 3811 words. To date…… 28368

Fiction for December………………… 24822
Fiction for 2024………………………. 952743
Nonfiction for December…………….. 7370
Nonfiction for 2024…………………… 369940
2024 consumable words…………….. 1,146,722

Average Fiction WPD (December)…. 4137

2024 Novels to Date…………………….. 17
2024 Novellas to Date…………………… 1
2024 Short Stories to Date……………… 31
Novels (since Oct 19, 2014)…………..… 101
Novellas (since Nov 1, 2015)…………… 10
Short stories (since Apr 15, 2014)……… 268
Short story collections……………………. 29

Disclaimer: Whatever you believe, unreasoning fear and the myths that outlining, revising, and rewriting will make your work better are lies. They will always slow your progress as a writer or stop you cold. I will never teach the myths on this blog.

Writing fiction should never be something that stresses you out. It should be fun. On this blog I teach Writing Into the Dark and adherence to Heinlein’s Rules. Because of WITD and because I endeavor to follow those Rules I am a prolific professional fiction writer. You can be too.