Happy Wednesday! Right now, I’m in the death throes of finishing Touched by Fire, the second Sentinel book, which will be out in October. Did anyone in this group say writing was fun or easy? If you did—whoever you are—I will find you and I’ll either inflict great pain or offer you money to write my next book—LOL. As I’ve said before, and I’m quoting my very wise critique partner, Linda Castillo: “Writing is like having a tooth pulled—very slowly—and without anesthesia.” Just call me the “toothless wonder”.
Worse, writing is like having a late-life baby. I thought my kids were challenging, but my characters are far worse, especially since I can’t send them to time out. Touched by Fire started out all right, because I already knew that the hero was going to knock the socks off my dowdy accountant heroine, and then kidnap her when she refused to cooperate. So far, so good—except she bit him when he grabbed her (this was a surprise to me, since I’m guarding my remaining teeth). She also turned out to be much funnier than I imagined—a real smart-ass.
Okay, so I can deal with a biting, smart aleck heroine, but enter her sister, who’s supposed to have a very minor supporting role and the hero’s superhuman boss, who has only a miniscule role. What’s this? The sister and the boss are going at each other? The boss has all these special powers I didn’t know about? The sister is already a fully fleshed-out, bigger-than-life character? She has precognitive abilities (when the hell did that happen)? Now what? Down, you two! Back to the sidelines!
Now the two main characters are in Austin, Texas, tracking an evil killer, and suddenly we have an appearance of the hero and heroine from the first book, Touched by Darkness. What are they doing here? Oh, we need them, do we? Arrrrgh!
Children, children! Whose story is this, anyway? Yours, or mine? Oh . . . I see. I’m chopped liver, minus a few teeth. I’m just the narrator. Well if that’s the case, do me a favor and hurry up and finish this book, will you? It’s due in less than two weeks, so you have to hurry.
That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it. So, here are two questions. To you writers, do you find characters trying to take over and direct your story? To you readers, do you often find yourself mentally re-writing a story and imagining the characters doing more or acting differently?
Everyone have a great week!
~ Catherine
Oh yes, Catherine, I had a book ‘mugged’ by secondary characters once, a Regency entitled Lord Pierson’s reform. Lord Pierson came off as a poor second to his best friend, and never regained his rightful status as the true ‘hero’ he was supposed to be. Due to time-constraints - my Regencies were written on a very tight schedule - there wasn’t much I could do about it ultimately. If I’d had more time I would have whipped the friend into properly subdued shape.
I’ve since come to the conclusion that a well-constructed outline is my only defence against it happening again! But that may be a pretty delusion that I’ve sold myself, and I may yet be ‘mugged’ again by a compelling secondary character. It is the price we pay for inventing vivid secondary characters, I think. Better than the pallid, lifeless alternatives, I suppose.
Good luck on the deadline… I feel for you, as I have a February 15th rewrite deadline looming.
Comment by Donna — January 17, 2007 @ 2:21 pm
Catherine,
I feel for you, too! OTOH, it’s fun when the characters take off on their own, and sometimes they take you to great places, even if you have to adapt a bit to follow them, like carving a new road behind charging horses
Good luck!
Nicole
Comment by Nicole Byrd — January 18, 2007 @ 1:56 am
THanks for the chuckle so early Cathy.
My characters very often do something so unexpected, I usually take days to figure out how to fix the mess they dug themselves into. In one book (will likely never be published) I had the heroine in a dead sleep in bed when the hero entered her room. Then, she sat up, bolted across the room and threw herself out of the window. DId I mention that this was a medieval and thus “window” was very very very high?
Took me forever to figure out how to save her rear!
Comment by Heather — January 18, 2007 @ 10:11 am
I never thought about giving my charactesr a time-out, but you’re right — they just don’t listen sometimes, do they? And then they’re off and running, doing their own thing, while you’re stuck jotting it all down! I had that happen with my book - one character who was supposed to be a minor supporting character decided she wanted a bigger role. Good thing, too - the story was better for it and my main character was just as surprised as me. That’s one thing I love about writing - that you can write a story and still be surprised!
Comment by Mia King — January 20, 2007 @ 7:54 pm