When characters wake you up at night

by Rick Blechta

Back from a few days away to regenerate the inner self, aka a lovely — although far too brief — vacation, I feel as if I’m ready to face the fall and winter.

Did I manage to get a whole bunch of writing done? Frankly, no, but now I’m primed to get back down to it.

The past few days, I haven’t written a word (except emails), but there were a number of things to catch up on. Plus I also managed to screw up my work computer again — this time completely my own fault. I should have known better than to mess around with computer things on which I’m not really “literate”. Luckily, I managed to clean up my mess myself (thank heaven for Apple’s Time Machine feature).

So I thought about my WIP (work-in-progress) a whole bunch and then didn’t act on anything yet. Seems I pissed off one of my protagonists.

She woke me up at 2:30 a.m. this morning, after I’d gotten to bed just short of midnight. Seems she wanted to talk.

Now, us writer-types are used to having discussions with our character-creations. Some of us here on Type M have written posts about it. Last night was different, though, with my character not contacting me during “business hours”.

I tried to ignore her for nearly an hour, using all my tried and true get-back-to-sleep methods. She kept shouting on me to give up and listen to what she had to say. I also must have slightly dozed off somewhere during the struggle because I had the clearest image of what she looks like. Interestingly, my previous mental image was incorrect.

I finally gave up and went downstairs, thought about various aspects of my nascent novel and realized she was trying to share some pretty good ideas while also pointing out some things I’d written that were dead wrong about her. In the end, I was glad that I hadn’t managed to roll over and go back to sleep.

After taking nearly two hours of dictation, she returned control of my brain to me and I suddenly was very sleepy.

So that’s the reason I slept in and my Tuesday post is rather late.

Honest!

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A follow up to my post from two weeks ago about the suicide of Jeffrey Epstein. Seems the closed-circuit video footage of his cell at the critical period when he supposedly took his life is "unusable". Hmmm… You’re not surprised are you? View some coverage HERE.

When characters start calling you

by Rick Blechta

It’s been enjoyable reading my blog-mates’ varied thoughts on the subject of characters. Let’s face it, characters are the most important aspect of writing fiction in most writers’ opinion. You can be telling the greatest tale in the world, but without a good character or two to inhabit it, your magnum opus will fall flat on its butt.

On the subject of characters, I’ve been having the most curious experience the past few weeks.

I’m finishing up a novella. My two characters, Pratt and Ellis, are developing nicely in this, their third appearance. I have a very clear idea of who they are, and this time out, I’m focusing on revealing their personalities more (within the framework of the “Rapid Reads Novella Mandate”).

The strange thing is my new series’ characters (one in particular) keep trying to talk to me. I’d tell her to bug off and wait her turn, but I’m worried she’ll be insulted (she can be a bit on the touchy side), stomp off and refuse to talk to me when I get back to work on the story in which she’s appearing. These intrusions have happened repeatedly, too.

For instance, last night I was working on a very critical chapter in the novella when she butted in, dragged in the other main character in her story too, and they started to tell me about her critical chapter which occurs near the beginning of the narrative. It was great stuff, too, so I dragged out my journal (where I keep notes) and started copying their words as quickly as I could.

Howls of protest went up about the intrusion from my novella’s protagonists, as well as a character who was in severe jeopardy at the time. I mean, how can you just up and leave when someone might very well lose his life?

Such is the schizoid existence of a fiction writer.

And now back to the chattering classes before I piss off someone else…