I’ve been spending a lot of time writing fiction lately.
That still feels like a strange sentence to say out loud.
When people ask how it’s going, I usually shrug and tell them it’s coming along. That’s true, but it doesn’t really explain what’s been happening. The writing itself isn’t the surprising part. The surprising part is the people.
I know how that sounds.
They’re not real. I made them up. I chose their names, decided what they look like, figured out what they care about and what keeps them awake at night. They only exist because I sat down one day and started typing.
At least that’s how it starts.
Somewhere along the way, something changes.
When a character is new, I can make them do just about anything. I can send them into any room, have them say whatever I need them to say, and move the story wherever I want it to go. But after enough time with them, that stops working.
Not because I can’t.
Because it doesn’t feel true anymore.
I’ll write a line of dialogue, stare at it for a minute, and think, No. He wouldn’t say that.
Or I’ll come up with what seems like a great scene, only to realize halfway through that she would have walked away three pages ago. The scene might be better on paper, but it isn’t better for the person standing in it.
That’s the strange part.
I created these people, but eventually they become consistent enough that they start pushing back. Not literally, of course. They don’t crawl out of the computer and argue with me over coffee. It’s quieter than that. It’s just a feeling that something isn’t honest.
Lately, I’ve been thinking that my job has changed.
At the beginning, I’m building the road. I’m deciding where the story starts, what obstacles appear along the way, and where I hope everyone ends up. But once the characters begin to feel like themselves, they’re the ones driving. I can still grab the steering wheel whenever I want, but if I force them to make a turn they never would have taken, it shows.
Maybe that’s why some stories feel real, and others don’t.
It’s probably not because one writer has a better imagination than another. It’s because someone took the time to understand the people they were writing about. Once that happens, the next decision often isn’t the most exciting one. It’s simply the honest one.
I’ve found that those are usually the same thing anyway.
The funny part is that I never expected to spend so much time listening to people who don’t exist. If someone had told me that a year ago, I probably would have laughed. Now I spend entire evenings trying to figure out why a conversation feels wrong, only to discover that I was asking someone to be somebody they aren’t.
That’s a surprisingly human mistake to make.
So these days, I don’t spend as much time wondering what happens next.
Instead, I spend more time wondering what they would do. And more often than not, they already know the answer.
I just have to pay attention.
The CJBuzz 