Sometimes the story you are writing does not turn out the way you planned. If you’re smart, you learn to roll with it, to turn down the unplanned detours, to take a chance and go down the rabbit hole, because sometimes that were the true story is to be found.
Okay, maybe letting the story drag you down the rabbit hole isn’t how you work. Right now I can picture several other professional writers shaking their heads and muttering about how they, not their characters, control the story, which is how it should be. There is nothing wrong with this style of working. Many writers prefer the control of knowing exactly where they are going before they ever touch fingers to keyboard or put pen to paper. The knowing—outlines, maps, sticky notes, spreadsheets and all that—allows them work quickly and confidently. That’s fine, if that works for them (or you).
I’m not that guy. I tend to take a concept, begin to run with it, stop to flesh out what happens next, write toward that, let the end suggest itself, stop and figure out how to get to that ending, and then write toward that while being perfectly willing to go haring off down side plots and chase down errant themes as they present themselves. There is joy in discovering the story in this manner, I’ve found.
There can also be frustration. You can get side-tracked easily. You can go down a dead-end thematically. You can write whole sections of prose that then need to be cut later because they seems to be from a totally different story.
You can find that what you thought was nice little short story about phantom streetcars suddenly (for various values of suddenly) becomes Last Car to Annwn Station, your first published novel. Yeah, that was this guy, and I’m trying to learn from that experience.
Back in June I started a story about two mages on a public transit bus engaged in low-level duel (there a metaphysical reason they can only duel on that route at that time of day) and the hapless third-party who gets caught in their crossfire. The story kept going and growing, and I was fine with that, even when it hit 15K, I was fine. I’ve written and sold plenty of novellas (well, four of them anyway) so I wasn’t scared. But at the 26K mark, this story that had been cruising along so nicely and I loved to write, stalled out and began to sputter. I stopped and took stock, decided it had stalled because I didn’t know what I was writing toward anymore, especially the end. I had gone as far as I could on nerve and the electric first blush of a great idea. Now was time to stop and do a little heavy-lifting brainstorming.
This led to my previous post about continuity, and needing to know how this piece fit in the greater overall setting. I wrote up five pages of notes, thoughts, and idea, finally deciding where I needed to head next. I sat down today and started writing toward goal.
And even though the whole thing stayed on the course I had set, it simultaneously took a hard turn to the left, began to gather speed, and started to morph. I could see where the story was going. I could easily see a story spooling out before me, building on what I had started here and using things I had established in the setting. It was all there.
And I slammed on the brakes. I didn’t trust what was happening. My story was suddenly not a short or a novella. No, I could see another 60K words before me. All I had to do was point my prose at that long straightaway fading off into the distant horizon, set my fingers on the keyboard, and hit the gas. The idea of being in for another (unplanned) novel freaked me out.
And then I remembered those phantom streetcars, and what they became when I stopped trying to rein the story in, stopped trying to keep it stuffed in the little box I thought I should fit in. Back then, I finally bowed to the inevitable and let the story have the room to run that it demanded. It became something wonderful, something I am intensely proud to have written. It became my first published novel. The mages dueling on a bus story stalled because I was trying to hammer it into the shape I thought it should be instead of letting become the story that needs to be told.
Surprise and discovery is part of my process. It is a scary part of my process, but is also the most joyful, and if writing can’t be an exercise in joy, then I don’t want to do it.
Dear Mages Dueling on a Bus story (which became a novella),
I acquiesce to your wishes. You are indeed a novel. Let’s do this, you and I!
Cheers,
Me