by Kaylee Savage-Cutcher
If I were to explain my writing process to someone slightly more normal than me, I would seem completely crazy.
I don’t extensively plan my fiction stories. I can’t, because it never goes how I expect. It’s like my characters have a mind of their own. They decide where the story goes, not me. They’re stubborn, too. They don’t want a writer functioning as their god. I definitely don’t have divine power over the worlds I create; when I write, it feels less like I’m creating a story and more like I’m watching it happen. It might start out in my control, but as I chase after new ideas, the story slips away from me. Soon, I can’t predict anything that might happen. I write words on the page without feeling like I chose them at all.
I’ve tried to ignore my characters. I’ve tried to tell them that I’m the author – this is my story and everything goes as I say. But it doesn’t work. I only get writers’ block when I push back against my characters. Everything comes to a standstill when I make a character do something they disagree with. It puts me out of touch with the narrative. This kind of writers’ block doesn’t just wear off, and I can’t fight through it. Without fail, the cure has always been to retrace my steps and let my characters take the reins again at the point where I took it from them.
This experience isn’t as uncommon as I sometimes think it is. I’ve seen published authors describe their characters as people who are as real as they are. I’ve talked to peers who feel similarly about their fiction. I remember going to a writing camp when I was pretty young and talking to one of my fellow campers about how she felt like she was possessed by or channeling her characters when she wrote her best work. It’s even been studied, with an article from The Guardian stating that out of 181 authors “Sixty-three per cent said they heard their characters speak while writing [and] 61% report[ed] characters were capable of acting independently.”
I’m not sure if that means I’m not so weird or just that most writers are a little strange. Maybe I’ll write a story about an author who talks to their characters and hope they figure it out.
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