Wiggle Room

Once, I wrote a book for a client that turned my expectations upside down.  The client handed me the plot, the characters, and the point he wanted to make.  We rearranged the plot and wrote a new outline that we both agreed would work better, but as far as I was concerned, everything that mattered had come from him.  I was just managing what he had created, not creating anything myself.

But when I sat down to write, his characters sometimes refused to do what we had agreed.  They didn't want to say what we had scripted or go where we had sent them.  Sometimes they pointed to huge sinkholes in the plot that would swallow them whole if I forced them to march ahead.  The more I understood them and got to know them, the more willing I was to bend the plan to follow them.  I was willing to listen to them and let them forge the path.

I still knew where we were going, and I reminded them of the big picture.  But in the individual scenes, in the small moments and personal conversations, I let them be.  I sat back and watched.  And I was profoundly grateful for the gift of imagination and for the diversity of human beings.  Imagination has to have some fodder, right?

That client's book taught me not to stay wholly within the confines of the structure and progression I needed in order to write at all.  It taught me to listen, to observe, and to exercise the humility necessary to admit that I did not foresee every twist and turn before the story started.  C. S. Lewis has said that "we read to know we are not alone."  Soulless robots prompt no warm pull of recognition, no glow of comfort.

I put that lesson to good use in Dawn Hyperdrive and the Galactic Handbag of Death!  Try the first chapter for free at my website, and then buy the book at Amazon for Kindle and Kindle apps or at Smashwords for all other e-readers.