Where'd that come from?

Hey Sage. Good to talk to you again.

This is natural. It looks like you've found your voice. It seems as though you don't have to think about what you're doing so much anymore; that the technical aspects musn't be as much of an issue. It sounds like the MS wants to write itself now. This is where you want to go as a writer.

If you give in to your instincts, your work will evolve organically. There is a lot of debate over whether organic or systemic writing works best.

I look at it this way: If my muse wants to do some of the heavy lifting, I'll let it.





Mike

I’d say that my favourite “Where did that come from” moment would have to be when I began to re-write my fantasy story (my current WIP) and I realized that Aliana, who was originally going to be the main character, was going to die before the story ever started and that the story was going to revolve around the previous-secondary-characters instead. I’ve had a couple others too, but in order to preserve the plot twists , I’ll keep those to myself.

Isn't it great? When characters become so alive that they can suddenly change something in a story and we don't even realize it until after the fact? I love it.

I love it too; it's a wonderful thing when your characters start leaping around in your head, insisting that you write down what they're telling you. Hey, who am I to argue?

Every word I write.

I find that non-stop freewriting helps maintain that 'back-brain spontaneity'. If you don't let yourself stop (and refuse to do things like write the same word or line over), things just start popping out. I've gotten some great plot and character ideas out of that - ideas I never would have considered in my day-to-day pondering.
This is also why I usually write about 2 or 3 pages of nothing before I start on my WIP. It oils up the gearworks so the characters can more easily muck around with them.

Throughout the almost 8 years I've been developing my novel series, I've had many of those "Where'd that come from?" moments. But, recently I had one that really took me by surprise. I realized that three women characters - 2 that have been part of the story from practically the beginning - could be (and now are) - sisters.

I really hesitated at the idea because the characters had such different and practically unconnected stories. The change would either work or it wouldn't and for it to work, I'd have to work - HARD - to make sure it didn't cause major contradictions. After weeks of juggling and thinking, I realized it worked better than I ever thought it would; so, it stayed. In fact, one of the sisters being related to the other two has become a pretty big twist in a future plot in a later book of the series. And the fact that the other two are sisters made something that happens later in the series - something I thought wouldn't be such a big deal before the change - emotionally heart-wrenching.

I really love those "Where'd that come from?" moments...

When I realized the female main character in my second manuscript was bipolar. It was a real shock...yet explained so much about her!

Yeah, those are the best. But then, I hate it when secondary characters (or even tertiary) just show up in the scene. Characters you didn't know existed, now they're there, and they demand to be named. Durn it - what ARE your names??

Ok, so I don't hate it, but it is a distraction.

I had a character tell me once that I was killing him off too early, and that he was needed. So I decided to kill him off in the next chapter. Nope, said the character, not yet. I'm too important.

This went on until the next to the last chapter. When he was executed, I was in tears--I'd really gotten to know him by then. And he'd been right.

This whole thing has been one "where did that come from?" moment after another! I kinda always thought writers exaggerated when they said that happened. I thought I was always in control of the story, but no more! If you read my "love scenes?" thread, what happened to me was very similar to what you described. My main character and a minor character were attracted to each other, and they were going to do for it, regardless of what I had to say about it!

I also had a moment in which one of my characters was keeping a secret from another. I had written him, at first, as thinking about it, like, "I suppose now would not be a good time to tell her that I really..." But then, I had to change it, to having the other character wondering, like, "Maybe he really..." The only explanation I could give for it was that he didn't want anyone to know about that. I always thought you would and should know everything about what your characters. But when your characters become real people, what if they refuse to tell you everything? As the cliche says, your characters are like your children, and do you tell your parents everything?

Also, my villian's motivation was harder to figure out. It wasn't that I had to come up with something. It was more like, she already knew what it was, but I just didn't figure it out yet.

My favorite "Where'd that come from" moment involves the entire ending of my first novel. The book was supposed to be the hero's story when originally conceived, but the heroine, Harley, kind of took over and it became more her story.

The ending I had planned involved the pregnant heroine going into some major pregnancy complications that threated both her life and the life of the unborn baby. The story revolved around the hero's desire for this child - he didn't want a wife, etc. so the heroine was just supposed to provide him with this baby and nothing else. So I wanted to force him into the position of having to choose between the baby and the heroine. (I'm evil that way.)

My heroine, however, had other ideas. Literally. One morning, as I drifted in that wonderful creative zone between awake and asleep, my heroine came to me and said, very clearly, "Help. I'm in jail."

And I was like, "What??! You're WHERE?"

"In jail. Get me the hell out of here."

I wanted to know how she'd gotten there, but she didn't tell me that. Only told me she was in jail and that it was MY job to get her out of there.

She was absolutely right. Her ending suited the story much better than what I'd planned, since this was HER story, not his. Jail was the one place that made the most sense for her resolution and completing her character arc.

You have to listen to them. Most of the time they know what they're talking about better than we do.

Susan G.

<<<MacAllister, if you're reading this, it's a spoiler!>>>



I had one of those moments - and a major one it turned out to be, too! - during the writing of my first novel. The heroine was supposed to be young, naive, and oh-so-sweet… but things happened to her in the course of the first few chapters and other characters were busy teaching her things they didn't let me in on! At one point she carries a newborn baby out to the father – our villain – and hands it to him, informing him in her oh-so-sweet way it's the boy he's been praying for.

What she doesn't tell him is it was stillborn.

It was a surprise to both me *and* the villain!

I buy all my storylines at the local Plots-R-Us. They have a customer loyalty card; for every ten story-arcs you buy, you get a free secondary character or cliffhanger ending.

They also sell deus-ex-machina endings, coincidence plot devices and cliches (which come in kilo bags).

I had a pretty devastating moment like that about two thirds into a draft of my latest novel, when I suddenly realized IT'S NOT HIS BABY.

This almost knocked me over. I had to walk around the block with a case of the chills. I also knew if this was the case, I'd have to change a number of things leading up to that revelation, which I did.

By the end of the draft I started to backtrack and wonder if maybe he only thinks it's not his baby.

Several revisions later, I have now left the question unresolved. It seems like it's just an example of his rampant paranoia about life in general. On the other hand, looking at his wife, even paranoids are right some of the time.

This is why it's hard for me to ever finish a novel.

I had an idea to throw in a masked avenger, who would do a cameo. He was intended to appear strictly for comic relief. With that in my head, I wrote and waited for the right moment to introduce him.

Along the way, one of my secondary characters, who had seemed like a bit of an air-head, suddenly did something that showed he knew exactly what was going on, and was only playing dumb.

At that moment it struck me that he was the masked avenger.

It changed the entire story, and now he's even got his own spin-off novel in the works.

Now that I've had my glib answer, I thought of something specific. I started one novel expressedly stating that it was NOT a romance--that is, these two characters would not love each other. It wasn't their nature anyway. They loved themselves and they loved money, but that's about as far as it went. Then one day...

"I love her," Character says.
"No, you don't. Shut up."
"Yes, i really do."
"Look, you can't love. You're too messed up to love. There is no love in your heart."
"But can't you see? She's me! She's the only one I can love."
"Shut up."
"I love her, I don't care what you say."
"Fine, but don't think you can be happy!"
"We'll just see about that."

I started a second book with these characters, and I'll be damned if they don't get to be happy in the end.

I've been working on the same fantasy WIP for several years and now one of my main characters is demanding that his backstory be told instead, so I've switched WIPs and am having a much easier time writing. I've spent a lot of time thinking up his history to explain why he behaves the way he does in the original story and I think that the time spent is paying off. Someday I intend to finish the original story, and I'm sure it'll be better than the story I'd intended and also written better. That was my first real attempt at writing and I know my writing has improved.

I've also had the problem of minor characters acting up. In my original story I added several bodyguards for the main character and they promptly tried hijacking the entire novel. One of them even wanted to have an affair with the female lead. She agreed. The only problem was neither one of them had time in the story to so much as have lunch together, much less have a torrid affair, but oh, were they insistent. It did give me ideas for some future stories.

I've also had eureka moments exploring yes/no scenarios. I originally assumed my female lead would automatically agree to a certain business deal, then I asked myself what would happen if she instead said no. Boy, did that open up possibilities. Now when I'm plotting I try not to lock myself into assumptions and remember to test the alternatives.

I don't know if I ever wrote a story that didn't have a "Where'd that come from" moment. It happens a lot more often now that I learned just to let the story tell itself instead of forcing it where I want it to go.

For example, in my current WIP, I learned that the main character's parents play a HUGE role in what's going to happen even though they're already dead...just by being an influence on the main character when she was younger.

It's kind of like finding a chocolate covered nougat in a variety box of chocolates.

I didn't answer your "Where'd that come from?" question in my original post because there were a few surprises to pick from. I also forgot about the thread. I hate getting old. Anyway, I think this one's a pretty good one.

If you read any of "The Mound Builders" series in SYW (removed a couple of weeks ago), you'll have an inkling of what the story is about.

This much is documented as being true: In 1939, a Nazi scientific expedition was sent to Antarctica to find the legendary land of Thule or Lemuria (Mu). Hitler's occultists were convinced that the people that populated Thule over 10,000 years ago were the direct ancestors of Germany. The U.S. sent three separate Naval operations led by Admiral Richard E. Byrd to observe them. The Nazi scientific expedition vanished sometime during WWII.

Byrd actually stated on record that he found a hole in the polar cap while doing an aerial mapping of the area, and that this led into an inner world. The government and military kind of distanced themselves from him after that. Big surprise there. He alleged that this is where the Nazis went.

Okay. When I finally got to this this new world (I'm not going to explain how, or who, or why my characters were there), I realized that this wasn't Thule. The Nazis captured my characters and transported them to their fortress in incredible machines that utilized very advanced technology. Then It dawned on me (Thule is also considered by many to be Atlantis) –– This was alien technology. Here's the kicker: the technology that was cannibalized by the Nazis was made from living alloys. Without the alien races that made these technologies around to direct them (there were two races that were at war - the scraps and mechanisms were scavenged from an ancient battlefied), the living machines lay in stasis. That is, until the Nazis reused the parts for their own purposes.

I had no idea that alien technology was going to be a part of the story. This was supposed to be about a long lost civilization like Atlantis. My muse would have none of it. I couldn't believe it, but I loved the experience.




Mike

scarletpeaches said:

I buy all my storylines at the local Plots-R-Us. They have a customer loyalty card; for every ten story-arcs you buy, you get a free secondary character or cliffhanger ending.

They also sell deus-ex-machina endings, coincidence plot devices and cliches (which come in kilo bags).

Click to expand...

That's probably one of the funniest things I've read in ages. Writer's humor...Haha!

Well, I'm a newbie, and currently working on my first real novel. I have interviewed one of my main characters so far and in that interview, she told me that she had one sibling and that he was four years older than she was.
Well, when I was writing her first scene with this sibling, he whispered to me:
"She lied to you. We're twins."

I'm like, jigga-wha? I wondered for a second who was telling the truth- rather, if he just meant that that's how close they were but he was like: "No, seriously."

I'm like, you know what, that could be true because she has a secret that she kept to herself for years and yet in that same scene between them, he revealed that he knew it. Yet, as far as I know, she didn't tell him!
He is also the more believable of the two, so I figured she lied to me in the interview- probably to throw me off because if i had known, I would have pursued that area more aggressively.
She's so damn secretive and quiet...but she's a clever little thing, to say the least.