Writing Yourself Into a Corner

Once you've discovered the direction that you want to go in - often many of my writing students will start writing the story. Many times the story sort of "writes itself" from that point, appearing on the page as they type or put pencil to paper.

I love that process. It's a true merger with the Muse. It's no wonder that the ancient Greeks thought that a strange spirit injected people with creativity when they were writing or creating.

What's interesting about interacting with the Muse is that when you're in that zone, you really have no idea what's going to happen next. When all cylinders are firing, and the story is flowing out of you, often events will pop out of nowhere.

I remember one conference I had with an author and she made this great point. She was writing, and had a character who had just worked through a seriously trying time. Just at that moment, the author was surprised to find that the phone rang in the story. Indeed, she didn't even know who was on the other end of the line until she had her main character pick up the phone.

To explain how this can often work with characters I often explain it this way...

You may have a story in mind but if you have really spent time developing your characters, you may run into a situation where you say to yourself, "Wait. My character wouldn't do that. My character would really do this." And suddenly, that grand plot that you had in your head is changed. That's the reality of writing with real and living characters.

That said, this little bit of magic would often get me into trouble when writing novels. My characters would go off in random directions (like people do in real life) and end up in some place that simply made for a poor story. Imagine if we hooked a camera to the shoulder of someone really interesting and famous. Say, Arnold Schwarzenegger. Well, about 10 to 20 percent of his life would be interesting, but then the other 80 to 90 percent would be snooze-ville as we watching Arnold take a dump, eat breakfast, or run on a treadmill.

There's also the problem that I had in that often I would get my characters into serious predicaments in which there was no escape. Obviously, in my stories, I wanted my characters to face serious odds or something that was threatening. Because my stories flowed realistically...I suddenly found that by all rights, my characters should completely lose the conflict that I set up. Which doesn't make for a very satisfying story. A character who loses in the end can be a great story, but not in the ways that I had set up.

So, when writing novels, I often found that I ended up writing myself into a corner.

Bleah.

That's why I've learned my lesson. I outline my stories now. Yep, I really do that. Keep in mind that my outlines are usually fairly loose and open. But I do it. The reason it's important for me to do that is because when I outline, I am able to see the end of the road. I'm able to keep track of where I'm going, and I can nudge my character in that direction. If the end that I hand in mind doesn't work, that's okay. I just retool the outline so that I can see where the new story is going. The main thing I try to keep in mind is maintaining my eyes on the prize and understanding where my story is going.

All for now.