A New Friendship

The image of Lucy and Mr. Tumnus walking through the snow was Narnia's beginning, and so it is rightfully its most famous illustration. 

It depicts the start of a wonderful friendship. But this discovery marks more than just the first meeting of two friends. It was also the onset of the Pevensie's adventures in Narnia, just as it marks the start for all those countless readers who have fallen in love with Narnia since. 

 

 

For Professor Lewis, Narnia began with a glimpse of a faun carrying parcels through the snow. Though he himself did not know what it meant or where the faun was going until Lucy came across him. Everything else, great and small and wonderful, came after that walk in the snow. In this way, one might say Narnia began with the meeting of a girl and a faun in a wintry forest. In the story of stories and how they come to be, Narnia begins with friendship, and to me, nothing could be better.

"And so Lucy found herself walking through the wood arm in arm with this strange creature as if they had known one another all their lives" 

~ C.S. Lewis, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe 

 

Bird Watching

C.S. Lewis compared his writing process to watching birds. For Lewis, writing came to him in pictures. Ideas settled before him like sparrows. 

 

To me it seems a very vivid way to describe the process because it suggests that there is something at work that is beyond you; a silent sort of being that lives on a different schedule, in a world so secluded from yours, it is like another world entirely. Picture it: you sight a bird, the very image of an idea, once there, up high or down low, then gone with the rise of the wind, the sound or smell of invention still in the air. But the bird flies away, moving at a pace apart from yours, flitting in and out of contact with you.

 

 

 

The more time you spend in a place the more you get to know the birds that live there. You see them often enough, if you look out for them. Other than the spiders, they might be your closest neighbours, for they build their nests in your trees and on your rooftop. Like ideas, birds weave their way in and out of our lives, aloof and stunning, but sometimes they make close contact, such as when they don't know you are watching them from a window. 

 

I made rather close contact myself this summer, but without the glass, for I spent some time napping in a hammock strung from two trees in the middle of August. It was wonderful, for even as I drifted into a light sleep, I could hear the world around me, the wind and the sound of the lake more real than the sun streaked black behind my closed eyes. Yet my favourite part of the nap was the end of it when I would awake silently and the birds, wholly unaware of me, were all around me, living their secret lives as if still completely unobserved.

 

 

 

Like bird-watching, writing comes on a schedule wholly disconnected from your own daylight hours. It awakes long before you do, and so, it sees so many things you do not, for it knows the world before it awakens. Writing feels that way sometimes: Like the start of a day or a story in which no one yet knows what might occur, and so it meanders, flowing slowly into happenings. 

Like a desire for writing, birds come and go, adorning our lives with their needlework each time they appear, for even throughout the day, they move through all the unseen corners around you, passing in and out of sight, slipping into tree tops you never reach, hopping into the shadowy kingdoms under brush and root where only the small critters live. 

 

Yet as with birds and pictures for writing, some people simply do not notice them. They are just mundane enough to not interest some, feeling so like a day dream that many do not take the time to speculate. Many do not ask: What if this was part of a story? 

 

 

 

Lewis saw such pictures. As a young man he saw a Faun with an umbrella beneath a snowy forest. He knew the Faun was carrying parcels, and though Lewis did not know why, he thought it looked like a story. Today almost anyone shown a picture of Mr. Tumnus walking through the snow would be able to tell you where it came from. 

Still, it is important to remember that at one point Lewis himself did not know. I suppose Mr. Tumnus was very much like a bird in that way, for Lewis did not get to see where Mr. Tumnus went after he'd been sighted (or who he met along the way). He had to come with that part himself.

 

Another author I greatly enjoy said something else about ideas and the art of having them that seems fitting to share. When asked how he gets his ideas, Neil Gaiman said that when it comes to having good ideas there is only one big difference between writers and ordinary people: writers notice when they're having them. It is like the gift of being able to remember your dreams; like an awareness for critters, some people notice it, and some people don't. But anyone can, if they try.

Indeed, like bird-watching, writing can at times be tedious and uneventful. After all, a Faun walking through snow with an umbrella is not a story in and of itself.

But it only feels that way so long as you are expecting something to happen. Birds do not lead lives of drama, not to the unimaginative eye. But when the bird takes off and flies away and you can no longer see it, some people simply keep dreaming and drifting. Few take the time to wonder where the bird goes and what it does before the next time it is seen. 

The Tail of Despereaux (And Why He Had to Lose It)

A Look at the Heroic Critters in Literature, Who (more often than not) Lose Their Tails

 

Ever since I wrote my post Why Mr. Fox Had to Lose His Tail a few months ago, another heroic critter has been coming in and out of mind. 

It occurred to me shortly after I shared the post here that Fantastic Mr. Fox wasn't the only fictional critter I knew of who had lost his tail. Despereaux, the heroic mouse in Kate Dicamillo's The Tale of Despereaux also loses his tail most gruesomely when Miggory Sow chops it off with a cleaver, so sparing his life by a hair, and yet, taking his tail nonetheless. 

 

Reepicheep in C.S. Lewis's Prince Caspian also loses his tail in a battle against the Telmarines.

 

I thought that surely there must be a mutual string here in these stories. I might not have noticed it otherwise were it not for the trail left by a violently lost tail.

 

Throughout the weeks that followed my first touch on this topic in June, I thought from time to time about Despereaux, wondering occasionally if I could figure out what this symbolism meant, if anything.

Yet I was uncertain whether there was enough in this differential between the loss of tail. It was evident to me that these two stories (Fantastic Mr. Fox and The Tale of Despereaux) did not otherwise have much in common; one being rather grotesque, while the other, though somewhat violent at times, reads much like fairy tale. 

Then, less than a week after I started to ponder Despereaux and his poor cleaved tail, a little chipmunk began to help himself to the food in my bird feeder just outside my living room window. 

Ironically, the little bandit had lost his tail. 

I decided then that it was time to revisit The Tale of Despereuax in an attempt to unravel this mystery. This post is the result of what I have discovered in my lengthy investigation.

We learn from the mouse Reepicheep that the loss of a tail is a heavy burden to bear for any small critter; and so, naturally, Reepicheep was not forgotten in my thoughts as I considered this conundrum. 

In C.S. Lewis's Prince Caspian, Reepicheep also loses his tail. Thereafter his mice followers decide to chop off their own tails, saying that it would be better to go without it than to bear the shame of wearing an honour denied to their chief.

 

Fortunatetly, the world Reepicheep lives in is one of healing and redemption, and by the power of Aslan his tail is quickly restored and thus no more tails are chopped off.  

Because of this, I will not be talking much about the wonder that is Reepicheep the mouse and his blessed tail, only say that the reaction of his people shows that the loss of a tail is not to be taken too lightly.

Indeed, I myself would  have been unsettled by such a sight as a group of mice slicing off their own tails with the sharp end of a blade. Surely, Narnia would have to be a more savage place than I remember if that is how the story had gone and we were left to look at the bloodied rumps of these pure creatures. 

 

 

 

As I mentioned in my last post regarding this subject, I find Mr. Fox's own bloodied stump of a tail unsettling, for it represents to me the severity of death in an animal's world and just how near it lives to an animal's rump. A slip down a hole may not be enough to give Death the slip. But if, like Mr. Fox, the critter is lucky, it may miss them by a tail's length. 

 

Despereaux himself is spared from the meat cleaver, and, like Mr. Fox, he must live with this reminder for the rest of his life. Death nearly got him then. But it was not luck that spared him. Fantastic Mr. Fox is a lucky creature, this we cannot deny, for every tight spot he ever gets into he evades with a combination of luck and his own personal cunning. 

Despereaux is not cunning, and indeed, he is often unlucky. 

So, what spared him then?

In the weeks that followed, Despereaux popped often into my mind trailed by this simple question. But the more I thought about these tailless creatures and the argument I had made for Mr. Fox's stump the less it seemed to apply to Despereaux. While it is true that he lives in an often harsh world, death does not dwell nearly so close in Despereaux's castle. Indeed, with an air of destiny, Despereaux evades death the moment he is born, for none of the other mice in his litter survive. He is born along with dead brothers and dead sisters, and though his father claims that he cannot possibly live, the narrator immediately assures us that he does, for this is, after all, his story. 

Thus, Despereaux survives, defying death with his birth alone. One might say it was his destiny that pulled him through. 

 

There is no destiny for Mr. Fox. Indeed, the word is not once uttered. One must remember that the events of the story itself are brought about by the consequences of Mr. Fox's own actions. They are the direct result of his animalistic instincts, to thieve, to eat, to snap chicken necks and crunch on bird bones. 

 

Despereaux, however, is never good at following his mouse instincts. Anyone assigned the task of teaching Despereaux the ways of being a mouse quickly gives up, and so Despereaux is left alone, free to spend his time as he wishes. 

Mostly, Despereaux wishes to daydream.

This simple activity in itself may not seem like a big deal, until one considers that Despereaux is doing things that are beyond even the Fantastic Mr. Fox. After all, despite his fantasticality, Mr. Fox's desires remain largly animalistic. He desires to eat good food, to protect his mate and his offspring, to have good game, and to be tricksy. 

Any fox we might otherwise observe will surely share in these desires: to hunt, to live, to expand the size of his den and further his own line.

 

Despereaux though, as we already discussed, is not just any mouse. He desires to transcend his own mousehood. He has little desire for food. When his sister tells him to eat the crispy pages of a book, Despereaux is perplexed. He would rather read it. While his siblings hunt for crumbs, Despereaux watches the light and he listens to the far off sound of music.

The music, we are told, is enough to make him forget the few mouse instincts he possesses, and so, Despereaux is led by his fate away from his siblings and right to the foot of the human king. 

 

We can all imagine what would happen to Mr. Fox had he forgotten his foxness so: he'd have been shot. His fur would likely have been turned into a hat, and his tail would have prematurely acted as a trophy. 

Despereaux's world is kinder. Indeed, I will tell you that the story ends with Despereaux sharing a table with the King and his daughter, an altogether whimsical image that can only be the stuff of fairytales.

 

Thus, the differential between the two worlds becomes once again evident. The world Dicamillo creates in this narrative is altogether lighter and more dreamy than that of any Roald Dahl book I've ever read, for in this world the gap between humanity and animality can be crossed with compassion and a willingness to change. 

These things are not available to the heroic creatures I mentioned in my last post. For Mr. Fox, for Hazel and Fiver, and for Peter Rabbit there is no crossing this gorge, for death stands in that valley. It is a law not to be breached; a disparity left agape with the curcuial disability of a limited language and an ultimate failure to see the life and possibility in the other. Be it the shortcoming of the beast or the man, these worlds are split apart, and in life they cannot be united. 

 

 

When I said that death does not live close in Despereaux's castle, I meant that death is by no means his next door neighbor. Even so, we find out very quickly exactly where death lives: in its most threatening form it lives in the dungeon, down a long winding staircase and many floors beneath Despereaux's own little feet. Yet, before we even know why, we are told that Despereaux is destined to go there. 

Indeed, the narrator herself tells us that it is fate that sends him there. With the sound of drumming and the smell of celery breath, bound to by a red thread, Despereaux is sent forth to meet death again. 

No mouse, we are told, has ever come back from the dungeons.

 

Despereaux does come back. He goes down the dark winding stair down which mice are sent to die, and he comes back up them again. 

In fact, he does so quite easily. He does not even do so himself. He is carried up on a tray, borne up by a girl named Miggery Sow, who, as I've already told you, will be the one to chop off his tail.

 

It is notable that the first thing Despereaux does when he comes to in the dungeon is to reach for his tail. Throughout the story so far, he has reached for tails often, sometimes his own, sometimes those of others, such as those of his older siblings. But there, with no other tail to cling to, Despereaux searches for his own and is frightened by how long it takes him to find it in the pitch black darkness. 

There in the black, with death circling around him, nearing him with sound of rat claws and long rat tails slithering, his own tail is the only comfort he can cling to.

 

It is also there that Despereaux utters the phrase "I need to live... I can't die," into the ear of the one who will save him.

It is also notable that Despereaux loses his tail the moment he leaves the dungeons. Just as he is recalled to the light and the life that it holds, Despereaux is greeted by a blinding flash as the cleaver comes down. 

So, Despereaux loses his tail. What do you think saved him?

If you want the techincal answer, Migger Sow did. She saved him when she saw more than just a filthy mouse, and so, as cook shouted the implacable words "kill him even if he's already dead", Miggory Sow missed him by a hair, and so Despereaux scurried away; he scurried like an actual professional mouse, the story tells us; for in this moment he is, after all, just an animal who has lost his tail and is running for his life. 

If you want the fairy tale answer, Despereaux's destiny saved him too. For Despereaux, we are told, is destined to save the princess, and thus, to eat soup at the table of the King.

 

That leaves us with one final question. Why did Despereaux have to lose his tail?

 

We are told by the people of Reepicheep that to wear a tail is an honour. 

Honour is a word often uttered by Despereaux throughout the course of his story. It is spoken by him to the princess when he first gives his heart to her. ("I honor you," he whispered with his paw on his heart.)

It is whispered by him in the face of danger and death when the princess is nowhere near, for it makes him feel braver to think of honouring her. 

 

So, one might say, Despereaux does honour her. He loses his tail for her, and so he honours her in the greatest way a little mouse can. Maybe even more.

 

I have, however, come to think that it is not quite that simple. After all, what does Despereaux's and Reepicheep's honour have to do with Mr. Fox's consequential world? The only mutual thread between the bullet, the cleaver, and the heat of battle is that they all have death in them. Yet, none of these critters ultimately dies within their story.

If we are to accept that the losing of a tail is a symbol for death, then we can be certain that these critters have all faced it.

So, why did they have to lose their tails at all?

Probably because only animals have tails; and because Despereaux, in order to transcend his animalness, had to lose a little. In order to unite animality with humanity, he had to give something up. 

 

As for Mr. Fox, he will never cross the breach between animality and humanity in this life. These two worlds cannot be united while they are living. 

Despereaux himself dies by all accounts but actuality: he is sent to the pit of no return, and comes back caked in blood and flour, looking altogether like a ghost. 

 

His story ends with a heavenly image as the author asks us to imagine a mouse and a rat at the table of a king, eating soup and being joyous. It is indeed the stuff of fairy tales. But by the light of this image, I see a heavenly twinge. 

 

 

 

In Despereaux's world death looks like a dark dungeon. Fortunately, it does not look so in mine. To me it looks a bit like the image Dicamillo leaves us with: of animal and humankind eating together at a table. To me, there is light even on the other side of death.

So, as I draw this mystery to a close at last, Reepicheep comes once again into my mind. I am not, however, thinking about his tail. 

I am thinking that Reepicheep is the only critter among all those I've mentioned that doesn't die, who will never die; not by the cleaver, or by the hunter, not in battle, not even by time.

I am thinking about Reepicheep in his little boat, sailing over the sweet waves into Aslan's country, there to depart from death forever. 

I cannot think of another place in literature where man and animal can live and dwell so well together, walk together, fight together, even die together, and then spend eternity together after all else is done.

 

"The wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the young goat, and the calf and the lion and the fattened calf together; and a little child shall lead them. The cow and the bear shall graze; their young shall lie down together; and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. The nursing child shall play over the hole of the cobra, and the weaned child shall put his hand on the adder's den. They shall not hurt or destroy in all my holy mountain; for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea."  (Isiah 11:6-9)

First, They Must Lose Their Parents

Why Kids Love Stories that Make Them Spook and Squirm

 

 Sabrina sees her parents in the mirror: The Fairy Tale Detectives.

 

I have often noticed that there is an uncanny pattern to be traced throughout the course of children's literature: the most popular children's tales are the dark ones. 

  

Even if they do frighten them, it really does seem that children like to read them. There is something about spooky stories that fascinates them. Stories like these are far darker than the fairy tale versions we'd like to imagine. Some adults even go so far as to forbid their children from reading them. Whether or not there is any real danger to stories about monsters and evil is yet to be proven. What is revealed here instead is that adults seem to fear these literary monstrosities more than their children. Evidently, these are not the books they'd have their child read for fear of what lies inside of them. Doubtlessly, in their mind children's books should be far lighter and fluffier than they are in reality. One might say this is a fairy tale version of the truth.

 

The irony in all this is, of course, that fairy tales have always been dark. Some of us have just forgotten.

 

 The Wolf Shows its Face: Little Red Riding Hood.

 

This phenomenon goes back to the wildly popular fairy tales once collected by the Brothers Grimm. Yet modern children's literature continues to follow in these dark footsteps. A Series of Unfortunate Events will not stop reminding us that it is a sinister and unhappy tale; Roald Dahl, the most popular children's author of all time, is full of the macabre and the disconcerting. But it doesn't end there. Stories like Neil Gaiman's Coraline are horrific enough to alarm adults. Gaiman himself claimed that it is the "strangest thing" he had ever written. He wrote that,

"It was a story, I learned when people began to read it, that children experienced as an adventure, but which gave adults nightmares."

 

An adult may puzzle over this. Indeed, a strange change comes over the mind of the practical adult when they find out that most children prefer tales about monsters and evil as opposed to books containing more comfortable and childlike ideas. I myself read these dark tales as a child, and I read them still, for they fascinate me to no end. Though the things that interest me about them now are not the things I liked about them as a child. Indeed, I never realized them then. I loved them because they were about adventure, because they thrilled me, and sometimes made me squirm. 

 

 

 The Jabberwocky: The Problem Child.

 

I believe it was in part these books that inspired in me a desire to free myself of my parents. It seems like a harsh or even humorous thing to say. Yet just how far a child dares go when they run away from home varies (it usually is a matter of blocks, but some are bolder than others). The steps halt and the tears come when a child runs to the extent of their desire to be parent-less and realizes that the big, frightful and altogether unfamiliar world is somewhere outside their door.

But, of course, this never happens to the children in the stories. Red Riding Hood does not turn around when she runs into the wolf, and despite what the rational adult would have her do, none can deny that at least Red Riding Hoods exertion into the deep dark woods and away from her mother made for a good story.

 

 The Deep Dark Wood: May Bird and the Ever After.

 

  Little Red Riding Hood meets the Wolf: Little Red Riding Hood.

 

It remains a rather obvious truth that even children's tales without monsters are usually about orphans, and, if they are not orphans, the protagonist's parents have been lost somehow. This tradition began with our first tales about children; classics like David Copperfield, Oliver Twist, Huckleberry Finn all feature children that are somehow parent-less, whether their parents are deceased or simply too incompetent to provide care. 

But, though the villain's face may change from one tale to another, as does the perpetrator that took their parents away, when it comes to children's stories, the adventure almost always begins the same way: First, the child must lose their parents, then the journey begins. 

 

 

Orphans: The Fairy Tale Detectives.

Alone in the World: The Wide Window.

 

By removing the children's guardian, they are cut loose into the world, sent adrift into trial and adversary, sometimes even into horror, all of which they will have to deal with on their own. Thus, Alice's mother does not seek her in the Looking Glass, Red Riding Hood goes into the woods alone, Coraline's parents do not crawl through the little door after her. 

Of course, no child would adamantly wish this fate upon themselves (I hope). Nevertheless, orphan-hood is romanticized, not so much because it is desired, but because it makes for a good story. If the child is parent-less, they must make their own way, find their own place. If there are monsters under their bed, there are no parents to check for them; they must take a peak themselves. If a scoundrel is after their fortune, they must outsmart him alone. If their house is being invaded by monsters, they must fight them off without adult aid. 

Thus, adventure becomes inevitable. 

Herein lies, I believe, the true appeal to the mind of a child. It lies between the motherless child and the monster, for it is here that the book reveals in full the idea that resonates so with the young mind that reads it: it reveals that the child can be capable, courageous, even heroic.

Inevitably, it was in books like these that I myself met many villains and faced many monsters. Yet, though I admit I was not always a particularly brave child, they never frightened me. Indeed, the only time these books kept me up at night was when I was busy reading them. 

Thinking back now, the only time the dark of my childhood bedroom ever scared me was when the book lay on my nightstand, still unfinished. It was then that the dark felt like the unknown pages of a still unread book, a book left stagnant amidst trial, still without an ending. It was questions like will May Bird ever make it back to the world of the living that kept me awake at night. 

 The Dark Unknown Pond: May Bird and the Ever After.

 

Ironically, my parents didn't let me finish that book, and I regret it still. I wonder sometimes how that book ends, for I never finished it. My parents forbidding was more frightening than the book itself, for it had not yet occurred to me that the ideas within a book could be dangerous, and the unknown sources of that danger scared me more than any book ever could.

At the end of the day, the truth is that any fear I might have felt was conquered when the children I was reading about conquered their monsters, be it the Other Mother, or the boogeyman.

 The Other Mother's Face: Coraline.

 

Much could be said about how adults and children experience horror differently. Even more could be written about how adults and children experience books differently. (I myself have written a great deal on this topic here on this blog.)

Yet perhaps the most fundamental question is this: What makes these creepy children's books so popular with kids? Why do kiddies like to squirm?

 

I believe, at its core, this question has a simple explanation.

 

Kids like books that are frightful because the world to them is frightful. Not only this, books like A Series of Unfortunate Events and Coraline put its child characters in the face of the frightful and yet they still feature them as heroes. Even when misfortune strikes or the monsters come knocking, these books suggest that the children stand a fighting chance. 

 

 Snatched: The Inside Story.

I have seen the following quotation attributed to many writers. But I know Gaiman was at least paraphrasing one of them (probably Chesterton) when he wrote that:

“Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten.”

 

The same is true for monsters, for Other-Mothers, and for sinister and selfish adults.

Every child will at one point face the real adversaries and true horrors around them (hopefully not to the same dramatic extent as these fictional children). 

But be it Gaiman, Chesterton, or Lewis to whom we attribute this idea, at one point or another, they all may have spoken truly when they said that there is a fundamental truth to fairy tales; not just because they teach that monsters (or dragons) can be beaten, but because they teach that the world is dark and full of evil. Brace yourself child, there are monsters out there, these tales say.

 

 The Tyrannical Editor: The Inside Story.

Yet, at the end of the day, that is not why I believe children read them. As much as monsters fascinate and entice the minds of children, the idea that truly captures their imagination is the image these books give them of themselves. This is their most important message: that, though the world is evil, they don't have to be. Thus, our child-heroes face cruelty and trial with courage, kindness, and a good heart.

As to why this scares the adult mind more than the child's... Well, the simple answer is this: The world is big and frightful, and there are monsters in it.

But perhaps it takes a child's imagination to believe and know that they could have what it takes to conquer it, or, at the least, not to let it conquer them.

      Into the Unknown World: The Bad Beginning.

If the world has you feeling anxious or even a bit frightened, I dare you to read a children's book. Revisit Narnia or Wonderland, crawl through the little door, run from the man with a uni-brow, unravel the conspiracy of the Scarlet Hand, rescue your kidnapped parents. If you're like me and you've read these books before, you already know what you'll find there. The unknown can no longer frighten you. 

Indeed, you will find that these books have something new to tell you, something that you probably never fully realized when you were a child: Nothing inspires bravery in such a fundamentally simple way as a book written for children.

As C.S. Lewis said,

“Since it is so likely that (children) will meet cruel enemies, let them at least have heard of brave knights and heroic courage. Otherwise you are making their destiny not brighter but darker.” 

~C.S. Lewis

Running Away with Fictional People: Writing Advice to Take you Off the Beaten Path

What to do When your Characters Don't Want What you Want

I read a quote once that stuck with me. I cannot for the life of me trace it, but this is the line as best as I remember it.

"I can't stop reading. The characters might do something without me."

This little line never fails to make me smile, for it perfectly captures the excitement of reading a good character driven story; of running off with fictional friends; of having grand adventures with a band of fanciful troublemakers, painting fences, or seeking treasures; sleeping in hay-stacks with wandering orphans; chasing characters who chase rabbits down holes, or crawling after them through little doors. In these situations, I don't mind feeling like the quiet friend in the bunch. In fact, there is never a better time to be the quiet friend, because everyone knows that the reader is the protagonist's closest and most reliable friend, usually being the one that follows the protagonist most closely, (till the pages end, that is).

But there's more to this simple line, where ever it comes from. It doesn't just capture the thrill of being a reader. It also encapsulates something I believe firmly about writing. In short, it suggests that characters can all too easily get away from us, go on without us, and undergo adventures or shenanigans long after the book is closed, the lights out, and the reader sleeping. 

 

Yet, while this idea is a thrill to the reader, it can keep a writer up at night. Indeed, the writer is in much closer association with the character than the reader that will later come to know them. For the writer, it can feel a bit as if the character is asking them if they can come out to play, or rather, pestering them with questions in the hope that the writer can explain their existence. Why did I have to do that? Why are we going there? What's the point of all this? Where is this story going? –These are the types of questions I imagine the character might be asking. But, of course, it isn't the character that is asking these things at all, but I, myself, the writer, the one spinning the character into their paper existence. Furthermore, the reason I am asking myself these questions is likely because I doubt the character's existence; doubt that they are in fact believable; that their actions make sense; or that they will feel real enough to the reader. It is a constant worry for any writer that their characters don't feel convincing enough, and frankly, it would be a great insult to hear that they were not.

I am fond of my characters, as any writer is. And I have come to be rather fond of these late night conversations with my characters, even if they often result in sleepless nights, in many ons and offs of the nightlight, and many quick scribbled notes, brief lines of dialog or descriptions of body language I do not want to forget in my sleep. I have come to enjoy these nights for the simple fact that I rarely get such one on one time with my characters; times in which I remove myself from the voice my narrator speaks in and start thinking in my own; start looking at my creation from the perspective of me, the life that created it. And, ironically, it is these late nights in which my characters keep me awake with the doubt that they are not real enough that my characters seem most alive to me.

I can honestly say that my wrestling with my characters does not go beyond these nights, and when the words and the rain comes, my characters take over the page. It is then that I feel a thrill like no venture as a reader as ever given me, for nothing will ever be quite as risky and as wonderful as setting a character free on the page and letting them do just what they want.

I have often heard the writely advice that a writer should control their characters, and while I understand the reasoning behind this, I cannot say that I agree.

In writing about fictional people (if that is something you have ever done, you will know what I mean), you will often find that your characters will try to get away from you. "My characters don't want to do what I want them to do," goes the complaint.

To this the sensible writer will say something like "What do you mean, they don't want? You created them, didn't you? Your characters will want what you want them to want." This is fine advice, over all.

It is, in fact, a logical argument. But the argumentative side of whether you should wrestle with your characters by editing out the parts of them that defy you and your vision for the plot is beside the point. What you should really ask yourself is this: What kind of story are you really writing? Are you writing about people, or about situations; about personality, or plot? If your characters aren't enacting the plot the way you imagined they would, maybe there's a reason for that. Maybe you should go with it. It is the character driven plot, with all its curious children and never-yielding tricksters that makes readers feel like they're adventuring with a friend, as the quote above suggested. Readers, after all, love to read about people, about fictional personalities, both grand and wonderfully simple (think of any Hobbit you ever met). When a character makes decisions which have been forced onto them by the writer, the reader can always tell because the reader is themselves a person; and when a heart tugs at you or a curiosity probes your mind we can rarely ignore it.

Ultimately, there is a very simple reason for this. We humans, while still capable of intense logic, are at the core of our being creatures of wants, of dreams, of desires. That's why history, both real and mythological, is full of people falling prone to the illogical sides of themselves; making mistakes because of it; wheeling in mysteriously gifted horses through our gates; ringing bells to awake long-sleeping witches; eating forbidden fruits; kissing sorceresses; crawling over walls to break into locked-up keeps. Characters, like people, make irrational decisions. And while I am not arguing that you should allow irrationality to rule the plot, I believe nonetheless, and very firmly, that a wonderful and wild story is created when we allow our characters to make these decisions, even if they are irrational or inconvenient to the narrator.

Consider, for example, Tolkien's Lord of the Rings. This is undoubtedly one of the most famous fictional epics of all time, and it was written because a man (namely, Tolkien) followed a Hobbit out of the Shire totally unknowing what he would find outside its borders. I myself am convinced that if Tolkien hadn't set his protagonist free from his outline and the plot's expectations Frodo would still be named Bingo and the world would have lost one of its biggest fictional adventures ever put to the page.

Maybe my advice to you is simply to write like Tolkien. Because, although the edits later on might be extensive, I believe the most unpredictable and unexpected stories occur when not even the writer can foresee exactly what lies ahead. Yes, this may be risky, maybe it's even dangerous. But you can't have adventure without a little danger. And, if you're one of those writers who writes because they first loved to read, then write like you love to read. Don't just take a reader on a journey. Go on a journey yourself. Even if you know the destination, or plan to make a few stops along the way, at least be daring enough to be curious, to run off from the charted course, to explore un-plotted territory.

What it comes down to is this: If your characters are trying to run away from you, maybe you should let them. You never know where they might take you. After all, what more could a writer want than to write about characters that actually have wants of their own.

Book-Worm; Childhood Favorites

My love for literature began before I even learned how to read. 
My passion started with my Dad. 
My Dad's bed time stories were the first stories I remember falling in love with. Whether it be a story he invented, or a re-tell of one of his favorite books, I loved it when my Dad told me stories. I often wonder what I might have become if my Dad hadn't read to me a as child. He introduced me to books like The Chronicles of Narnia, and, the book that would forever change my life, The Hobbit.
Growing up, I had more books than I had friends. 
People often thought I was shy, in some cases, they even thought I was lonely, but I rarely felt alone.
I found greater friends with-in the pages of my favorite books than I did in other kids my age. 
I never felt uncomfortable with being excluded. I never felt like I was a loner or a loser, and somehow, I never even realized I was different. Maybe it's because I spent so much time with my nose in a book, or maybe I just didn't care. 
All I know is, although I did make friends eventually, I believe growing up as a book worm shaped who I am today. The more books I fell in love with the greater became my passion for fiction. 

  
Some of my childhood favorites include Narnia, The Hobbit, The Sisters Grimm, Peter Pan, Pippi Longstocking, The Tale of Despereaux, The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane, Matt Cruse, East, Coraline, and Stardust.

The Photo-credit goes to my Dad. 
You can see more of his pictures at 
www.heinrichnikel.com

Thanks for reading to me Dad.