To the Character I Had Killed Off

Dear Deceased Character,

 

I don't know why I had you killed off. Perhaps your time was simply over. Perhaps I was simply bored. 

I admit, you bothered me a little. Your practices disturbed me. I think the story will be better off without you, if somewhat less interesting. 

I must also confess that I killed you off on a whim. I guess you bothered me more than I thought you did. If it helps, you were probably going to die sooner or later. I think that much we both knew. You were a frail creature, and I never liked you. 

You were so pesky, such a persistent nuisance to me and to others. I don't think the reader will miss you. In fact, I think they'll feel a lot better now that you're gone. Even if other things continue to go wrong, they'll have that solace.  

 

Even though you're dead, you're vivid to me still. Your face is one I see clearly. Where other's are sometimes blurry, your face shines through. 

Don't worry, I won't give you away. I won't spoil your ending; won't go so far as to describe the features of your face and deem you recognizable. Who knows who might read these words once I post them on the internet. But what can I say, you were fun to write about; you and your vile ways and your vile, vivid face. 

Now you're gone without a trace. Left only in my mind. The images will get old soon enough, now that I won't be writing about you anymore.

As of yet, no one else knows that you're dead. No one but my most trusted advisor who said with a smile that your death scene was one of the best I'd ever written.

What can I say, dear Deceased Character, killed by a the writer's whim: you were fun to write about, that much I've admitted. 

But the truth is, killing you off was more fun still. The second I thought of your demise, I was committed, and the plot permitted it just as well. 

And so, I thought, I might as well do it. As they say, all's well that ends well. 

And you know, I think you ended well, ended in good glorious drama. And because all's well that ends well, you've become better for it; become more sufferable now that you've ended, more manageable, really. 

I like you better now that you're dead.

 

And if I write a flash-back, well, all I can say is that I hope you're not in it; I pray the plot will not permit it.

May we never meet again,

                                             

Why Tolkien Left Middle-Earth

Wisdom From Gandalf on the Nature of Stories

"It has been brought forth and must now go its appointed way in the world, though naturally I take a deep interest in its fortunes, as a parent would of a child. I am comforted to know that it has good friends to defend it against the malice of its enemies."

~Tolkien on The Lord of the Rings

 

In a letter that Tolkien may have never actually sent, he recounted a peculiar conversation he once had with a man at Oxford whose name he had forgotten.

He could recall little else about the gentlemen of mystery other than that he was well known, though ill-remembered by Tolkien later on, despite the interesting conversation he shared with him.

This conversation took place somewhere neigh twenty years after the publication of The Lord of the Rings. Though the exact date of it is unknown, it was by it that Tolkien believed to have discovered the answer to a well-worn question of his. Remarkably, the answer was, as Tolkien later recalls, offered to him as if by Gandalf himself! 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

(some things), Tolkien claimed "may explain to some extent why it (The Lord of the Rings) 'feels' like a history; why it was accepted for publication; and why it has proved readable for a large number of different kinds of people... It does not fully explain what has actually happened."

What a strange question. Yet to be sure the answer cannot be horribly simplified by the simpleminded, one should note that Tolkien was not asking about the logistical explanation for his success. 

When a reader asks a similar question of the author (namely how a work was created? or where its inspiration came from?) it does not seem to the inquirer nearly as large a question. The word why is not used, after all, and questions that deal in where and how usually seem far more traceable than the the large untraceable why.

A great many readers did ask this of Tolkien. Questions like "where did your inspiration come from?" or "how did you come with these ideas" plagued him. As a younger man he took the time to explain the mystery of his discovery of Middle-Earth. As he got older, he had little patience for it.

But naturally, when the writer doesn't supply a suitable answer, the reader will try to solve the mystery themselves. Usually they will seek to do this in small ways, like examining the things they encounter that remind them of the work (such as other works of art), or inspecting the authors lives, both of which Tolkien hated. Some inquirers were more persistent, however. Many wrote to Tolkien, asking him for answers. Some were lucky enough to interview him.

Yet when the man whose name Tolkien could remember asked him a similar question (though greatly disguised by his words) Tolkien was suddenly and expectantly given an answer by someone whom one might suppose far wiser than he himself: namely, Gandalf. 

"I think I can now guess what Gandalf would reply...", Tolkien wrote. For just as Tolkien dismissed the inquiry, the mysterious gentleman fell silent, and stared "fixedly" and said, in a voice much like Gandalf's,

"Of course you don't suppose, do you, that you wrote all that book yourself?"

"Pure Gandalf!", Tolkien states.

And then, being well familiar with Gandalf and his ways, he considered his answer.

"I was too well exposed with G. to expose myself rashly, or to ask what he meant. I think I said: 'No, I don't suppose so any longer.'"

All in all, the conversation echoes of Gandalf's advice to Frodo. His words to Frodo in the Mines of Moria are not so different, in a way. No one can put one in one's place quite so simply and thoroughly as Gandalf, whether that be to put one back where one belongs, or bring one forth and out onto the greater way.

'I wish the Ring had never come to me. I wish none of this had happened.'
Gandalf: 'So do all who live to see such times, but that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us. There are other forces at work in this world, Frodo, besides that of evil. Bilbo was meant to find the Ring, in which case you were also meant to have it. And that is an encouraging thought.”

One cannot help but feel that Tolkien was likewise meant to find Middle-Earth and all that happened in it. (He always said that Middle-Earth was his discovery, not his invention.)

One could say a great deal about why Tolkien's creation has remained so astounedly successful. (I know I could). But perhaps that has little to with Tolkien himself and much more to do with those that aided him in its creation. C.S. Lewis and his youngest son Christopher Tolkien certainly come to mind.

But maybe it wouldn't be so crazy to say that Gandalf helped a little too.

One can easily chuckle about this notion. But it is, after all, a strange relationship an author has with their characters. They are not really "theirs", nor are they fully of them. Even those that resemble the author (as Tolkien claimed Faramir did) are not really theirs to keep.

The author has them only for a time, like a friend that they know and love for a short while who will one day move away. The author may at times wonder how that friend is doing, they might even consider writing to them, but it is unlikely that they ever will. 

Their characters have passed into the Grey Havens, a place only attainable from afar. One may catch glimpses of that distant shore, but neither reader nor writer will ever walk there in this lifetime. The pages of a book work the same way for us as the roundness of the earth does for the worlds of men: the best we can do is go back to where we started, travel round the globe, go there and back again, and start anew.

Eventually the author must let go of their characters. This is an inevitable truth. Even those that refuse to do so will eventually find that their characters are not the same; that they are less alive than they once were. Indeed, many writers suddenly find that they are unable to write about their characters. It is as if they aren't there anymore, living in the hole where they once dwelt; all that remains are the writer's memories of them and what they might have said or done in a given situation. But the story is over, and its characters, like its author, must move on eventually.

Many wise authors have abandoned sequels to their great works. Thus, their story ends well and its characters are allowed to retire (whether they pass into death and legend, or to have untold adventures on the road that goes ever on). And so, Bilbo walks down the road to Rivendell at the start of The Fellowship of the Ring, and not even Tolkien was able to follow.

In the same letter in which he recounted this conversation, Tolkien, in words that seem to rekindle Bilbo's own narrative tone, wrote that

"Looking back on the wholly unexpected things that have followed its publication ... I feel as if an ever darkening sky over our present world has been suddenly pierced, the clouds rolled back, and an almost forgotten sunlight had poured down again. As if indeed the horns of Hope had been heard again, as Pippin heard them suddenly."

And that is where the author stays, eventually: retired into the routine of their own life with abundant memories of their adventures, now behind them. His letters reveal just how often Tolkien would return to his memories of Middle-Earth, in one way or another, reminiscing about the events of his works like once lived adventures he had been fortunate enough to witness.

After all, Tolkien knew well that

"The L.R. (The Lord of the Rings) does not belong to me."

If it had, he may have stayed there forever; might have returned there often to walk in its hills or have tea with Bilbo. Indeed, one would like to think he could. But Bilbo doesn't live in Bag End anymore. 

What a sad thought this is. And yet, if one really thinks about it, one cannot help but feel that it is better this way. For all great adventures end eventually. It is only so that new adventures can be had, and a new Hobbit can come to live at Bag End. As Tolkien wrote long before his journey through Middle-Earth was over,

"So comes snow after fire, and even dragons have their endings."

(The Hobbit)

 

 

It was by discovering Middle-Earth that a desire was in me awakened to write and to create things that likewise arouse such fondness in others. (How marvelous it is to be fond of a place that one can carry in one's bag, in one's mind, and in one's heart! Only books can fit worlds in such little spaces; can cram worlds to explore and get lost in into words, and keep hearths to sit by and call home into paper!)

But reading Tolkien's letters has reminded me that all things have to end. Books always run out of pages sooner or later. That is the nature of things. But it is both a sadness and a blessing. For it is only in ending that they can become fond memories.

 

 

 

 

I may still be in the midst of my own adventure. And while I think often of the day when I can look back on all that I have said and done with fondness, I cannot forget to take the time to enjoy the journey for all the joys and struggles that it still has to offer me.

Even Tolkien had to leave Middle-Earth eventually, after all. But I am not yet ready to leave mine.

My book will run its course one day, and then the words will leave me. I may write about other things, but nothing will ever again be written about the realm I once knew and walked. Even an author can overstay their welcome in their world.

For now, I know that at least that it is not ready to leave me. There is much still to discover, and I am not finished with it yet.

 

On goes the road, as ever and always old stories continue to give way to new ones.

Writing in the Rain

Everyone has got their muse. Mine just happens to be the rain. 

 

 

 

I don't know how this really started. I just know that one day I convinced myself that all the best things I'd ever written happened on rainy days. 

Over time, I have come to rely on it for that; that when the rain comes, the scene will get written, the chapter completed, writer's-block beaten. 

 

Occasionally something good will come to me on a sunny day, but it takes a dedicated kind of focus and a calmness of the mind to bring me there. That being said, all my sunny-day-scenes tend to feel more peaceful, sometimes sad. Rarely are they of the same kind of impact or vitality as the things I write when it rains. 

 

Writing in the rain has its upsides and its downsides. It's both erratic, and reliable. 

When it doesn't rain for weeks on end, I feel as desperate for it as the earth around me. I feel parched, dried up in my creativity, like the thirsty plant shrivels. 

And yet, when the clouds come over me, I know that today I may write again. It always rains eventually, and when the drought ends, so does my writer's block. 

 

Over the years, the metaphor has only become more perfect. How sporadic rain can be. Just like inspiration, it sometimes comes when you least expect it, or don't want it at all; when you have prior engagements and you have to chose to either duck-out and feel guilty for missing life, or miss out and feel regret for the words that might have been written. Inspiration waits for no one. And the storms don't plan their schedule around me.

And so, I plan around it, when I can. I look at the weather forecast and make excuses on days when I want to slip away; do nothing but listen to the tap of the rain on my window and the click of my quick fingers typing, nothing but cross empty pages, showering them with curled letters, little dotted words that drizzle and then drench into paragraphs.

Ah, yes: the rain, it comes like a river. 

But then there was a day this summer when it rained so much, buckets filled and spewed over, saplings drowned, every dirty window for miles was washed clean, and all I could do was sit and look, and watch the rain fall. I don't think I wrote more than a page that day. 

 

 

 

 

I don't know what the lesson here is, other than that maybe there's a balance to everything. Just like words don't always come when it rains; just like how, a few weeks after that rainy day on which nothing was written, I wrote the best scene I'd written all summer on a hot humid day; in the same way that long busy winters always give way to rich and rain-full summers in which so much is written, writing comes with ups and downs. 

Rain and sun, inspiration, depression. Sometimes it rains, and words fall like a waterfall. Sometimes there are other things to do, like to sit and simply watch the rain fall. 

 

When it comes down to it, I'm a writer on rainy days and on sunny ones; I'm a writer in winter, and in summer, whether I'm writing or not. 

For all of these things are part of it, you write, and you live, and then sometimes you write some more. And occasionally, all it takes to be a writer is to sit and listen to the rain fall and let your keyboard be still.

 

 

 

Writing When You're in a Hurry

How to Write When You're a Whirlwind

A Whirlwind: A chaotic rush, fast approaching, swiftly passing, never lasting.

How can you write in the midst of a drought when writing for you feels like a whirlwind? How can you write when you climb your hill in expectation, let lose your hair, but find no breeze to lift you?

And still the wind is on your mind. You're too aware of your own breath when its calm; too aware of the limitations of your own existence.

Writing is like a turbulence of words that overcomes you; but you, with your butterfly net, you who puts out buckets and basins to collect it when it falls, catch so little of it. You find that the wind cannot be caught in nets; find that still water is too tranquil, too unlike rain, far too tamed by your small vessel to offer much inspiration.

  

You may wander the fields afterwards, once the storm has spent itself. You look for lost treasures in the tillage, things you missed that the earth didn't already take from you. But if there are seeds in the earth, maybe the storm will make way for things to grow.

They grow in the calm, even when you're not looking, even less when you do (you cannot watch a sapling sprout in your slow-human-seconds). But did you plant the right seeds?

Let us dig and find out if your seeds have what it takes.

You planted white things; planted paper; planted sleeplessness; planted an alphabet by the keys of an old typewriter. You planted the books you once read, now decomposed and rotted in half-remembered, dirt-stained passages. You planted half formed visions, hoping that they'd grow. You planted feelings, also half-forgotten because you never wrote them down. You planted patience, such small simple seeds, the whirlwind could take them, and you'd decide you do not need them (you'd rather watch for storms). You planted watering cans with rusted spouts with which to do the watering (how counterproductive writers are). You planted faulty scales with which to measure the greatness of your rain-water because you wondered once how much rain it takes to make a pond, a lake, an ocean. (How many words it takes to write a book, I've always wondered. But who has ever counted?)

You may regret ever taking up gardening as you sit there, with dirt on your knees and in your finger nails, with leaves in your hair still damp from the last rain.

But then you find one pretty seed in the earth, already sprouting roots, and you know: this one craves, this one desires, this one hopes. Seeds turn into trees sometimes, and you can feel it by the determination of its little roots that this one wants to grow; wants to know what it will be when it grows.

Trees take a long time to grow, so much longer than flowers. Trees turn into books sometimes; not just one, but hundreds, even thousands. How many words can trees hold on their pages, I wonder? More leaves than they've ever sprouted, surely.

You forget sometimes how much time it takes for trees to grow, that what you plant today won't grow until a great many tomorrows.

But how counterproductive writers can be when they doubt themselves; when they plant seeds just to dig them up again, forgetting that it takes so much more for things to grow than a planter, a gardener, a caretaker. Leave it in the dirt next time.

Next time, let the storm do the watering, but get up in the morning and water it some more. Seeds grow slower when you watch them, but people say that they like to be talked to.

You, you who writes in whirlwinds, you will talk to it sometimes, late at night when you can't stop thinking; when you put words to your own mind instead of paper, writing imaginary books in the space between waking and dreaming, because writing is so much harder when you're distracted by your wakefulness.

Books get written sometimes; out of paper, words, and things-once-read. Books get written, with patience, with doubt, and an untraceable craving, deeper than the pen can delve. The desire for books to exist, to write, to pass on stories, is as ancient as the once young sapling's wish to grow up to be a tree.

Books get written sometimes. But only if you give it time to grow.

So next time when you plant your garden, plant a little time.

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.