Accidents happen. And sometimes these are happy accidents. This is true of everything in life from finding a job to driving a car to writing a novel. What are happy accidents for a novelist? Well, they can be a lot of things. Perhaps that character in Chapter Three whose only purpose was to bring drinks to the table can suddenly play a significant role in Chapter Seventeen. Or you randomly explained how that serial killer escaped police custody and find out that it's actually a major plot point later on. There are lots of little accidents that happen when we're writing, even if we like to plot out each and every little detail.
This week I ran into a happy accident of my own while writing my current story. Weeks ago, when I had just started on my current novel, I was writing Chapter One (because I was at the beginning, of course). I had a couple of random characters in that chapter whose only purpose was to allow the protagonist to have a conversation with someone of no significance. Having conversations with someone who doesn't matter is what this particular character does, and he does it frequently.
Well, this week I was working on Chapter Twenty-Four. I'm basically halfway though this first draft. And suddenly the characters from the first chapter made a reappearance. They became useful in a way I'd never anticipated. I'd certainly never planned on ever using them again. But they just fit the situation and I didn't have to do much to establish them as characters because they had already been introduced. Okay, so I have to go back and tweek Chapter One just a little (by about ten words). No problem.
The point is that happy accidents result in some of the best parts of a book. No matter how much we plan out a story, it will inevitably surprise us. And this is the best part of writing a novel.
I was working on a particularly intense part of my next novel this week and it just wasn't coming together. It wasn't writer's block because I could write. It was more like I was writing the wrong thing. My prose was off and the words were not sticking to the page. It just wasn't happening for me this week.
After much thought, I realized what the problem was. I wasn't digging deep enough. The emotion wasn't there and without that emotion, this particular scene was going to fall flat and would not contribute to the final novel. And if it wasn't going to contribute, I needed to either cut the scene or fix the problem.
Cutting the scene was not an option, so I had to fix it. I had to find the emotion that would fuel the scene. This is often the key to writing a novel. Of course, it's easy to say "find the emotion." It's much harder to actually do it. After three days of agonizing over this, I turned to the most emotional form of writing I know -- poetry.
I wrote the scene as poetry instead of prose. I let it form in verse and suddenly my brain was engaged. I was digging for the real meat of the scene and leaving behind that which just didn't fit. If there wasn't room for it in the poem, it didn't belong in the prose. Once I had the entire scene written as a poem, I went back and converted the poem into prose. And I am immensely pleased with the results.
Did this take me a little longer than simply writing the scene would have? Well, yes (if I'd actually been able to write the thing in a satisfying way). But the results are more than worth the effort. So if you find yourself in a bind while writing your first novel (or your tenth), try using a little bit of poetry to reengage a sluggish brain.
I was giving a lecture at the local university this week and we were talking about how to choose what to write. Which genre should you pick? Fiction or non-fiction? And inevitably someone piped and and said that writers should only write what they know.
I hate this little bit of "advice" that seems to pop up frequently. It really doesn't help anyone. Why should a writer confine herself (I'm a woman, I'm going to use the feminine here; no offense to the guys) to what she currently knows when she can go out and learn just about anything. It's a limiting viewpoint and not something I subscribe to. Especially when it comes to giving advice to students, since they don't know as much now as they will 10 years from now. They could get stuck in a mentality that will never lend itself to the best they're capable of.
So I amended the statement. My exact words were, "Let's change that up a little bit and say that you should write what you're interested in. You can always go out and learn something new." What does this mean? Well, maybe you want to write a non-fiction book on learning to ride horses but you've never even touched a horse in your life. You can still write the book. Get out there and learn to ride and write a book about it.
Doesn't this mean that you're now writing what you know? Well, yes, but you didn't know how to ride a horse before you got the idea for the book. The point is that you should never let the statement "write what you know" direct your writing. Instead, go with your heart. What do you love to write about? Horses? Fantasies? Murder mysteries? We all have things we love, and we should direct our efforts to these areas.
If you can do this, you'll soon find that the words just pour out of you and take their place on the page.
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