Who's Driving This Thing, Anyway?

Part Three: Who’s Driving This Thing, Anyway?
Note: This is part three of a short series inspired by a long footnote in a previous post. Click here for Part One: The Muse and Part Two: Writer's Block.

Let’s review. What does a good story* need?
> Characters.
> Motivation and conflict for said characters.
> A plot, in which said characters do interesting things (presumably tied to said motivation and conflict).
> A setting, where said characters will do said interesting things.
There are arguably others, but those are the basics.

So when I ask who’s in charge of the story, the answer is clearly the characters, right? I mean, look at ‘em! They’re all over the place up there! The book is about them, for heaven’s sake. They must be the ones telling us what to do...

Mmmmm, no. No, no, no, no, nononononononono. We, the writers, are driving. We are in charge of shaping the story—the path the characters take—to make it “good” (that is, structurally sound, full of character development, compelling, etc.**).

Sometimes, though, we talk as if our characters are the ones who are in charge.

For example, I decided to switch one of the characters in my last book from an incidental tertiary character to a major secondary character. But, ew. Who wants to talk about it like that? Instead, I sometimes say things like, “Yeah, he decided he had more story to tell and he wasn’t ready to be written out of the book yet. Who knew? *chuckle, chuckle*” Now, obviously, he didn’t decide anything. He’s not real***. I’m the writer and I was in charge of the story. I was the one who decided to give him a bigger role.

I think this sort of thing is all in good fun. It’s a way for us to pay metaphorical tribute to the life we give our characters in the stories we tell; as if we’re saying our characters are so real, they’ve taken on a life of their own.

Where we get into trouble, I think, is when we forget that our characters really aren’t real, that they don’t, in fact, have lives of their own. We lose sight of the fact that their lives, their journeys, are wholly shaped by us and that it’s our responsibility to literally bend their lives to serve the story.

I understand how it happens. Hell, I’ve been there myself. (See yesterday’s post on ignoring the twinge…) You start talking a little bit of silliness like I did above, breathing some autonomy into your characters just for the fun of it. That continues for a while and suddenly there’s this little shift in perception. You forget that you’re just playing around and you begin to believe the words you’re saying. A little further down the road and you’re making narrative decisions based on what your characters feel like doing, rather than what the story needs.

I’m certainly not saying we can’t talk about our characters as if they’re real. Gawd, how boring would that be? I’m only suggesting this sort of thing needs to be handled with care and that we must always, always remember that we, the writers, are the ones in charge of the story. This, I feel, is a deeply important responsibility. It is one of the secret ingredients that will create amazing stories, that will spin the magic threads that connect a reader’s heart to the words on your pages, that will slice through the bullshit and bring forth Truth.

Tomorrow's post will be Part Four: Accountability


*In this case (as with most of my posts), I’m specifically talking about fiction.
**Yeah, what makes a story “good” is a whooooooole other post. :)
***Oh, the tragedy…