So, I wanted to start off my blogging with a little story of mine about a little story of mine. You see, I'm writing this story called "The Elements" (might change the name, but look for it in bookstore one day). It's pretty much my main book project; the thing I'm really intending to write up and publish one of these days. I don't want to say much about it because anyone online could steal the idea, but something interesting happened to me once while writing it which was really fascinating.
So here's the scene: there's a teenage kid who's on the run. He's all alone and ends up being in the wrong place at the wrong time since there's a gang of thugs out to get him for trespassing on their territory. They try and beat him up, but this kid's not just a normal kid. Firstly, he's super smart; secondly, he's been really well trained in fighting; thirdly, he's got these super powers... yep, maybe he's a little over powered, but he's got some weaknesses, I swear. Anyway, he manages to beat all these guys up and is left with the gang leader who is this big, hulking monster of a guy carrying a big hulking monster of scimitar (awesome Arabian sword).
Now, I had this whole thing planned out. The fight was supposed to be for the reader to show off my main character's abilities a bit and provide some action, but I also needed to get my character from point A to point B without the real bad guys finding him. So I had a brilliant idea! Have my character so impress the gang leader with his powers that the the leader helps him out, making an escape route for my hero!
So, what was the problem?
.... Well, I couldn't make my characters do that....
You see, I'd made the gang leader a really bad guy. A cold-hearted killer. It was EXTREMELY obvious just from the way he looked that he'd try and double cross my hero. And I was going to have my genius hero- my hero who built a combustion engine when he was 6, who created a working robot when he was five and who could have graduated from college at 16- I was going to have him TRUST this guy?
I almost felt my hero in my mind turn to me, look me in the eye and say "This is the stupidest idea ever. I would never do this." And when he did that I couldn't write the scene that way anymore! I just couldn't! I could write it if I changed his character and made him dumber, or got rid of the gang leader, or changed some major part of my plot, but I could not make my hero do what I wanted him to.
That was when I discovered that stories have lives of their own.
When you write a story you have to be true to your characters. If you aren't then the story sucks. Period. If your hero is afraid of snakes then he isn't going to be the calmest guy when facing a giant snake. If your hero is none too bright he's not going to figure out the genius plot of the evil mastermind. If your hero is a genius he's not going to do something as stupid as trust people who would slit his throat as soon as look at him.
Unless, of course, your hero needs to do those things and, by some miracle, is somehow able to accomplish a miracle and pull the feat off.... and hopefully that sounds a bit lame to you.
"Oh! I have a wonderful idea! Since I can't solve this conflict I'll just have everything miraculously work out!!! Because of a miracle!!!"
Deus ex machina, people. Look it up on tvtropes. But I digress...
My point is that, to a certain extent, once you endow the people, the city and the world of your story with character you have in a way injected a bit of life into them. That is what makes some stories so good! That's why you sit on the edge of your seat when a character you love is in the middle of the action! That's why you hate the truly evil villains so much! That's why I cried for Sirius and Dobby and Dumbledore!.... And yes, I'm enough of a man to admit that.
The reason for all of that is that those characters, that world, is so real to you because of that life. That soul, that spirit which the author has given it lives in those words. It really is an extraordinary thing!
...But, as a writer, it can sometimes bite you in the butt.
And that is why my character, my creation and the invention of my own mind, berated me for trying to do something so very, very stupid.
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