Something I’ve been having a lot of fun with while sticking to the Writing Into the Dark process is the unpredictability of a novel’s events.
Even as the author… most times, I haven’t a clue what’s going to happen next. Sometimes that really freaks me out, yes. But as long as I stay in the characters’ heads, as long as I can still feel/hear/see them… I just wait and watch. I let them figure it out.
Then I write down whatever it is they happen to do. And frankly, so often I’m so impressed by how they figure their way out of bad situations, lol. Because I can tell you, as the author, I’m quite certain they’re dead.
But instead… they come up with some crazy solution to get out of that particular mess. Or, it turns out they remember something that occurred or something that was said earlier in the book (or in the previous book) that nicely sets up or foreshadows something they could do or say or use in the current moment!
It’s like magic. Beautiful, incredible magic.
Except sometimes, it’s not like magic.
Sometimes, I forget the little things.
And so do they.
I almost always remember a little while later, of course, and then I have a decision to make. Do I go back and fix the thing I forgot? Or do I just roll with it, and write in the fact that I (and they) forgot into the actual story itself?
Recently, while drafting BONES IN BLACKBIRD, the third book in the Legacy of Lucky Logan series, this happened not once, but twice.
Firstly, I had Van fall asleep, and then when he was leaving the next morning, I realized belatedly he had forgotten to grab his hat before he left. And surely his hat would have fallen off while he slept. Well, that was an easy fix. I left in the forgetfulness and had Holt remind Van to grab his hat, then had Van go back to get it. (I mean, Van was hungover anyway, so it makes sense he’d forget it in the first place.)
The second one was a little bit bigger of a deal. Earlier in the book, I’d mentioned our intrepid (anti)heroes had brought along a pack horse for their 5 day journey across the desert.
Well it just so happens that at one point later in the book, they have to leave a town in a big hurry.
As I started the next chapter, I realized I’d forgotten to mention them dragging along that poor pack horse as they skedaddled out of town. Then I thought, “well that’s going to make their escape all awkward and clumsy and probably slow them down”. So I considered for a little while, and then I decided…
I’d leave the forgetfulness again.
Only this time they couldn’t go back for their pack horse or any of the supplies she was carrying.
They forgot her in their rush to leave… and now they’d lost her and half of their supplies… and water.
Yep. Gotta deal with the consequences now, folks! Lol. In any event, it did make the last two days of their 5 day journey quite a bit more difficult, and interesting, and also led to a great conversation about the fact they’d forgotten the pack horse.
IMO, these are great little organic developments. I don’t always keep in the forgetfulness, of course. Sometimes I fix it in edits. But at other times… it can really be a lot of fun, and add to the “realness” of fiction, I think. (As long as you draw attention to it in some way, of course, once you remember. If you have characters forget things… things that should be important to them like their hat (for a cowboy, anyway) or their pack horse… and then just never mention those things again, readers will catch on, realize you just plum forgot those things as an author, and get upset at you for ruining their reading experience by jolting them out of the story. This is also why you have editors and beta readers, too… to double-check that you didn’t forget forget anything, lol.)
What do you think? 🙂
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