Whose Story Is It Anyway?
Newsflash: My story “Bedfellow” is in the current issue of KNOCK. It’s a fairy tale of three CEOs trying to win the favor of a mighty senator.
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So, with my thesis comfortably (more or less) in the hands of my second reader, I’ve been turning my attention to the next project. I’m taking a story I wrote for NaNoWriMo a few years back, a fifty-thousand-plus word extravaganza that proved to me I could write a novel, and re-writing it from scratch. I’m keeping the core idea and most of the characters, but otherwise I’m tearing it down and starting over. What I had was all right, but it had several weaknesses because I didn’t know enough of the craft then. I feel as though I am now in a position to tell the story the way it deserves to be told.*
And, conveniently, I’m taking a craft class in writing the young adult novel. Good timing, because my protagonist is just out of high school. The novel begins during the summer after his high school graduation and continues into his freshman year of college, so it might not qualify as young adult on a technicality. At the last residency, guest faculty defined the young adult novel as stopping with high school and the summer after – anything after that moved into adult fiction. I’m going to leave the categorization to readers (and perhaps publishers, if all goes well).
Anyway, as part of this week’s assignment, we interviewed our protagonists and antagonists. The protagonist interview went well. He was engaging, funny, gave me useful information and even told me a story about himself that I didn’t know.
My antagonist, however, didn’t want to be interviewed and berated the first question I asked him:
Q: What stands out to you most from your high school experience?
A: Honestly, I know I consented to give you an interview, but this is what you want to ask me?
Now, I’ve heard of characters taking over a story. I even have some experience with characters making unexpected decisions in the middle of scenes and taking chapters places I didn’t expect them to go. But I’ve given my share of character interviews in the past, and this is the first time a character has actually talked back to me. So, I did what I think any self-respecting writer would do in my position. I threatened to give his role to another character.
I wasn’t kidding, either. I’d’ve done it, though I wonder now if that would have been a mistake. A novel needs a strong, capable antagonist to bring out the best in the protagonist. My story would have suffered if I had tossed aside a powerful, intelligent villain with complex motivations just because he sassed me.
Mind you, this guy has no existence except whatever I write for him, so when he calls my questions jejune (as he did later in the interview) is this some strange way for me to insult myself? I chose the questions, after all. I wanted to do the assignment, so it wasn’t as though I were conducting this interview under duress. And yet, my electronic homunculus disrespected his creator. Should I be worried about what this says about me?
I don’t think so. I created a character whose power and intelligence made him haughty, exacerbated by a cruel streak. He may believe his goals and motivations justify his decisions and actions, but no one would call him a nice guy.
In other words, he’s exactly what I need him to be. And if that means that he has his own ideas about how I should be doing things, well, then drafting and revising this manuscript is going to get very interesting.
*Don’t interpret that as me saying I now know all I need to know about writing. There’s always more.
