Most writers will have
experienced the phenomenon of a character developing a mind of his or
her own and taking their story in an unexpected direction.
I've been experiencing
a fairly extreme case of this over the past few weeks.
Before you read any
further, I should point out that, although the story I'm working on
is as yet untitled and isn't anywhere near finished, there could be
potential spoilers in the following account. When you've read it, you
might want to find a friendly vampire to wipe your memory before this
story gets published anywhere. Though given how long it's taking me
to get the first one published, and the fact there are several others
further up the pipeline than this one, you have plenty of time and
you may well have forgotten all of this by then, anyway - but you
have been warned.
I wanted, for this
particular story, a "kiss and tell" article about one of
the main characters to illustrate a) that he was a bit of a playboy
and b) that another character, who was reading the article,
was a tiny bit obsessed with him. I needed a title for this and the
name of the supermodel who had written it.
It was one of those
occasions when a name popped into my head, rather than my having to
go through a mental list of all my friends and family for a name I
haven't used yet, peruse my bookshelves for a likely name among the
authors or activate a name generating app. In hindsight, it seemed
this time that the character was out there in the creative ether
somewhere already and wanted to introduce herself. Her name, she told
me, was Puffball McKenzie. Yes, I know it sounds like a daft name,
the sort celebrities saddle their kids with, but since she lives in a
parallel dimension, odd names are fine (Although there are other
characters in the same story with perfectly ordinary names that could
easily belong to some bloke you meet down the pub).
I had what I needed for
the scene I was writing. That was to be the extent of Puffball
McKenzie's part in this story.
Then Puffball
unexpectedly shows up when the aforementioned playboy character is on
a date with another woman, and almost causes a scene - except her
latest squeeze ushers her out of the restaurant before things get
ugly.
I'd decided that I
wasn't going to include an account of Puffball's encounter with the
playboy character. I already had some romantic scenes involving
characters whose relationships had a chance of going somewhere, and I
reckoned that was enough.
Puffball didn't agree.
She started telling me about it. To her credit, she didn't dwell on
the most intimate parts of the evening, but she wanted me to know how
they met and what happened immediately afterwards. She was also
showing me what she looked like; a very clear image which inspired me
to pick up a pen and draw her, even though she was still, at this
point, a very minor character.
Then, as her account of
that evening unfolded, she gave me some insights into her character.
She showed me the inside of her apartment, where absolutely
everything is either white or made from clear glass. All her clothes
are white. The one splash of colour in her apartment is the green
stems of some white roses she has in a clear glass vase on a clear
glass coffee table. She gets more and more interesting.
As she tells me what
happens in the morning, when she wakes up and finds him gone, it is
as if she wants to correct the misconceptions people might have of
her. Rather than being a cold, calculating character selling her
story for money, she is disappointed, angry and feeling rejected. She
writes the article in the heat of the moment, because she wants to
hit back at this man in the only way she can think of that could
possibly hurt him. She doesn't think through what the consequences
might be for herself, and by the time she does, it's already gone
viral.
That, I decided, is all
we need to see of Puffball. We need to get on with the main focus of
the story which involves a nuclear explosion that opens up a wormhole
between Puffball's dimension and ours, and what happens to the
characters who get sucked through it. Puffball isn't one of them;
here is where we leave her behind.
Until I started writing
about what would happen if those characters found a way back home; a
way to produce a more stable wormhole so they can move freely between
the two worlds.
Puffball wanted in on
that.
I don't know if it was
my growing sympathy for her, or part of the story she was telling me,
that had me have her find love with someone totally unexpected, but
that is what happens. That is also how she gets invited along to the
big homecoming bash of the characters who've been missing for a
couple of years. There is a closure with her and the playboy
character, who is one of the people returning. All's well that ends
well. Or is it?
Puffball seems not to
be finished with me yet. She wants to go through the wormhole. As I
write the conversations between the returners and their old friends,
it is Puffball who asks if it's possible to visit Earth. She is told
no, because passage through the wormhole had unexpected and random
effects on people (some of them got super-powers) and so it is only
really safe for people who've made the trip before.
I know exactly what
Puffball is saying to me now. "Get me through the wormhole. I
don't care how you do it. I want a super-power. I'm willing to take
the risk."
I was thinking the
story was nearly over, but it looks as if Puffball is going to
go through, and of course a bunch of people are going to have to go
through and rescue her, which is likely to result in at least one
more person getting a super-power. Strangely enough, that person
would be exactly the one Puffball would want to grant a super-power
to, given the choice.
This is how Puffball went from being just a name on an article to being a major character and a
super-heroine to boot!
What was I saying about her not being
calculating?
