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| A character sketch of Lia Falls. |
...spmarm hmn sbt.
What?
Kombna ksi tish.
Can you speak up, please?
THEY SPEAK TO ME, DAMN IT! All right. I know. I'm weird. But it's true. I hear them in my head, and sometimes I talk back. I don't allow these conversations to take place in public because I'd rather not be introduced to tall men in white coats, a padded cell, and certain types of medication. So I'll carry on in private, thank you.
Maybe it is kind of crazy to have fictional characters speaking to you. Maybe it's like a multiple personality disorder. I don't really know.
All I know is that after I've imagined a character, after my conscious brain and my subconscious brain have come to a deep understanding of who the character is, I start to feel them like the memory of an old friend.
When I think of my friend Zack back in Vermont—big, tall, masculine, but with a little boy face and a teddy bear's demeanor—I can imagine him in any situation and know how he would react. A movie quote is never far from his brain. When he sticks his hands in his front pockets his thumbs always hang out. He's got a kind heart and a gentle nature. If someone picked a fist fight with him he would try to talk his way out of it first, though I've no doubt he could lay a guy on the floor with a single blow if he wanted to. Zack is built like a grassy hillside—he may look soft on the surface, but he's a rock underneath.
Because I know Zack so well, my imagination can predict his actions. If I were to try and write a story involving him, my will would not determine his behavior. His would. I might be able to steer his actions, but his character is still going to drive his narrative.
I've had stories take drastic turns as the result of a fictional character becoming so real to me that I feel them saying, "You're writing me all wrong. I would never do that. I would do this!" And the more I listen to them and follow their character the more awesome things happen.
In Children of the Falls this happens most frequently with the character of Lia. She was the first character who really came alive to me. Right off the bat I felt like I knew who she was. All I do is set her on her course and push her around with plots and tragedies, but I never need to script her response. It's probably why I enjoy writing her so much—I'm never sure what she's going to do.
I've tried explaining this to some of my non-writing friends and they just nod their heads with a somewhat vacant smile on their faces like a person opening a Christmas gift they really don't like. "Oh, slippers. That's... nice."
So if you're reading this and you totally understand it, that means two things. 1. You're crazy like me, and 2. I like you already. Aloha! Let's be friends :-)
I must be crazy like you and you like me already. This is what happens when I write scripts. Two characters I have in my TV series idea which was originally a movie have done this for me. Drake Darrow is his own man, a bit of a loner because he was dropped off at a Catholic orphanage. He has no sense of himself because of his past, so he needs to be a loner to figure out who he is. He's sarcastic, doesn't have much faith in humanity of the Government, because he has been screwed by one arm of the Government and they were the cause of his time travel experiment going all wrong, which put him in this state of telekinesis and he resents it. He feels like a freak because of this. So there just is no trust and it is very hard to get close to him. The other character is one of his partner's that he has gotten to trust, Kitty Lange(An alias from the federal witness protection program.) Kitty is a hard tough woman from Medford Mass, whose mob past every so often catches up with her. Because she grew up around that life, she has also learned to live this loner type life. Which is why she and Drake get along. Both these characters have definitely spoken to me in the midst of writing many times. I love it most when the antagonists speak to you. That's the most fun. You sit there thinking, why you little son of a bitch, you want me to write you how? Oh well that is just plain sick. I can relate to what your saying Craig a whole lot.
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