My latest WIP has failed to gel within my mind. I continued to force my main character into the lime-light. Time and again, the fellow held up his hands and shied away.
Wrong protagonist.
I knew this instinctively, but kept to my plans with the boy, Rogan, and his character arc. I thought I wanted the story to be about him. He finally convinced me he’d prefer second string.
The story, it seems, would favor my chosen antagonist as lead, the guy who wants to infect the world with his CRISPR engineered virus that kills 99% of those infected and leaves survivors *changed*.
I finally realized why the boy was not the right guy: I’d rather have the bad guy win. All I needed to do was to list out separately what I’d rather have happen in any story I write. Akin to M.R.Carey’s break-out novel The Girl With All The Gifts, it’s the infected leader, the author convinces you, who should persevere and prevail. The GGR, as I’ve imagined, necessary to alter humanity’s understanding of itself, that is, the Great Global Reset.
So, I’ll be taking my sinister lead and try to sway readers into siding with his vision. It feels better already. I guess I should follow my instincts more often.
Anonymole - apocryphal agitators 
It seems like you have a plan now, and I cannot say that I dislike it. Antagonists can be very entertaining.
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without…without…
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No one took a moment to recognize and praise Girl with all the Gifts. I shall be the first to do so. I believe I read it awhile back upon your recommendation. Either way, I get your point. Now, if only I can get in and out of here with PH noticing or responding.
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Hi A. Mole,
I’m sure any germane comments I could make on this topic would be worthless, so let me just say, hey it is sort of good to be alive! I recently read something Chekhov noted that went like this, people are always criticizing life like they don’t like it, yet they carry an inordinate amount of fear about dying. I thought that was pretty good. A. Mole, life is filled with fucked up stuff and great stuff and someday all of this will end and then where the fuck will we be? I got a check for $128 from Amazon. Jan is probably spending it right now on shoes. Nice, as they destroy the world and enslave all of those poor bastards in the warehouses. Thanks. Duke P.S. I just found a song written by a blind guy, it is called “I Trawl the Megahertz”. It is a sad, long suite to a lonely woman who has been fucked over by life and love. He picked up her story while listening to the radio.
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FM only then… Though AM’s khz can bounce the Ionosphere, deliver foreign tongue to jungle and desert alike.
If Bezos is payin’ you, best have a drink and celebrate. His tax is high and matches the Prime Directive: Main Street be damned.
Point a narrow radio beam to the galactic center and read your poetry. In a million years ET will rejoice in your honor. Else, our works will crawl into caves and molder as mache’ base to stalagmites.
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We never know who will jump out and who will fade until it all stops working. Or in my case when a guest pops up who makes a lot of what was already there look sophomoric. A lot of what was in-the-can becomes in-the-shit can. It’s a good thing to let WIPs simmer as opposed to the rush to “publish” or complete.
You should ALWAYS listen to the cosmic radio, and when it drifts off channel remember to not go running around trying to invent shit yourself to rub into form. Here’s one from a famous feminist AND author who might singlehandedly be behind an entire genre, if we’re pigeonholing…
Invention, it must be humbly admitted, does not consist in creating out of void, but out of chaos. – Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
And like Michelangelo, holy shit – the sculpture was already there in the stone. His job was to get it out
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I recognized the problem when I ran through the other three main characters in my two novels and 1/3 finished story — they all had solid, compelling goals. In this latest effort, the kid’s was slight if there at all.
Fortunately, I think 3/4th of the work done still fits the story. Now I have to shrug the guise of a bumbling youth and don the cape of a mad man.
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I read somewhere goal orientation and plot aren’t all they’re cracked up to be. If the characters learn something, or get somewhere, or resolve something that ran into them on the way to somewhere else, that’s good. Read the first Raylin, or Maximum Bob. Most of Jack London starts in the middle. What, exactly, is the plot of Tom Sawyer? What’s his (fucking) ultimate goal?
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Exactly. Tom Sawyer is just some kid to whom, and who in turn causes, shit to happen. A meandering, pointless story of foolish youth. Clemens being clever with his aimless, meandering story telling.
I, on the other hand, need my characters to have a fucking goal to spur them forward. So that, at the end, you know whether they’ve failed or succeeded.
Starting in the middle? Absolutely, but some primeval motivation must still be engendered, some gut-twisting need that must be satisfied. Else, who gives a flying-fuck whether the character live or dies.
Kill that little conniving bastard Sawyer, I don’t give a shit about that prick.
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Well, at least we now know what happened to storytelling and the morality play, arts which are as we speak fighting their Alamo on the stand-up comedy circuit.
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An interesting change-up. It didn’t cross my mind while reading the chapters you provided, but now that you mention it, that would give the story a very unique feel.
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As I proceeded in the story, it became evident that the timeline was difficult to manage. That and the fact that the boy had no real motivation. No Hero’s Goal. No buried-deep-gut reason to continue.
The other fellow, whom you’ve not met, does.
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