Wednesday, November 8, 2017

The Character Who Just Showed Up

This AC/DC T-shirt is quintessential Harlan,
the character who just showed up.
Around the time Solid Ground was released earlier this year, I penned a series of posts about my writing process and my journey to publication.

The articles were initially published on various book sites, but with lots of new readers and social media friends, I've decided to re-issue them on my blog. Here's the third installment.

Let me start by saying this — I’m a writer who generally balks when other writers say characters acted on their own or storylines took twists the writers never could have expected. It’s all in our heads, right? It’s not magic, it’s plotting. Having said that…

Most of the characters in Solid Ground were there from the beginning. My damaged main character, Conor, and his Buddhist boyfriend, Will, both existed from the moment I conceived the story. Conor’s beloved Vegas-loving grandmother and his judgy evangelical Aunt Doris, even his not-so-important and somewhat peripheral boss, Marshall — they all existed in my head when I first put pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard). But not Harlan, Conor’s smart-ass, sixteen year-old, Florida cracker neighbor. This brash kid from the sticks was nowhere near when I began writing Solid Ground. Still, from the moment he appeared on Conor’s front porch, a cigarette dangling from his lip and a tattered AC/DC concert T-shirt hanging from his scrawny frame, I knew exactly who Harlan was. What I didn’t know was how much work he would do for my story.

Harlan was an interesting kid, so I let him stay awhile. I explored his past and his personality, and I realized he offered a great deal to Solid Ground. I won’t tell you everything about Harlan, but here are just a few of the things this unplanned character does for my story. 

First, the kid’s overly confident smart-assery provides welcome comic relief to the story and to Conor, whose storyline offers plenty of stress and an abundance of costly wrong turns. Second, descriptions of Harlan’s hometown and his central Florida upbringing give the story a more authentic view of place and setting. Third, Harlan’s willingness to help Conor illustrates a central theme of Solid Ground, which is that we have to learn to be open to the unexpected — the teenager’s support is not something Conor anticipates, or even recognizes. Lastly, through Conor’s interaction with Harlan, a character whose age, experience, and personality are significantly different from anyone else in the story, the reader sees an added dimension of Conor, like watching a coworker whom you’ve never seen outside the office playing with his kids in a park. 

I’ll probably never remember the exact genesis of Harlan, but I’m grateful he and his mother left their “backwater shithole in central Florida” and moved next door to my main character. I’m not saying every unplanned guest who shows up in a manuscript needs to stay, but when Conor (and I) needed him, Harlan grew organically from the narrative, sprouting from the story like a weed, or a wildflower.

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