The inevitable; The Unfolding.

The Unfolding. As I work through the second book, I find the experience more intense, more draining. When I walk home at night from my office, I frequently find myself overcome with emotion. I have to tell, no reassure, my characters that everything will be okay. I'm like the knife-wielding German in Saving Private Ryan who, having pinned an American soldier to the ground, slowly, ever so slowly, forces the knife down into the heart of his adversary. Everything will be okay...shshshsh...it's okay.  My characters, torn, weeping, beg for life, release from the torture I inflict on them. It is a cruel endeavor, an evil endeavor, if you feel, as I do, your characters to be real.

And so when the writing feels like it's lagging, when the characters are sort just walking around and I become stuck, I know what the problem is: I'm being too nice. Damn Midwestern niceness. These characters must suffer, and then when I think they've had enough, it must go even deeper.

I call it The Unfolding, a term I unceremoniously created for this blog, but a process that I've been conscious of for some time. It's a process driven by understanding protagonist and antagonist points of view and their individual wants and desires. I don't believe in plot as a preemptive construct, at least not beyond a loose outline of destinations. I likewise don't believe in writer's block. I think these two beliefs are connected. 

If I have a clear sense of character p.o.v., then protagonist and antagonist desires drive the narrative, and the plot develops organically. What passes as 'writer's block' for me is when characters plod along aimlessly. That is when I know I'm being too nice, that the antagonist has fallen asleep at the helm of his own desires. Once I realize this, The Unfolding continues.