When Bad Things Happen to Good Characters

Have you ever characters ever completely surprised you? Have you ever been surprised by what they all of a sudden do, or what you all of a sudden do to them? I plotted out a novel last month and depressed myself by killing off the main character’s best friend. I don’t think I’ll ever get around to writing the novel (at least not soon) but it just didn’t work unless the friend died, but I didn’t want him to die! Struck down in the prime of his life by a careless driver just to make the main character realize his place in the world and how to seize it.

Yesterday night one of my characters (different story) told me she had cancer. I was shocked. I never saw that coming. She young. Really young for cancer. And she never told me before, never told anyone because she was trying to start a new life. She moved away to college in remission, so much more grown up than everyone else because she’d faced death but also so much more immature because she was dead set on experiencing everything without regard to consequence before she ran out of time. And after that move she never told anyone because she didn’t want to be the sick girl anymore, didn’t want to be cancer-girl. And she got her wish for years. But now time’s up and she doesn’t know how she wants people to treat her. Certainly, her family’s there for her, but what about all these friends, these romances, this life I’ve created for her – what about them? Does she tell them? Does she let them in on the secret that she’s been someone else for the past years, someone not herself, that she’s been someone she wanted to be someone who wasn’t cancer-girl?

Some writers have trouble letting bad things happen to their characters. Or letting things bad enough happen to their characters. These writers inevitably suffer from boring prose. Not me. Apparently I thrust my characters right into the fray, right into the biggest struggle there is: that of life and death. Where other’s tentativeness causes them constipation my tenaciousness causes me heartache. I see now why some writers have trouble letting bad things, truly bad things, happen to their characters. We all like our characters and doing this … well, it hurts.

I think about the best friend that I killed off in the earlier story and I am reminded of Stranger than Fiction. It’s enough to creep an author out the thought that it may all somehow overlap with realty. But until I get that precipitous phone call I’ll let my characters keep surprising me. And when they tell me these things I will write them out, no matter how much it pains me.

Special Harry Potter Edition

Did you know that over 12 million copies of Harry Potter were pre-ordered? … And that's just in the United States. The British Parcel Service (or whatever they call themselves) states that they have 600,000 copies set for Saturday delivery and that’s not counting the copies in stores there. Or in stores around Europe, China, Taiwan and the rest of the world!

Talk about the power of a book.

P.S. Now would be a particularly bad time to start arguing that books are in decline.

Message from Above

(fiction)
George never liked being here. Churches made him itchy. They always had. Mass made him nervous. Ever since his brother had let one rip in the eighth grade and Mrs. Donahue had let him have it, George had been terrified of passing gas during mass. Itchy and constipated he sighed and genuflected, surrendering to an hour spent sitting on a hard wooden bench next to his mother. But he came every Sunday that he was home because of his mother. Because going to school two thousand miles away meant that he could still keep up pretenses with his mother.

He’d been to fancy new churches. Baptist churches billing themselves as “Christian” without alluding to denomination. Churches with reclining chairs cushier than those in movie theaters. And it just didn’t work for him. Church was pain. Sitting through it should be a discomfort otherwise Mass was easy and if it was easy then you obviously weren’t making enough of a sacrifice to God. George knew that anything worth anything involved suffering, involved compromise and giving something up. George understood that he was young and selfish and he liked being both young and selfish. That’s why he didn’t like church and why he didn’t keep girlfriends. He kept girls, yes, but never girlfriends, nothing where he might have to put someone else first.

He spent the hour of the service thinking of a myriad of things including the young priest’s new hair. Father Patrick had grown it out recently and it was now long enough to tie back. Word was that he liked it and planned on keeping it. The little old ladies offered to give him free hair cuts or the less skilled ones just tried to badger him into it but he just smiled benevolently at them and they left whispering about rumors of a bet that got him grow it out. George didn’t listen to the rumor, he knew the truth. It was a bet, he’d been there when it was made.

They were exiting the church, George a few steps before his mother, when a piece of plaster bigger than a grapefruit broke from above the door frame above and landed between George and his mother. He’d felt it pass behind him, the breeze that it had created on his neck, and knew even before he met Father Patrick’s eyes that it had narrowly missed his head. He didn’t move, just met Father Patrick’s stare like a deer caught in the open. His mother, looking up from the plaster she had also been starring at met his eyes and patted her son on the shoulder. “George,” she said, “maybe you shouldn’t come to church with us anymore.” He should have known his mother was a sharp enough woman to see through pretenses.

Obscene Road Signs

While out running recently I discovered the following road sign. And while it did not stop me in my tracks it did keep my eyes off the sidewalk for some time.

Perhaps it's that I have a vulgar lexicon, but if someone mentioned a "speed hump" to me in conversation I'd be forced to assume they were talking about a quickly performed sexual favor. And at 25 mph it would be a very quick sexual favor.

Apparently in other lexicons a "speed hump" is a raised intersection that certainly presents no threat to my SUV, actually it's only mildly noted when cradled by my behemoth's awesome suspension. But someone felt the need to take two mild intersections and replace the YIELD signs -- yes, that's how busy it was, and still is, it didn't even warrant a full stop -- with an asphalt hump.

Talking with a resident of the neighborhood has enlightened me to the existence of the "Neighborhood Nazi". You know whom I'm talking about, the woman on the block that comes up and reminds your teenager drivers that they can't park in front of their houses unless their cars are pointed the same direction as traffic. She's constantly patrolling the streets and sidewalks and actually attends city council meetings where she brings up all the issues, cracks, potholes and potentially deadly traffic situations that haunt her street. Such as the YIELD sign's inadequacy. She fought city council for this. She collected signatures for this. And since I have not seen another one anywhere else in the city I'm forced to assume that city council made up this distinctive signage just for her.

In effect the "speed hump" is so inconsequential that I don't slow down except to snicker at the sign most times I pass. This state has potholes, many, many potholes that put the "speed hump" to shame.

Birthing a Generation of Hate

I just found a spider on my wall. Wedging itself in the corner between ceiling and wall. When it arrived at said destination is unknown. I haven’t seen a spider in such a position in, easily, two months. I thought I had swallowed them all in my sleep. I did not know that one persisted. Perhaps it has recently hatched. This would mean there are siblings which must be done away with. I would prefer it to be a lone renegade spider that had escaped my previous assault. One rebel is much better than a family’s worth of children that knows I killed their parents.