There’s a song in the animated movie Pocahontas titled Just Around the Riverbend; besides being an amazing tune that will stick with you for the rest of your life once you hear it, the underlying message of trying to choose between two options is one that never fails to resonate with anyone who’s heard it. Most of our choices as adults are always done in this weird, blind manner; we’re never gifted with enough foresight to make a truly informed decision, so we are generally forced to trust our instincts — for better, or, unfortunately, for worse.
I’ve been thinking about that for a bit now, specifically that sense that if we only had just the right sort information just when we needed it, we’d always make the right choice each and every time. Whole disciplines have sprung up around this principle, things like data science and business analytics and this crazy rise in the popularity of predictive AI. Taken as a whole, they feel like the answer to this desire for having more at our fingertips, and yet I just can’t shake the sense that none of it is actually helping.
In some ways, my characters are in this sort of Petri dish experiment for this concept, for (in theory) as the author I know everything that’s going to happen to them; their entire path through a given plot is for all intents and purposes completely predetermined before they utter their first sentence. And yet, even with all that planning on my part, somehow they always seem to wander away from the yellow brick road; shadows hidden in the ferns along the route call out to them and draw them into side stories and unusual character moments that ultimately embellish the universe in which they exist.
How does this happen?
I’ve thought about that quite a bit, too. My original answer some time ago was that Sean, Vasily and the entire cast of characters have always felt real to me, actual people that I (in a real sense ) have deep, meaningful conversations with. They often act with an agency completely locked down characters wouldn’t have; make decisions I probably would have vetoes had I kept myself locked tightly into the original narrative arc I’d planned.
It took me years to allow this to happen, for despite what my own instincts were telling me, formal training had always overridden them. Setting those preconceptions aside finally opened the door to simply seeing what might appear from my fingers flying over the keyboard — and then following along as it continued to grow, creatively. Sometimes the results aren’t great, but that tends to be the exception now; I’ve also learned that I can’t force it, either. The world has to appear in its own way, and on its own schedule; when I’m completely tapped into it, time is meaningless. When I’m not, no amount of prodding will make my recalcitrant characters appear. Giving myself grace to accept those periods will appear has also been a longterm exercise in personal growth — as well as providing the recognition that every now and then, I have to set aside the stories and do something completely different. Shifting gears and working on another hobby often unlocks something in my brain and shakes loose the answer to a plot problem, or provides a completely new story that will get added to the list of ones to yet be written.
So here’s to listening to yourself — and to trusting the results.
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