He grew impatient and introduced a duck into the story

kinzel and I did an interview with Chris Meadows at Biblio File a couple weeks ago (you can listen to the podcast here).
During the interview, I can be heard struggling to express the concepts of story hooks and forced decisions in narrative. Talking about such things isn't easy for me; I'm very much an intuitive writer, with all the associated problems that this implies, but I have learned a couple things, after all these years.

One of the things I've learned is that "finding ideas" is rarely a problem for a writer. Most often, the problem is that there are Too Dern Many Ideas. The writer's challenge is to pick and choose, hopefully picking and choosing ideas that are both (1)exciting, and (2)will (or can be made to) work together.

Given that satisfying (1) and (2) is a necessarily rough winnow (allowing sufficient skill, any idea can be made to seem exciting and there is a certain pleasure to be had in taking two seemingly incompatible ideas and engineering them to play nicely together), other filters may be employed, among them genre convention, intended audience, deadline (if any) and probably as many etceteras as there are writers. Each of the filters applied narrows the field a little more. Some writers like to winnow and winnow and winnow some more until they have the three, six, nine...ideas that they're going to work from set out neatly on the table, and sweep the others back into the box for later.

Some writers -- kinzel and me among them -- like to have several stacks of ideas to hand. This means that sometimes we draw an idea set that won't, given our level of skill, play together nicely, and then we have to draw new cards and try again. This method isn't tidy, but apparently we get something out of writing in this frustratingly haphazard manner, because we never learned better.

No matter, though, if you're an organized, tightly-focused type of writer, or a messy, let's-see-what-happens kind of writer, one thing is true for stories, as for real life: Decisions have consequences. Every decision opens a door, and closes a door; every ending is both a happy ending and a tragedy until the last decision set is made; and in the very best stories there are no straight, unbranching paths.

He grew impatient, and introduced a duck into the story.

The quote references Princess Tutu, very possibly the best film about the process of writing and what it means to be a writer that I've ever seen.

In Princess Tutu, Herr Drosselmeyer -- that's him, in the icon -- is trying to continue his interrupted masterwork, but the story is stalled. In an agony to continue, intent on making something happen, he introduces a new character (writers often do this; other tactics to get stalled action moving is to blow something up, or to have a man with a gun burst into an otherwise static scene. You'd think we'd learn). Happily for Herr Drosselmeyer, the tactic seems to work. The stalled story takes off, just as the writer had hoped, invigorated by the infusion of this new character with her new necessities.

Every character brings his or her own necessities with them, and they will work toward the resolution that they desire. Duck, as the new character is named, is no exception. She begins to subtly alter the plot decisions made by the author, seeking her own resolution. A little here, a little there; not so much, really...

...and Herr Drosselmeyer realizes that he has lost control of his creation; that the actions forced by Duck's decisions and necessities are altering his plotline and taking him where he'd hadn't planned to go.

Every action in a story, every decision made, opens a door, and closes a door. The story isn't over until it's over. And -- speaking only for myself -- very often I don't know what the story is about until I've read the finished manuscript.

This is why we're writing Fledgling, to identify the ideas that we do need to go beyond I Dare and to work out the decisions, one by one, that will get Theo where -- and who she needs to be.

Playing Hookey

It was sooooooo pretty today -- sunny with just a touch of cool breeze. We had intended to be Good Authors and return home after our scheduled errands to write the day away. Alas, Something Happened as we drove out of the post office parking lot, one of those Disturbances in the Space-Time Continuum for which Maine is justly famed.

In any case, we found ourselves in Belfast, facing a glittering blue bay, and then, a little time later at Lincolnville Beach, where we walked the stones and marveled at how very far OUT the tide can go, shopped for stars and copper leaves, then found the courage to take the right turn, through Appleton, eventually, and thence to home.

I ought to feel guilty, but ...I don't. I feel Just Fine.

And hoping you're all the same.