My Learning Curve To Writing
Melanie Ifield
I’m going to let you in on a little secret. Sometime I get the feeling the characters I create had a life before I got my mitts on them.
Yes, I know that sounds crazy (I prefer fanciful, thank you very much). But I can’t help the feeling that they have merely allowed me a glimpse into their lives.
Let me explain.
It all began years ago….
I’ve been writing stories in some form or another, since I could pick up a pencil. The only trouble with all this activity is, I seldom proceeded much past chapter one. There were loads of characters and jumbled plots, but no continuation through a coherent storyline. Each character appeared, fully formed, said their piece, and then exited stage left. If I had chosen to publish this material, I would have had a full length novel, with new people with their own dramas, each new chapter. An intriguing idea, but terribly confusing to read, I would imagine.
It took me years to realise what the problem was.
I wasn’t invested in the characters enough to continue their story.
They had no lives of their own before I came along, nor could they sustain one long after I’d gone. They merely emerged one day and disappeared the next.
So how did I go from one scene wonder, to a four book children’s fantasy series and nearly five hundred pages of adult romantic thriller?
It takes investment and discipline.
Perhaps you have a novel in your mind, partially fleshed out characters and several scenes of you own that keep getting stuck. Or you are simply curious about the writing process. I would love to give you the all-expenses paid novel busting approach that guarantees you’ll complete it! But I doubt it ever really existed.
What I learned in all my research, the courses I took and the information so kindly offered to me from other authors is… everyone has their own way of slogging it out till the end. Some plan the whole thing, each chapter and every scene so they never get writers’ block because it is all laid out beforehand. A start, a middle and an end. Others wing it. And some follow where the characters lead.
I follow. They lead.
I didn’t even begin to see the changes, but they are obvious now I look back. I started to dream of the characters involved. I would talk to them out loud, or nut out a plot point with them, walking in nature. I was obsessed with them – who they were, who they reminded me of in ‘real life’, and whether this was merely a physical resemblance or something more substantial?
Were they heroes or villains or a mixture of both, as in the case of Jonelle from The Age of Corruption, because there is really very little black and white in life? Even the villains have shades of grey and redeeming qualities.
They took over every available inch of my mind, until I could not deny them the space required to tell their story.
Yes, they had a past, and it was complex and messy. The story I was telling was coloured by that, but not about the past really at all. They stepped into the scene and didn’t leave until that point in their lives, that part of their stories, was over. Regardless of if they were 12-year-olds riding dragons, or twenty nine year olds dodging bullets.
What did I learn from splitting myself between adult action/adventure and a fantasy series for ages twelve and over, and actually completing them?
I learned that switching between the age groups was impossible. I had to write one complete novel before I began the next. By knowing and loving the characters, I could no longer abandon them after chapter one to write another book. I had to find the discipline to end it first. Not only that but the tone of the adult novel (with sex and adultery, violence and murder) could not be allowed to splash over into the junior fiction. Constantly switching between the voices didn’t come naturally to me, so I had no choice but to write one, then the other.
I learned that not everyone sees the action, or the sweet inconsistencies, as just a part of the lives created on a page. Paradoxically, fiction needs to be smoother than real life in order to create a feeling of reality and not to jolt a reader out of the story. Random moments of being human – messy, inconsistent, out of character – don’t always translate onto the page. And yet, sometimes, I let it go, even if it annoys readers, because one piece of advice I received echoes strongly in my head – write what you love. Life and people are not always smooth or rational and I love that. So I write it. Motivations and choices are not always clear cut, simple or even expressed. So I write that too.
While I was writing fantasy to escape the confines of the rules of our society, I discovered that in doing so, I had created a whole new world with its own rules that I needed to adhere to, so really, there is no way to escape society’s expectations, even if you go across time and space to a whole new realm to do so. You simply find different rules to conform to.
Somewhere along the way, I came to the realisation that it was quite possible to write my characters into a spot of bother where neither I, nor they, could get them out of it and I had to erase the entire chapter so they didn’t go there in the first place.
Mostly, however, I learned that to get past Chapter One, you have to be emotionally involved with the characters, and what is happening. Whether as the reader or the writer – without that attachment, the characters can exit stage left at the end of the first chapter and you simply do not follow.
I believe books speak to us as humans. Storytelling draws us together, allows us to share ideas, hopes, dreams, fantasies and ideas of what it means to be human. How? They show us things about ourselves, about our shared humanity and offers us a look at the lives and emotions of others.
By caring about the lives, motivations and fears and hopes of my characters, suddenly going from Chapter One to The End was uncomplicated.
Never easy, but simply the next step as I followed them to the end of their current adventures.
Melanie Ifield
Melanie Ifield was born and raised in country Australia where she returned when she became chronically ill seven years ago. Healing from long term illness is a marathon race, and one she is looking forward to completing one day so she can go back to horse riding, hiking, swimming and dancing, as well as the occasional motorbike ride!
‘For now and forever – my aim and passion is to write. My dream is for my books to find their audience, and for me to heal; then write some more. Write as often and as much as I can while I can. I’ll change tone, change voice, and change genre. I’ll write in novels, in journals, on my blog, in my notebook and on post-it notes… Because what are we if we are not our passions?’
Melanie writes fiction for children, young adults and adults. Check out her website at https://melanieifield.wordpress.com
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