Are characters sharks?

 

I can't help it. I keep changing little things, adding little things to this manuscript, even as I present it to agents as a completed work. This is a little passage I added last night:

"How do you...how do you know you're not a character?"

"Oh, that's depressingly easy, my dear. Just look back on all those boring, meaningless moments, whole days that dragged away. Characters never experience that. They're sharks, always moving forward."

And I thought, hey, that's profound. But ... do I believe it...