Shut Your Characters Down: What I Learned by Locking Myself Out of My Bathroom

My title is fairly self-explanatory, however, I will explain how making an ass of myself links to writing. Or rather, I will explain how my mind automatically connects my humiliation to the characters I write.

Does wanting to humiliate my characters make me a bad person?

If it does I don’t care.

Last Wednesday my dad asked me to change the halogen bulbs in our kitchen light fixture. It’s a track light with six bulbs that have glass enclosures held on by three steel pins that screw in. In other words, the whole thing is a witch to play with. I didn’t want to make a project out of it so I used a little step stool. Because I’m short I was working with my arms fully extended above my head.

There was cursing. At the fixture. At my dad. At the fact that I had to do the job. The usual stuff.

When I was done I rolled my eyes and wondered why on earth I was the only one out of the three of us able to handle the job. Feeling superior, I went back to my own chores that I had started in the basement. I’d been bleaching the drains in my bathroom and needed to rinse them.

I shut the bathroom door behind me because I didn’t want the cats to get in. I must have hit the lock button as I left the room because I was most assuredly locked out.

Source

 

I trudged back up the stairs and asked my dad to help me. It would take me twice as long as him to get the door open so I swallowed my pride. Yes, he laughed at me. I would laugh at him. So.

Once able to re-enter the bathroom, I had a thought. In the course of writing my stories do I remember to shut my characters down like life seems to do to me? Karma is always keeping me well balanced.

Sometimes it seems like I get horrific tunnel vision while writing and just want to get my character from plot point A to plot point B without any interruption. I do this to the point that things get dull. Life for my characters, like life for me, should have those ridiculous moments where one is just put in their place perfectly.

I’m not saying anyone’s story should be riddled with such moments to the point that the plot/story line is railroaded, but life interrupts everyone. Life can’t be perfectly hellish or perfectly heavenly. Unhappy people need to be made to laugh even if just briefly. Happy people need to cry. Life’s bumps make this happen.

This is my reminder to myself that I need to step back when I’m editing and interrupt my characters’ journeys. Thoughts?

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