After much time, I think I've regained the voice that's been missing from my fiction, and it was probably what has kept my work from being enjoyable to me since my last self-satisfying piece, "The Exchange (June 2006)."
Correction--The Narrator of "Devouring Memphis (June 2007)" the one from both the final form (that needs a bunch of revision) and the original drafting (had a problem with a way-too-long-of-a-setup-plot) was a pretty good guy to me. I liked him. I still do. Anyway...The spark came from a totally unexpected climax to the untitled piece I've been working on for months now. I just finished the first draft this morning, and it feels great to have figured out the disease that was digging my fiction's grave.
It's all about character.
Usually, I'm a plotting sort. It starts with an idea of place, theme, and structure. Then, I build my characters from there. Nothing has really been different over the past two years, that wasn't there the previous three . Plot-wise, I thought I was rolling.
The problem became character and, more specifically, the infusion of myself into them.
I think it began in March of 2007. I started what I thought would be a pretty cool trilogy about a man trying to find his place in the world. Being pretty much a douche, the character should have been okay, seeing how he talked to dead people, he lived with the apparition of his mother, his best friend in life was a dead guy, a ladies' man, trying to get him to get his shit together, and he collected reward money for the unsolved cases, missing persons and murder victims. "Pushing Daisies" and "Medium" and the disease have pretty much closed it off from reaching fruition, so I don't mind spoiling anything. It's dead. Dead. Dead. Dead.
Anyway, the plot was simple, involving mind control, telepathy, fathers & sons, and a little ghost-girl's brutal case--which would set up the climax where the guy's dead friend would sacrifice himself and the little girl would take over for the other two parts.
But the problem came from the fact that the dead people were more interesting, more fun, more enjoyable than the main character. He just kind of sucked.
From then, a few stories since, few and far between, have been okay to me, but the characters just weren't around long enough (a couple flash/dialogue things) or were too talky and spouting exposition. Though, in the one case, I'd argue it was pretty much needed (a story about haggling over football tickets and a monkey's-paw-like deal.) And if they weren't sucking, they were just actors in some action.
The character of Lee Hardin, for example, an heir to the Southern Command during a sort-of Civil War II, was cool for a second, but the plots, done and planned, were so brutal that he wasn't enjoyable at all. Though, I do like the first story (for the most part)--enough to type it up shortly--and bits of the second (an action sequence which may come back to haunt itself into something bigger). But the landscape was too ugly to find something likable about the character, especially his little brother who goes ape shit after the big reveal in the finished story.
The script (unfinished, undone) was good character-wise (and it might actually pop back up--I don't know), but it just hit a road block of my patience and a strained sense of believability.
Which brings me to this just-completed piece. I'm sitting there for what--two-three months--scratching at a similar theme to the dead trilogy. Guy's sorta Milquetoast, has done something he thinks will ruin his family (mom and dad family) and decides to do what he has to do in order to lessen the mistake. Outside his house, he gets jacked, and this sets off a constant struggle toward an end that I thought I knew was coming.
Except, it didn't. The end I expected was going to be sort of like an "of all the shitty luck" kind of ending, but then the guy I thought would be a real asshole came pouring out like a father-figure, laying it down like the Duke would--well, with a tongue that'd blush Mama right off the earth. He forced me to like him. He forced my Milquetoast protagonist to change his outlook. Forced him to see that, yeah, life isn't beautiful all the time, but it sure as hell ain't worth spit being a sad-sacked, worry-warted, dick-faced dildo about every little thing, now is it.
He seems rough, but he's also got it figured out. He's also, sort of affable, in a rugged father kind of way. You want to roll your eyes at the lessons he's dealing and punch him for being a bit rude and honest with his tongue, but, in the end, he's someone you'd like to have a beer with, or go fishing with. He's a character with a voice.
Where was this voice?
Where was my voice?
God only knows, but I hope it's back.
Which has me set up for my next story, about a father-and-son relationship that gets strained by both a conflict and a paranormal experience.
Here's to hope my voice is back permanently.
Though, some editors and others may disagree--hahahaha!
Har.
