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Playing Chess
Posted by: andychilton
Chess is a game I learnt at a young age. I knew every single rule - except one of them - by the time I was about eight.
Then one day when I was much older, I was playing against a friend mine. He pulled off a move which I had never seen before. I'm not talking about a set of moves but just one move and in my eyes it was an illegal one. From that day forward, I would never forget how En passant actually works.
Needless to say, it took me by surprise but once I understood what happened, I managed to cope with it during the rest of the game, get my game back on track and ultimately try and win.
To me, this is similar to how your story pans out as you are writing it. On numerous occasions I have heard people say such things as:
And then my MC decided to fly to Hawaii and become a limbo dancer, when she really should have married the farmer, had 6 kids and raised a thoroughbred racehorse! And I still can't believe she did it.
Basically, what the author is saying is that she has absolutely no control over their characters whatsoever. And I think this is the interesting thing about writing a novel.
You set up your environment, give your characters personalities, plan out your plot and all you get in return is a tantrum and something very out of character. An unexpected twist but something, in all honesty, that is very true to life. Something that suddenly makes the situation a lot more interesting.
This is where playing chess helps.
Every so often, that MC of yours plays a move you just never expected but being able to deal with it is one of one of the things you have to learn fast when writing a novel. Firstly you have to get over the shock of the move and then you have to get that plot back on track.
So, the next time someone in your novel wildly goes out of character and does something unexpected, just sit back, mull over this latest development and plan your way through at least the next few moves.
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27 Jun 2008 22:55:39
Comments
On 28 Jun 2008 00:50:00 Travis said:
Or - you can kill them off. Either works. :)