Shouts From Down Under

Once I had an imaginary friend, and he had a real one...

When you write, do you have a particular reader in your mind? Do you picture the sort of person, sitting down reading your story / novel / poem?

And when you put the dialogue in, do you imagine that same reader, or audience, taking in what your characters are saying?

Today it occurred to me to wonder, how many people, all over the globe, do things for people alive or passed away, or for pets that don't exist. And there must be some who do things like a ritual for an imaginary friend, because they haven't got a real friend. Perhaps they have no relatives at all and aren't the best socially.

Some people may grieve for someone that's died and so they do things, maybe once a year, for that person that isn't here any more, and never will be again, as far as we know.

Some of the things people like this do may sound a little creepy. Bunches of flowers for someone, chocolates, gifts. I'm sure I'm hardly touching on stuff that some do for departed ones. And for imaginary, fictitious characters who are only real in their mind.

Asylums are crawling with folks who do stuff for no apparent reason.

You know, I'm not alluding to all this for any disrespectful reason, mentally unstable, grieving, misguided, creepy or not.

Because it's what novelists do all the time. Think about it.

We write stories that in theory may never be read by anyone. Ever. Yes, on WDC there's a high chance that they will. But I mean in the real world, if our stuff goes unpublished, then nobody except ourselves will ever read it. I have a couple of novels like that right now. I've tried to get family members to sit down and really read them.

But, I understand, their time is limited, and no prophet is heard in his own country or however that biblical quote goes about Nazarenes.

So, here we are, writing stories for someone to read who is imaginary. They don't exist folks.

Doesn't it strike you that right there is an example of what faith is. We write stories in full expectancy that they'll be read, even if its just by someone we imagine. We craft the wording, the mood, the tone, everything, to entertain or appeal to this reader. We just know our writing will be read. There is no proof. No evidence whatsoever. But millions do it, like farmers planting their crops with no evidence that the seed will grow, or that there'll be rain, or that the sun will even come up tomorrow.

It just has every time before, so it's a fair chance to say it will tomorrow. But we don't know for sure.

Our readers are totally imaginary "friends", like when we were kids, or heard of the kid that someone was talking about next door, or up the road, or in Smith Street who "has an imaginary friend." Usually the kid goes around talking to this "person", and quite happily plays all day, not feeling the least bit stupid. They can see the "friend" and so they just get stroppy if we don't.

I think genre or selling targets, appeal audience etc is one angle, but it's not who we think of, is it, when we are writing that novel?

What do you do when you write? Do you picture the story going along in your head, each step, each moment, each event, incident, progression, backflip, twist and turn. Do you hear your characters talking? Do you find yourself even saying it all yourself, out loud?

I find it helps a lot if I do say the story out loud, and the dialogue. Especially if I imagine I'm the person, or one of them, or a fly on the wall.
Then you can say to yourself quite honestly, hey, come off it, they wouldnt say that! Rubbish. Get it right! They'd say it the other way. I've heard people say this term, or exclamation etc.

It's like in Michael Connolly's book Nine Dragons, on the first page Feras says to Bosch, "I'm taking off...they have my cell."
He could have written that as "cellphone" or "Mobile phone".

But that's not how it's said is it, in an informal situation, when busy work colleagues are rushing and talking "short hand", and don't have to be professional.

So, that's what I was thinking of today.

I was given this book for Christmas this year, and perhaps I'll get back into reading a bit more. I've found it hard to read books since I started writing them. I don't want to be influenced by someone else's, or find that I've accidentally absorbed some of their stuff subconsciously.

But perhaps that's a bit immature. Maybe I get too serious about a lot of this stuff.

Sparky

The title of this blog is a Carl Barron quote.