One of my worst fears as a writer is being predictable. I don't want a reader to guess, smirk and/or roll their eyes, and say 5 minutes later:
"I knew you were going to do that."
"You're boring."
"Mighty un-clever!"
Where does unpredictability come from? Usually from my secondary characters. They whisper things in my ear like: "You know that scene 150 pages back? I could pop in, pull on her pig-tails a little - see what happens. Whatdoyasay?" (insert hearty wink here)
Seriously though, what do you say? Well, I said it honestly sounds kinda fun. Let's stir things up a bit - let's suddenly appear out of nowhere and show 2% of kindness when 98% of the time we're schemy and evil. Let's die. Let's not die and wear fuschia to someone else's funeral.
After I thought this was a cool idea, I realized how difficult it was and decided to write this blog post. I definitely don't want to shy away from making my story better just because it'll be hard and I wanted to come on here and tell you just that. Because I just learned that letting that character go cause a ruckus meant I had over a dozen other scenes to change. So, I've had to be really careful with continuity issues AND with being unpredictable, yet believable.
I definitely don't want a reader to go:
Huh. That doesn't make sense.
Huh. That was out of character.
Huh. THAT WAS REALLY DUMB!
So ... there's a fine line and I'm trying to see it. (peers) Can you see it?
