No Destination?

A funny thing about discovery writing (not funny, as in side-splitting, but funny as in, insane) is that the destination takes drastic turns. It's my own fault. Maybe one out of the eleven books I've written started out with a theme. That's because I can't formulate ideas in advance. I need to get to know the main character before I can decide what happens to her. I have to plop her down in a situation to find out what she's going to do with it.

Shadow Song is a prime example of that. I started with a character who was losing her job because a large conglomerate bought out her company and was purging all the employees. She lived in a small town with no job opportunities, so what was she going to do? Beats me. Right off the bat I decided that relocating wasn't an option. So I hemmed her in, deliberately. That helped me brainstorm a new job that wasn't even close to one she'd want. Yay ~ first conflict.  

Her home was in northwest Minnesota, where I lived as a child, and I remembered a lake resort that my parents took us to a few times each summer. It was essentially just a lake and a concession stand, but what else did kids need? It was great. Thus, I had my main character spy an ad for "sidewalk artists/ride operators" at a nearby resort that also featured carnival rides. I gave her a college minor in art, which solved the qualifications question. But being a sidewalk artist didn't present any real story possibilities; thus, I created a misunderstanding: it turned out that "sidewalk artist/ride operator" was the same job. Her job interview didn't make that clear. In fact, as she was reciting her skills, she naturally mentioned that she had minored in "it". Her potential boss was astounded that schools even offered that kind of course, which took her aback, but she went with it. Everyone's a little quirky, after all. And one thing led to another, blah blah blah, and now she found herself as not only a carnival ride operator but a ride supervisor, and she knew absolutely nothing ~ zero ~ about handling rides.

I readily cop to loving the humor in misunderstandings*, so this little twist tickled me. (Sometimes a writer has to tickle themselves.) It also served to open up new possibilities, because at that point I still had none. 

*In Second Chance, at one point the main character accidentally runs into the singer she has a crush on. She's a waitress at the Chance-It, the local saloon where his band plays on weekends. She's out walking, exploring the town, when the two of them cross paths. He's gently flirtatious:

"Haven't I seen you somewhere before?"

"Chance-It."

"Well, that's kind of what I was doing."

Sure, it's a throwaway line, but I fancy it. Anyway, back to Shadow Song:

As I was writing along, I figured the story needed an antagonist, so the main character landed on one  ~ the competing sidewalk artist who was taking away all her potential customers. (She did still get to paint half-time.) She developed a seething hatred for the guy, though they'd never even met. He even showed up one day at her cabin to introduce himself, and she very politely shooed him away. (Yes, you know where this is going. But every story can use a good male/female relationship.)

Still, the story had no real drama or tension. At that point it was just, she met the guy, hated the guy, and...that's it. So I put her in a situation in which she went out of her way to avoid running into him. To get to the other half of her job, the one at the arcade, she'd have to cross his path every day, so she began taking a shortcut through the woods. One day, after a long sleepless night, she awakens to find that she's overslept and the sky already dark. She panics that she's late for work, so she cuts her usual path through the woods and....trips over a dead body.

Aha! Found it! 

And there you go. That's how my books are written, at least the good ones.

 

Which leads me to my latest quandary. I've written a lot of Second Chance already and I still haven't found "it". I know what the overall theme is (I think). The main character is wholly dissatisfied with her life, and every new step she takes seems like it'll be the answer, but it never is. In fact, each step sinks her deeper into quicksand. She's never stopped to consider what she wants to do; only what she's supposed to do. She's supposed to be a singer. She's been a singer since she was a kid. All she even knows how to do is sing. She thought she'd escaped that fate when she landed in Chance, but when her boss's bar was on the verge of closing because the band that drew in all the fans broke up, she stepped forward and finally admitted that she was a singer and that she had an idea to save his bar that just might work. 

Then things take a bad turn in her personal life. The guy she's in love with (the aforementioned band singer) seems to have found someone else, and she spies the couple moving into a house she'd walked past many times, one that had a For Sale sign in front of it for months. She'd been all set to decline the label offer that a vacationing A&R guy had made after seeing her band perform. She's happy in Chance and doesn't want to try becoming a recording star. But seeing what she saw, she zooms home, calls up the guy and tells him she'll arrive in Nashville in three days.

The offer isn't all it's cracked up to be. In fact, she's more miserable than ever. (Then lots of bad, degrading things ensue.) Now she's found herself back in Chance, simply because she is nearly running out of gas and she has no money (other complications that I won't recount) and Chance is the nearest town she can make it to.

So, okay? Now what? What does she really want? To confuse matters, everything that happened to her once she landed in Nashville wasn't bad. In fact, a few things went spectacularly, and she loved them. Does she really want to give up her career or doesn't she? Is it just the circumstances she's finding herself in that drive her back to her adopted hometown?  

What the heck is the theme? Is she ever going to make up her mind? Maybe the theme is "confusion", because that's what I'm feeling. Worse, the narrative so far isn't exactly pointing to any theme. Things just happen.

I suppose the theme is that she has to do something to get what she wants; not what her mother wants or her label wants or even what her mentor wants. She needs to stop being a (excuse my language) pussy and stand up for herself. But what exactly does she want? 

Shadow Song was so easy. This one is so hard. Maybe I'm doing it wrong. 

Doesn't matter. The story will keep going. Either it'll burn up in the atmosphere or it'll work out. It's fifty-fifty at this point.