I suppose I could do so, but why? Am I not the author, the one supposedly in control?
If you happen to be reading my book, A Haunting We Will Go . . ., (if you are one of the winners of the Goodreads Giveaway) you will certainly notice the languid pace of getting to the essence of the story in the included novella, The Dancing Man. I encourage you to stick with the story, however, in spite of the slow beginning, as the payoff is there. You will, in my opinion, have a rollicking good time as the story picks up and moves on to its nineteen eighties horror movie style conclusion. I can’t explain why I make the association of the story to an eighties horror movie other than to say that that is what it felt like to me with the horror/humor as the story nears its conclusion. I could see this as I wrote when I came to one specific scene. All I can say without giving away too much is that the scene is where the main character is pinned to the wall and he asks a specific question. I could see this clearly on the big screen, the question and resulting answer being reminiscent of the humor of a Bruce Willis movie, perhaps Die Hard. Not that I pictured Willis as the main character, but the sense of humor running through the scene seemed to trigger a connection in my mind.
But I digress. Let me get back to the main point of this post, the slowness of the build-up to the story.
I am ultimately to blame, of course, as I am the writer. My only defense is to state that the reason for the slowness is the fact that I am what is known as a “seat of the pants” style writer. This simply means that I don’t plot out the story. The story gets revealed to me as I am typing along. The characters come to life and move and talk. The dialogue and actions of the characters are revealed to me by the characters, and the story unfolds before my mind’s eye, much as the story is revealed to you as the reader. I absolutely do not know what is going to happen next until it unfolds. On occasions I’ll get a hint, or a glimpse of something about to happen. And on rare occasions a scene will pop into my mind, as though my mind is jumping ahead to this scene that is a good distance down the road. How I’ll get there, or if I’ll get there at all, I won’t know. This all depends on the characters. They might decide to go in a whole different direction, veering off the path completely. That scene might be something that becomes another story with the same characters, something I will write in the future. Or, perhaps after a few off-the-wall twists and turns, we might all (me and the characters) end up in that very spot, playing out that scene exactly with all details becoming clear and spilling out onto the page.
So trust me, I, as writer, was just as frustrated at Frank and Arlen for not getting to the point of things as you might be as you read the story. I was standing in Frank’s shoes, so to speak, trying to get Arlen to spill things. I had no more sway with what Frank said or did to get Arlen to get on with things than I would have with Arlen had I been writing from his viewpoint. Had I been doing so, Arlen might or might not have kept that part of the story blocked from me. Though, overall, I suppose, the story would have been a different story altogether had I told it from Arlen’s point of view.
Does all of this sound strange?
Of course it does! Doesn’t it? I mean, characters are just imaginary beings, after all, aren’t they?
Rather than getting into a debate about it all, I’ll just land on the point that I cannot blame them. All I know is that characters (real or not) will only reveal the story as they see fit to reveal it. I can have ideas, of course, and touch things up here and there . . . and I can go back and tighten things up, editing and correcting mistakes, etc.
Could I have done this, or possibly still do this with this story? Suppose I took out Frank and Arlen’s story about the dancing man, or other of the two character’s reminiscences of Farley when he was still alive? Would it make much of a difference? I suppose I could curtail some of Arlen’s hemming and hawing at spilling the beans to Frank. He does take an awfully long time to do so. At the time of the writing, he really did not want to spill things.
Or was this simply me, as writer, tooling along, waiting on ideas to come? Was I buying time? Maybe. On some level, I guess this could be true.
And what of the curse itself? The curse really is convoluted—comically so. But doesn’t that blend in with the whole of the story, fitting the eighties movie genre theme—a rollicking Goth-Horror-Comedy of sorts?
Well, in conclusion, I guess I have to accept complete and total responsibility for what I write. The characters are under my purview, whether I can control them or not. At times they allow me more leeway than in this story.
In the end I just rolled along with the characters, enjoying the ride. I hope you can do the same as a reader. Just remember to not take it all too seriously. I wrote it in fun. I suppose if you want serious literature, you won’t be reading this book anyway.
Both of the novellas: The Dancing Man and The Children’s Home are stand alone novellas that I included in this book along with the short story “Quicksand.” “Quicksand” (my homage to Poe’s story “The Gold Bug”) can be found in volume three of my Civil War Tales: And You Shall Not Live!
For the fun of it, I usually have a Goodreads Giveaway for 100 digital copies of A Haunting We Will Go each year around Halloween.
Each of the two included novellas were knocked out in about 3-4 days. Though both were written by “seat of the pants,” I did have to give a little more thought about tying things together with The Children’s Home, being that it is more of a Sherlock Holmes type of mystery.
Even though the writing time for each of the novellas was 3-4 days, the reading over and editing, after the fact, took a few days longer. And any mistakes or errors that slipped by are solely mine. There is no way I can blame this on the characters.
Ahh, anyway, it is what it is—simple entertainment! And I, for one, certainly enjoy following along after the characters and recording it all.