When Your Characters Have Become Real

To take a page from Margery Williams' The Velveteen Rabbit, specifically, a small part of the beautiful and oft-quoted passage about becoming Real:

"I suppose you are real?" said the Rabbit. And then he wished he had not said it, for he thought the Skin Horse might be sensitive. But the Skin Horse only smiled. 

"The Boy's Uncle made me Real," he said. "That was a great many years ago; but once you are Real you can't become unreal again. It lasts for always.” 

The characters of The Fracture of a Dream have been real to me for quite some time now.  Sometimes I'll see a photograph of a woman and think, "Ah, that's Shanna!" or hear a song that resonates perfectly with their storylines.

In fact, this painting by Myles Sullivan immediately drew my attention a few months ago:

Myles Sullivan, Rendezvous

"That's Dek! And Shanna...slightly leggier and more bombshell than I'd envisioned her, but definitely still Shanna. They look like they're having one of their intense (and silly) debates at their favorite bistro."

It was a reminder that I needed to continue their story.

Returning to them, telling more of their story, is like catching sight of a beloved friend you haven't seen for quite some time.  I feel a warmth and happiness to be reunited with my characters and wonder how their unwritten lives have passed since I last worked with them.

The only awkward part is that Dek and Shanna seem so real to me that, in the rewriting stage, adding new parts to their story felt like telling a lie. The way I told the story the first time -- to me, that was how all the events had come to pass.  It couldn't be altered.

I have to remind myself that reality is not black-and-white, as we like to think. We each perceive and interpret events, behaviors, and words in different ways.  And from Elizabeth Loftus' extensive work on the fallibility of memory, we also know that we mis-remember our own lives constantly.  Aside from these mundane "alternate" realities that occur normally, there are also the moments of our lives which simply aren't chronicled -- because that would be dull -- and introducing new scenes might just mean I'm telling the reader something that hadn't seemed important before.

Taking heart from the Skin Horse's words to the Rabbit, however, I like the idea that my characters continue to live on, even when I'm away from them, the threads of their lives rolling, looping, and knotting in new ways that I haven't yet imagined. I guess that's why there are sequels.

And I'm pretty sure Shanna's got a few secrets that are going to come out.  They usually do...eventually.

Stay curious,
Ren D.