The blank page. At times, an insurmountable horror for writers.
For some, new and old, this blank page is that first, gaping step into the discomfort zone. It is the leap into the maw of the unknown. We’ve dreamed about it, agonized over it, and dedicated ourselves to the journey beyond the terror of that first paragraph. For others, the blankness is little more than an annoyance. It might entail only a mocking whisper as they tap their pen against the starkness, searching their mind for that first poignant sentence.
I remember my own experience as a new writer more than 2 decades ago. The empty page beckoned to me, and I couldn’t wait to fill its whiteness with the story bursting inside my heart. With pen in hand, I scribbled “That’s not how you begin a story, Vicki,” and my first YA novel, The New Road, was born. There has been little pause since.
The most memorable instance of tumbling into the discomfort zone found me when I acted as the Junior Director of our church’s drama team, The New Life Players. I was tasked with writing an entire scene for an evening production, including a unique song. My younger brother was chosen to play the main character throughout the production, an unbeliever who then met five unique individuals who offered him their testimony. Part of that witness/testimony was the song. Agony ventured to new heights when I discovered that I would be the person acting and singing the part that I scripted.
It has been too many years now. I don’t recall the character name or the song. One of my closest friends, Melissa, accompanied me on piano and still loves the melody and its message. I should find out if she has the lyrics and chords and scan them into my computer…. Through that jaunt over the battlefield of the discomfort zone I grew as a writer and performer. Public speaking and performing is not my favorite thing. In fact, it’s something I despise because I know that I am better with the written word than the verbal. But I didn’t shirk the duty, and I know I am better for the facing of my fears.
No matter how much I hated it at the time.
A few years later, I took a conscious plunge into the discomfort zone. Forever seeking out new inspirations for the next story, I ventured into the realm of video game fan-fiction. What is fan-fiction? According to Wikipedia:
Fan fiction (alternately referred to as fanfiction, fanfic, FF, or fic) is a broadly-defined term for fan labor regarding stories about characters or settings written by fans of the original work, rather than by the original creator.”
The most daunting prospect in writing fan-fiction was & is two-fold:
- You must stay true to the characters in how they speak, act/react in any given situation.
- You must stay true to the setting created by the original creator, keeping the facts of the game and the game universe clear and concise in your head as well as in the characters’ everyday lives.
These two requirements put you as a writer into a type of open box. On four or five sides you are graced little freedom. However, there is one freedom you do have: the storyline. The caveat is that even here there are regulations; the storyline must keep the facts of the game in mind.
Over the course of 5 years of writing fanfiction I penned 46 novellas, short-stories, and poems. Many of these were submitted, accepted, and published to online sites such as RPGamer and IcyBrian, two video-game resource websites that have approval committees reserved for fanfiction.
Fanfiction served as my introduction to science-fiction, a genre I had convinced myself to never write for. It also served as an intro to a variety of jaded character types that I wouldn’t have envisioned in normal circumstances.
An example: original character Janine Larabie. Janine is a sexy, no-nonsense officer in a black ops mercenary/military group. In my story, she falls for the antagonist from the popular video-game Final Fantasy VIII. In my edgy romance The Reluctant Knight, Seifer Almasy, the antagonist, is intrigued by this “button-pusher” who transfers from a northern military base. There is an immediate attraction, due mostly to the fact that Seifer and Janine both prefer hard-nosed individuals who tell it like it is without regard to the other’s feelings. Life is too short, they believe, for touchie-feelie nonsense.
The novella is fraught with head-to-head confrontations between the two as they work out a friendship and then a close relationship. In fact, because Janine is a button-pusher, she is the first to get Seifer to admit to secrets from his past as a “dare to trust”, a rush for people like them who don’t trust anyone with anything. It sets both on a path of inner healing that allows them to share a closeness and a bond they have never experienced before.
The Reluctant Knight grabbed me by the hair and dragged me along behind the characters as I frantically jotted down their story.
It has been five years since my last jaunt into writing fan-fiction. I have grown as a writer, and I sometimes wonder if I would cringe and moan at my fanfiction quality now that I have matured in style and approach? Perhaps that is another, less realized venture outside my realm of comfort?
My most recent venture into the discomfort zone was writing for the National Novel Writing Month. Specifically, last year’s NaNovel, Silver and Iron, a fantasy suspense novel that was a continuation of the paranormal tale began in To Save a Soul (2008 NaNovel). In To Save a Soul I had the benefit of writing the story from my husband’s story outline. Silver and Iron, however, did not have such a luxury. It was a true “write by the seat of your pants” novel where I didn’t have a clear idea of the middle or end of the storyline.
True to the basic goal of NaNoWriMo, I put my fingers to the keys and just wrote the story as it came to me. Now, I have 56k words and no ending, and my writing juices struggle to continue because I’m not certain how to approach the ending that is still very misty in my mind. My husband and I have decided the best thing to do would be to re-enact the story so that I can experience the twists and turns of the adventure and figure out what my main characters are going to do in order to solve the mystery and catch the villain. It is a unique challenge for me to look at a page and wonder what in the world I’m going to write next.
In hindsight, it has taught me that I don’t like writing from the seat of my pants without a clear idea of where the story is supposed to go. I need a goal!
Of course, there are many more situations where I found myself facing into the black void that is the discomfort zone, especially in my journey toward publication and all the throes and woes that go along with that! All in all, stepping or leaping into the discomfort zone has been the best source of learning for me as a writer. A stretch from the norm to prove that I can do anything I set my mind to. A peek from behind a usual door to the adventures waiting outside that whisper of blessings, to myself and others.
Writing in the discomfort zone is a thrill and, like Janine Larabie, I’ve become a thrill-junkie looking for the next bit of discomfort.
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*this post originally fell under the christianwriters.com blog chain subject ‘the discomfort zone’
And don’t you think every character should have that ending?
Chapter one and then chapter two were outlined with comparative ease. The characters seemed real, conflicts were revealed, and I was eager to get started with the writing of it. Chapter three found me beginning to stumble and hesitate with the storyline. Questions were beginning to arise that I wasn’t certain how to approach in an outline versus story. So, in order to have the best of both worlds, I decided to begin writing out only those chapters outlined.
When I realized the box I was beginning to write myself into, I stopped! I let myself out of the cage, set the chapter outline into my bag and out of sight, and then let AJ, the male character, tell me his story. Instead of informing him of his motivations and reasonings, I listened to his heart and mind. I let him admit to his fears and his uncertainty. I was quiet as he confessed his anger and frustration. He was a lot more cooperative once I quit telling him what to do!
I can hardly wait to see the finished version. The really difficult wait time will be when she’s working on the ‘couple pic’, which will be a rendition of the following scene from the book:
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