Let me ask this—do you before you write a story consciously think ‘“Now I will make him the speaker and POV character because in the end I am going to kill off so and so and the story will be best told by “” because ---- and the implications of that will be, blah blah blah”’? I am a teacher and I always groan at these analyses of what the writer’s motives were. That may make me odd—but it also stirs in me some memories and a glimmer of the way people react to things—“oh she only did that to spite me.” (a grand assumption, most of the time not based on any real happening or intention.)

I sit down to write and I start with something—I may have an idea where the story is going and I know where I want it end up—but at the start I rarely have all the character’s chosen (like never): I certainly don’t have all the intricacies of their motivations and personalities picked out. New characters come into the story all on their own, characters that I thought were important turn out to be otherwise, evil ones good ones and in reverse ----and if I write “in flow” I don’t even know what I’ve written until my shoulders and wrists give out some time later (sometimes hours later) and this total absence of conscious thought turn out the very best stories).

So why the long-winded, he chose this character because? Hasn’t anyone else thought that maybe he just sat down and wrote and this is what the story and characters gave him? I have not yet published a novel, but I don’t think that other writers (published) plan to the point that readers try to delve into the “why they did this and that”. Don’t all of you as writers see something odd in analyzing a story on that level?

Right now I am purposely writing a story “on the fly” so to speak, to see what happens with no forethought as to where it will go, who the characters will be (at the start, or new ones who will come up)---I do not even have glimmer as to where it will end. It is being published in an online magazine and is now on chapter 12. (I’ve had to write a 3 chapter chunk because I will be doing an international move soon) As I write each chapter, (the week it is due) I have found that the story twists and turns towards a natural ending, with a bunch of surprises in between. I have gotten e-mails asking for the rest of the story so people did not have to wait. When I reached part 8, I thought I had reached an end point—my editor told me that if I stopped this story that she would fly over here and hunt me down and glue me to the keyboard until I wrote more of the story.

So, to me, I find it silly to sit and decide this is what the author intended. I think all authors intend to do one thing—tell the story keeping them up at night. Of course later people will look back and think it was a political commentary on the times or that the author chose because----but did they? Isn’t the political, or other commentary, born out the time they live in simply by the influence of living in that time? 20 years ago I wouldn’t have batted an eye at the Oreo cookie reference—now I wrestled with political correctness--

My intentions and choices are born out of telling the story as the story spreads before me. I often look at published “this is why the author did this” and think the auhtors must be turning in their graves or groaning out loud. “All I did was tell a story!”

I remember reading a story, and I can’t think of who wrote it or the comment at the moment, but the author had gotten several nasty letters as a result of a scene he wrote. His reply was that it was absurd to think he felt that way about women because of the scene—it was simply a scene. (It may have been OSC—Cruel Miracles?) Others have been asked or told “Do you really feel that way about marriage, divorce, raising children, sex, ect—because of the stories they write. I have been asked if I am satanic because of the dark fantasy I write. (Not asked—accused of being so)(I'm not).

It is my opinion, therefore, that writers write and all the rest, well we as humans just love delving into someone else’s motivations—thus the great gossip chain of the world.

It is not love that makes the world go around—but the analysis of others motivations and the right or wrong of that person based on that analyses.

Yikes, what a stream of thought I better go back to bed and start over today!

Shawn

My POV characters (and there's about 6 of them) were "chosen" if you will because they have stories to tell. The "style" concept of the book I'm working on is that there is an overarching plot and even some overarching themes. But this plot is merely the foundation for the story, and there are about 6 different, interconnected, interweaving stories. Each story has their own POV character, and as the novel progresses you discover how each of these stories intertwine. (Does that make sense??)

And yes, it's odd how characters can leap from your imagination and have their story unfold in a completely unexpected way. In my book, for example, the army's 2nd in command (Kenturan) was only half-formed in my mind; I'd mentioned him, even had a "walk on appearance" but didn't give him much thought... He wasn't a main character after all. But then I had a dialogue exchange between him and his commander, and all of sudden he leapt out from his preconceived mold and became one of the bad guys. When I reread that chapter, I was literally stunned because I had never really given him much thought, and that particular dialogue section wasn't meant to foreshadow what was to come... but it did and actually changed what I had originally thought would happen. It revealed that Kent wasn't who the commander thought he was. He certainly wasn't who I thought he was!

Enough rambling for me... Back to work.

Speaking of your current theme, I wonder if you have read SK's Bag of Bones? I wonder how he developed that book with it's powerful theme? Was this his theme from the begining?

Oh well...