An author does develop a caring for his characters, and often doesn’t want to let them go. This becomes a problem when he tries to direct them within a setting he’s laid out for them, or when, the story just turns out to be an exercise in skill. It’s also hard to know they’re locked away in some story that one wrote a while ago and is unused and near-forgotten.
In thinking of going the novel route–and this will in no way preclude the other writing projects I intend to take on, nor the short stories that come unbidden–I’m thinking already of who lives there? An unlikely setting is unrolling in my mind and characters who have peopled stories sitting now in a file on my hard drive begin pounding at the chips for my attention.
Some stories–and I have a good thirty or so of them–are just never going to be rewritten or revised simply because they’re not worth it. But the characters just may be. And I may use them to populate this place I have in my mind. It would be well to work with friends.
And here I’m thinking back to Storytron, and Sims, and wondering if the learning of these is not of more value than I thought and perhaps should be placed back there on my list of things to do. Storytron holds promise of character development. Sims holds the ability to visually see the setting.
So maybe I’m not dropping out of these worlds after all.
The Lost Children: A Charity Anthology