Sometimes as writers we don’t really know what’s going to happen next. Even the best outliner may find their characters wandering straight off the map. There may be stretches in a novel when we have to write our way toward figuring out what’s supposed to happen.
Letting your characters wander can be very productive! It usually means you’re listening to your their inner logic rather than ushering them around in a predetermined Point A to Point B. Characters doing things you didn’t expect them to can be an almost uncanny experience and you may start feeling as if they are real people somewhere out there in the ether.
But there’s a challenge inherent in wandering: It can feel aimless to the reader.
Novels flow from motivations
Novels are an incredibly unique and strange art form. Readers use ink splotches to co-create a world in their head with the author by anchoring to a particular perspective within the novel to serve as the fulcrum for our mental map. We are super, super attuned to where we “are” within a scene and why the characters are doing what they’re doing.
Interiority is what separates novels from more visual mediums like plays, television, and movies. We are attuned to characters’ unique thought processes, motivations, best and worst case scenarios, and hopes and dreams. If something a character is doing doesn’t make very much sense, it’s way more jarring than it would be in a movie because we are co-architects constantly building the world rather than sitting back and more passively consuming it with our eyes.
There are novels like Rachel Kushner’s stellar Creation Lake that keep the protagonist’s true motive hidden, but even there Kushner dangles enough of the outlines of the protagonist’s mission that we become engrossed in trying to untangle what she’s up to. Sadie’s motives are still central to the novel, even in absentia.
On the other hand, almost by definition, a character who’s wandering lacks a clear sense of purpose. If they knew what they were after, they’d be searching instead of wandering.
Characters who feel wholly adrift are difficult to invest in. The reader will find themselves grasping for why they’re doing what they’re doing, and the novel will feel like it’s stalling out.
We learn about characters as we write
But look. Sometimes we authors have absolutely no clue what to do with our characters or where they should go yet. We are wandering, as authors. And there are times when you just have to press forward anyway until you figure it out.
Even the best outline can let you down. Sometimes you just have to write your way out of a jam. You might still be getting to know the characters or you just have to try some things to locate the story. Characters can feel very mysterious, even to their creators.
You’ll eventually get there, and by the end of a full draft, you’ll know the characters much better than you did when you were starting out. But that’s why revising is so important.
Be careful not to let the wandering parts of the plot cement in your mind. Just because you, the author, wandered, doesn’t mean your character needs to be adrift in your final draft.
Layer the motivations back in
Unless you’re trying to pull off something extraordinarily difficult like Rachel Kushner burying her protagonist’s motivations to form the central mystery in Creation Lake (there’s a reason she was nominated for the Booker Prize), a more tried and true approach for us mortals is to let scenes flow from characters who have a clearly articulated motivation and actively go after that thing, whether that’s physically moving through the world or simply trying to figure out a specific question.
Revisit stretches of the novel where your protagonist wanders, does meaningless chores, speaks without thinking, or otherwise acts without a clear sense of purpose. Chances are, at some point in your first draft you eventually discovered what was really driving your protagonist.
Now: Go back and layer in those motivations as early as you can.
When readers are attuned to a protagonist’s motivation, it builds anticipation and creates a propulsive sense of purpose. We start wondering if our dashing hero is going to successfully woo their love interest or defeat the dragon. Mysteries and quests need some breathing room to develop. If you prime the reader as early as you can around what the protagonist wants, it builds suspense.
Chances are your protagonist can simply know what they want and start going after it, which turns your wandering into a quest.
Even if your protagonist’s final, true purpose doesn’t reveal itself until the end of the story, it’s almost always better to show the character actively and consciously choose to go in the wrong direction than to show them not knowing why they’re doing what they’re doing entirely.
Tolkien famously wrote “Not all those who wander are lost” in Lord of the Rings, and it’s a good distinction for writing purposes.
In real life, people may well wander without purpose for stretches. But those wanders are not the stuff of novels. Better to write about a wanderer who knows where they’re headed, even if they don’t yet know how to get there.
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Art: Waldweg bei Spandau by Carl Blechen
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