Falklore: Living Your Story

After you decide what kind of story you want to write, where do you go from there? There's only two directions. One is to construct a plot outline and follow it throughout the manuscript -- from the first paragraph to the climax. I think that takes a lot of work and a lot of planning that sometimes can be frustrating as the plot veers from the intended direction. I go in another direction, I just let things fly.

I get an idea for a plot, something that can really cause problems. For instance, during the Gulf War I read a suggestion that everybody should write a letter to a serviceman. Don't worry about to whom. Somebody will get it. As I read that, I thought what a stupid thing to do, write and not know who is on the other end. I knew guys in the service who could have easily been psychopaths, and guys like them were getting the letters?

So I began to think what could happen if a psychopath did get some letters, some of which -- as I pointed out in "The Pen Pal Murders” -- set up a psychopathic sting operation of murder and robbery while leaving a lot of well-meaning letter-writers dead.

For me and writing, it's take what comes, write it and run with it -- no outline. There will be changes, but start with the premise, the problems, the characters and let it fly from there. You will introduce exciting characters that you never expected would be a part of your story and I think that will keep your readers locked in.

So I started off with a woman who did write and whose husband suddenly disappears. That was followed by mysterious phone calls and continued in a frightening but very possible direction. As I wrote, I imagined new situations or extensions of older ones and drew upon them. I never gave it a chance to slow down -- always trying to
keep the reader on pins and needles.

Following is a method I like. It was used in my Master’s work and we called it "Living Your Story." We studied Shakespeare and in doing so each class member had to play roles. One time I was King Lear's daughter, Reagen. The fun part of it was not only trying to act like Reagen, but also to talk like her and in a voice pitched like a woman’s. It was the same for all the characters, and it was fun.

It did help me with my writing. I really lived the characters in Pen Pals, and later in Sitting Duck. I talked out loud like I thought a psychopath might talk and think, and I used that approach for each character. I thought, talked like and became the female protagonist. I embodied a police officer, talked and thought like him. I became a female reporter -- thought and talked like her. I did that with every character, bar none, and I think it made each one of them more believable. I was a bastard in the final chapter working out what I was going to do to the women I was holding prisoner. Don't ask me about it. It was scary. Sometimes as I was doing all of this I frightened myself. But I think by using that method, I created characters and a story that nobody could say: "That could never have happened."

Questions/Comments? Contact Jim at james@jamesfalk.net, or visit www.jamesfalk.net.

James Falk, as a teen-ager, used to dream of being a big-time racketeer. Fortunately, his dream didn't come true. A 10th grade dropout, he finished highschool after four years in the Marines and went on to earn a B.A. in Journalism and an M.A. in Communications.