How I Met My Re-Writes
By Elizabeth Solar
Remember the show How I Met Your Mother? For several years it was a fun and frothy evening diversion. Cute plot lines about how the protagonist, a hapless and hopeful romantic architect named Ted, met the mother of his two teenage children.
The children, often seen, but rarely heard, in opening sequences would listen rapt as in voice over, future Ted related stories of his dating misadventures, and his friends’ hijinks.
In the final of seven seasons, we finally meet the woman Ted eventually meets cute, marries, and then — spoiler alert — loses to an untimely, and tragic death.
Okay, fine. But how the writers got there is problematic, in that they filmed the kids sequences, which adhere to a well-planned ending they cooked up at the inception of the story. The commitment to this ending was ill-advised, and distressing, as it undid swaths of character development, and evolution as the story unfolded over the previous seasons.
I felt betrayed by the ending, and the lack of genuine change in the characters.
That’s the problem with planning a story in such a way that you no longer let the characters complete their journey in ways that feel emotionally resonant and satisfying.
In writing my own novel, there had been plot points I’ve passionately defended, and kept in the arc of the story. Over time, however, certain characters, especially my protagonist, have proved more complex, situations have provided extenuating circumstances I could never have anticipated when I outlined my book.
That’s the downside of an outline. Stubborn devotion to it can hinder, rather than help your story. After some time, characters take on a life of their own, and as a writer, I’ve learned to respect that.
My novel’s present form still contains many of the same key elements, themes, and overall arc found in the first draft. However, with the passage of time, a little more life experience, and an improved sense of craft, I trust the characters and situations to develop more organically, in a way that feels more true, and less forced. As John Lennon’s song says ‘Life is what happens when you’re making other plans.’
On your journey of revision, trust yourself to be open to possibility, to really question if where the story is heading respects the evolution, or devolution of your characters. If situations arise in a way that delights, surprises and full engages, without labored literary acrobatics, you will have a story that satisfies your creative intent, and rewards the reader.
Get comfy not having it all figured out, and enjoy living in the land of ‘what if.’
In the words of the philosopher Rumi, ‘Sell your cleverness, and buy bewilderment.’
