Author: Christa Avampato

“Writing fiction can be difficult, lonely job; it’s like crossing the Atlantic Ocean in a bathtub. There’s plenty of opportunity for self-doubt.” ~ Stephen King.

I’ve started working on a few more play ideas. Writing fiction in any format is a strange and fascinating process. Over the Christmas break I finished The Playwright’s Guidebook by Stuart Spencer and he spends a good deal of time delineating between the story you want to write and the story that needs to be written. I wrestled with this concept when I was working on my play, Sing After Storms, over the summer. I kept trying to force my characters down a road and they fought me so hard that eventually I just let them do what they wanted. I stopped trying to save them from themselves. They were right and I was wrong. That was a big learning for me and it’s what makes fiction so distinct from nonfiction. There is structure to fiction but it’s so entrenched in the narrative that you can’t see it. The story builds the structure as it goes if the writer gives the characters the room they need to develop.

I’ve heard that there are writers who believe their stories come through them, as if they’re taking dictation from God in fully formed ideas. I’m not one of those people. My stories show up in fits and starts and sparks. I’ll hear sounds or envision scenes without any idea why they showed up, and they often appear at the most inopportune times – in the shower, while I’m walking Phin, at 4am when all I should be doing is sleeping. I rarely know where they’re leading. I just follow along, taking note of what’s interesting on the long and winding road that appears. To write fiction, we have to completely let go and let the story carry us wherever it’s headed.

I try to stay right there at the edge, peering over until I almost fall down into the abyss of the plot. These stories need telling and even though I don’t know why at first, I write them down as best I can. That’s what happened recently. I was working on an idea, happily plunking along when I started thinking about an entirely new character in a completely new setting. I kept trying to ignore him as I worked on my other idea and then he started invading my dreams. There he was, in the snowfall, his nephew trailing behind him. He seemed burdened, dark, and imposing. And alone. Terribly, terribly alone, even when he was with other people. I knew he was hiding something and it took some time for me to find out what it was. And then I found it, in a dream I had on the plane coming back from Florida to New York City the day after Christmas.

My eyes welled up when I learned what horrible pain he was hiding and what he would confess. It was awful and beautiful and for a split second I thought about finding a way to shut him up, to make him take it all back. But it was too late for him. And for me. The train was already pulling out of the story station and I needed to board it, to follow it to the end of the road, even though I wanted to run in the other direction. I couldn’t. He already had me in his grip. I have to take the journey with him. My curiosity is too great and I can’t let him go alone.

This wasn’t the story I wanted to tell right now but it’s the story I need to tell. I have no idea why just yet. I just know it’s there and I am the only one who can hear it. So I write it down in bits and pieces, and then do the hard work of cobbling it all together, of weaving the strings of words into one cohesive path. I feel lucky to have this job because it shows me that I really was meant to be a writer.