The Magic of Randomness
There’s a lot of randomness in the decisions that people make.
-Daniel Kahneman, author of Thinking Fast and Slow
Randomness is one of the hardest things to let into your world. Most writers (including me!) can be dictators, wanting to control every aspect of their creation. But micromanaging your world isn’t always a good idea. It can rob stories of their vitality, of the spark that keeps readers engaged.
Every once in a while, I like to spice things up with a little randomness.
Let me give you a recent example.
When I was writing Thin Places, a friend visited us and we talked about my writing. He asked me a question in the middle of a noisy restaurant. I thought I understood what he was asking and answered yes. Later, my husband took me aside and said, “I didn’t know you had any gay people in your next book.”
It was only then I realized I misheard him.
My first impulse was not to do anything, to keep things the way they were and apologize to our friend for the misunderstanding.
Then I thought “Why not put a gay character in my book?”
Mind you, I wanted to be very careful about the decision.
I didn’t want to just plonk the identity down on a random character and not have it really mean anything. I knew enough friends growing up who struggled with their sexual identity. I didn’t want to trivialize what was an important (and sometimes painful) part of their lives.
Fortunately, there was a character in my book who was tailor-made for such a transformation.
King Kuranes card from Call of Cthulhu
King Kuranes was a one of H.P. Lovecraft’s original characters. He was the last descendant of an old English family and lived in a haze of dreams and narcotics, yearning for an imaginary city in the Dreamlands. Desperate to escape the world and get to the place he envisioned, he threw himself into a nearby river. His body was never recovered, and he was written off as a suicide.
When I wrote King Kuranes into my story, none of this background information seemed that interesting. And to be honest, my lack of engagement showed.
Then the what-if questions hit me.
“What if the reason Kuranes was so desperate to escape to another world was because he was gay, because he wanted to take refuge in a city free of all the prejudice he encountered?”
“What if he threw himself into the water in an attempt to end his life and discovered a portal to another world, a passage that led him to his dream?”
The Dream City of Celaphais
The moment I allowed him that escape, Kuranes blossomed as a character. He started to tell me things about himself–about his disastrous affair with a friend in college, his long years yearning for love in the waking world, his hope that he would find happiness and meaning by building a city in the Dreamlands. Once he started talking, I couldn’t get him to stop. Kuranes went from being a stiff, cardboard character into an audacious dreamer brimming with life and purpose.
Some of the best times I’ve had writing a character have been with him.
And I wouldn’t have happened if I didn’t loosen my grip on the world and let in a little randomness…