Getting to know you

Today's writing session provided an interesting twist for me.

No, I didn't introduce a race of zombies into my town, or turn all of the characters into aliens, or reveal that the whole story was happening in a snow globe.

This isn't something new to writers, and I'm sure it happens all of the time. But for the first time, I had a revelation about a character that wasn't the main character. Suddenly, this guy went from static to dynamic in, oh, about 500 words.

I was just typing along and it hit me: This guy's a waaaay bigger deal than I thought. He was just sneaking up on me. Once again, I got to hit one of those milestones that I'm sure most writers have all of the time. That doesn't mean they don't feel good.

I'm getting t0 points where stuff is happening to a lot of different characters, and it's cool to watch them turn into different things. Some of this growth and development will change how they talk or act (or both) in the earlier stuff I wrote, but that's what second drafts are for.

Discovering more about your characters has helped me discover more about my writing, and proved to me - at least for one day - that something's actually going on with these guys.