Change

For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope.

Jeremiah 29:11

I did not know when I set down to write that first manuscript that my writing style would go through so many changes. Nor did I know how writing would effect the way I look at the world. I learned to watch the way I start my sentences. Using the same first word sentence after sentence isn't allowed. Neither is using the same word in several sentences in a row or even in a couple of paragraphs. One can only use the word amazing so many times before it looses it's effect.

But for the sake of this post let's just say that the writing process is amazing and that it is a growth process. One that creates change in every writer. No matter how we got started on this journey it changes us. Takes us places we probably never intended to go. I did not know the places I would go when I started writing.

I did not know about the hours and hours I would pour into research to turn out a story that seemed so easy when I first came up with it. How was I to know that in learning to critique my own work it would change my enjoyment of reading books so that I can now no longer turn of the critique in me?

Let's admit up front...we've all done it.

As readers...as writers. We have sat down with a book and while reading, no matter how much we may be enjoying the story, we have thought I would have done this or I wish the writer would have done that. Or 'why isn't my favorite character reacting to this the way I want them to'?

Once the ability to critique a story is developed it can't be turned off at will. It can't be erased. Once there it becomes a part of how you read and interact with books and manuscripts. This is a good thing when you're writing your own manuscripts and you need to figure out if what this character is doing is the right thing or if they are acting in character for who they are. But it's a bad thing when you pick up a book and just want to read for the enjoyment of it.

Maybe you're sick and you don't feel like doing anything but laying on the couch and reading. You want to lose yourself in a book for a while, to forget your sore throat and stuffy nose, the pounding in your head, and just focus on someone else's life for a few hours. For readers that works very well. I have passed many hours that way. For writers...it doesn't quite work so well.

Sooner or later we are going to start catching repeated words, mistakes, even mentally changing a scene to what we think would make the story better. Why do we do that? Because it was part of the change that happened in us as authors as we learned to write better.

This can be good and bad depending on when and why we are reading and what we are hoping to gain from it. Being able to spot all those differences, to pick apart a story lets us learn and keep growing as authors. It lets us read a book and get a story idea from a scene or two or even from a single line. Reading feeds our imaginations, keeps the editor in us alive and can be considered a tool of the trade. I read somewhere that if we want to be able to keep writing we must keep reading. For that is what fuels the imagination in us that feeds the stories we keep creating.

But...we did not start out being able to do that. At least I didn't. Nor did several of the authors I have had the pleasure of getting to know. It was a learned process. A change. Something that we acquired slowly as we began picking our own stories apart.

Change is a good thing. It happens to all of us. In life there is no getting away from change. As good as it is because it makes us grow and become who and what the Lord has planned for us it can also be bad. Or so it may seem at the time.

Some changes that come our way are things we do not want. We would never look for it, never ask for it. I recently moved to a new house. That was a change I fought for months. I simply did not want to move. Now I'm glad I did. There are many other changes I did not want in my life just this year alone. My grandpa passed away, my sister and her family moved across the country... I could sit here all day listing changes I would not have asked for but got anyway. Changes that not only came my way but also made me grow as a person.

In writing our characters are supposed to grow. Throughout the story they are to have some sort of internal conflict that makes them grow as a person. Often this is seen in their belief in God. They struggle with faith or with forgiving God for something in their past or...whatever.

As the writer of that particular story, as the one changing and making that character into who and what they have to become what does it take to bring about that kind of change? And do we give our characters enough situations that stress or push them far enough to make them reach the change we are creating if they were real people, in real life?

That's a very good question.

In one of my manuscripts...one I had a lot of fun writing...my heroine has a very troubled past. She has things in her past that she believes no man can ever forgive. Without warning the hero crashes into her life, actually she crashes into his. Literally. From the first meeting between the two they are drawn to each other but they both have very good reasons to want nothing to do with the other. The heroine, despite her past, is interested and willing to see where things go. At least at first. The hero is not. He wants nothing to do with women. He learned the hard way that they're nothing but trouble and he is determined to stay as far away from them as possible.

My preacher often says 'a wife will follow her leader' meaning she will follow her husband. He teaches regularly that if men want a good marriage they have to treat their wife good. And he is right. It isn't a magic formula for a good marriage but it is a basic idea that will make a difference. Because a good number of women do follow in relationships. No matter how strong a person we may be, no matter what our character is, we get our cues from the other person. Something that probably works for men too.

But it isn't limited to spouses. Following the other person in a relationship comes natural no matter the dynamics. I recently met two young women, on two different occasions that I knew before the initial meeting were going to be an important part of my life. I wanted to hug them both on that first meeting, and I did, but not before getting my cues from them. I did not want to hug them if they didn't want it. I needed to figure out how they felt about that before hugging them and the only way to do that was to try and get a feel for how they wanted that first greeting to go.

I have a close family member that because of our relation to each other should be very close. And yet there is something there that prevents that. It can't be seen from the outside, can't be heard in our conversations, unless a person knew what should be there and isn't. I take my cues from the other person in this relationship most of the time. Sometimes I instigate hugs or conversations just because I know that we should be doing or talking about these things and we aren't.

I know someone else that has become family of my heart. We aren't related by blood or marriage. There is no true family tie between us but our hearts have adopted each other and the tie is there. This woman makes me happy just being in her presence. Her hugs feed something inside me that simply lets me know I am loved. Her advice, when given, is the kind of advice and encouragement I have been seeking for years without knowing it. Simply put...she is someone the Lord has brought into my life, that filled a space in me I didn't know needed to be filled. When I first met this woman I wasn't looking for any kind of relationship with her, not even friendship. We simply kept turning up at the same place time and time again. And then she started saying 'I love you'. There was no stopping the bond that formed after that. But it started because I responded to the way she treated me. Now this woman holds a place in my heart. A place that has given me an adoptive mother I wasn't looking for. I have a mother but now I have two. One I was born to and one I was drawn to in life.

But back to that manuscript...in it my heroine was initially interested in my hero but his attitude toward her pushed her away. To an extent. She was still drawn to him but she had scars in  her past that she couldn't separate from what was happening with him. And he was drawn to her despite his best efforts not to be. As a result she followed her leader. When he was nice to her she responded by enjoying her time with him and wanting to be around him. When he wasn't so nice she ended their meetings either angry or in tears. And he responded in kind. Because she got angry he tried to keep from making her feel that way. And he tried even harder not to make her cry, so much so that he kept count of the number of times he made her cry.

At the end of that manuscript, as with most, the hero's story comes out. The heroine discovers something in his past that she couldn't have fathomed. She had the opportunity to find out about his past without going through him but she refused, over and over, because by that point her faith in him was so complete she didn't believe she needed to know what his past was. Then it all came out. With the proof staring at her in black and white she couldn't deny what she was seeing. And she couldn't stop the reaction she had. Because his past came too close to something in her own past. It opened old wounds and created new ones. Wounds that caused the much needed black moment in the manuscript.

And it caused change. In the heroine. In the hero. It stretched them to become more than they were before. It's also the only manuscript where I have been able to create that sort of change in my characters. My hero went from not wanting anything to do with women to wanting to marry one in a matter of weeks. My heroine learned to trust the hero so much that she fell apart when she found out about his past.

Change.

In real life it happens on a day to day basis. To live is to change and to grow into the person the Lord wants us to be. In fiction, as an author, we create it. We must throw the kind of situations that cause life changes into our characters paths so that they can change and mature as the story unfolds.

But how do we do that? What kind of situations create that kind of change? What do you put your characters through to get them to change that much? In only a few hundred pages?