Character-driven plot

It came to me this afternoon why my blog posts have been so boring for the past couple years. There’s been no compelling storyline.

 

Good writers can make a compelling story out of anything. James Thurber created the immortal Walter Mitty out of a middle-aged shlump daydreaming while standing in line. But I’m clearly not James Thurber. (It’s not always obvious whether I rise even to the level of Walter Mitty, but be that as it may.) Whatever virtue my posts used to have – and people used to have nice things to say about them – came not from my skill as a storyteller but from the material itself. It came because I had dramatic scenes to describe, with characters who forced the scenes to come alive.

 

Or at least I had one such character. I mean Wife.

 

It’s not that I miss living with her, God knows. Don’t misunderstand me. But she – her complex and maddeningly contradictory character – may have been the most dynamic thing in my early posts. Maybe also the anger that she inspired in me at every turn, the anger that I had to write down in letters of fire to keep my head from exploding. To keep from doing real damage to myself or her.

 

But I don’t feel that kind of anger any more. Wife is a shell of her former self, and I live an hour’s drive away. She still sets my teeth on edge when I have to say more than Hello or Goodbye to her, but that’s all pretty rare these days. And I’m not romantically entangled with anybody these days, least of all a tormented narcissist. Even if I were on the lookout for a girlfriend, my experiences with Wife and with D – and with my Father, come to that – have pretty much innoculated me against wanting to be tied to another tormented narcissist. On the other hand, they do make life exciting, and they are fun to write about. They make even the most pedestrian prose sparkle in the same way that they make the real world sparkle … because there can be something entrancing about them even as they make themselves and everyone else miserable.

 

She cuts you once.

She cuts you twice.

And still you believe.

The wound is so fresh

you can taste the blood,

but you don’t have strength to leave.

You’ve been slashed

In the face

You’ve been locked outside the door.

You stand there pleading

with your insides bleeding

but you deep down want some more ….

 

But in that case, it seems like I have a choice: learn to write, or stop writing, or accept being dull. Damn but I wish there were an easy choice that also gratified my ego! How galling that the only choice which really puffs up my ego is the one that requires hard work …!