The Book of Masks Homepage

Expanding on a Comment

So, to the post below, Kenny asks:

I didn't know Gordon was making the most out of his situation after Dane basically ruined his (old) life. I wasn't expecting that plot point, to be honest. I don't remember if you did something similar on a previous arc or this was where you saw the current arc moving towards. ... One more question: are Sean and Terry two of the new names you made up for this arc or were they featured before?

I gave tl;dr answers in an answering comment. Here are longer answers that noodle around talking about technique, and how and why the interactive (at least when it's me writing; rugal and others would have to speak for themselves) evolves the way it does.

I've lived with these characters for a long time, and some of them have a very vivid presence in my imagination, so that (a) I know things about them they don't even know about themselves; and (b) I don't even have to think about it to know how they would react in a given situation. So, for instance, I know that Gordon is not going to roll over and die if he gets trapped in Will's mask; he's going to do what he can with it when he sees a chance. So I don't have to be "inspired" to imagine Gordon making the best of his situation, or to write it down in notes that that's what he'd do. He just does it. I don't know the specifics of what he's doing off-page in these chapters, beyond what I've written, but I know the sort of thing he's likely to be doing, and can invent the details if the time for those details comes.

And no, I haven't written much about what he's doing. To write a story is to pick and choose what is important, and what's going on with Gordon has been pretty much irrelevant to Will's adventures, so I haven't even alluded to him much; I only allude to him here in order to set up a possible storyline where he does become important to Will. And in those sequel branches where he doesn't become important? Then this is just a passing glance through a window into his life. (But having glanced through that window, Will may return to it even if he doesn't choose to involve himself with Gordon's new life.)

Picking and choosing what to include, by the way, is pretty hard, especially when you have to figure out afterward why a newly created detail that should have been crucial to earlier chapters wasn't mentioned in them (because that detail hadn't been invented when those chapters were composed). I have (you might have noticed) developed a few tricks—running gags, almost—to handle these things. One of those tricks is Will's persistent inability to remember who he knows and who he doesn't: hence, Caleb's wisecrack about him having the mind and memory of a sparrow. It's also one of the reasons Will has turned out to be a fairly introverted, almost anti-social animal with very few friends: that way, when new people are invented, it's plausible that he hasn't paid much attention to them, which would explain why a story told from his POV hasn't mentioned them. People like Sean Wilcox and Terry Colson.

* * * * *

Speaking of new people: I've actually got stacks and stacks of them in my notes, some of them put together by me, some by rugal. A common writerly trick, when it comes time to invent characters, is to simply look around and notice people. It's pretty easy to do these days with the internet, when a cursory Google search can turn up thousands upon thousands of photographs of interesting, evocative faces and circumstances. Little stories suggest themselves; character traits get daydreamed over; a sketchy character comes into semi-focus; a name gets applied; and a quasi-character goes into the files to be pulled out when there seems a call for them. Terry and Sean are two of these; it was this way with Bhodi and his sophomore friends; it will have been this way with the other new names that might pop up in upcoming chapters.

* * * * *

And one final thought-that-follows-on-another: Sean's gossip to Will hints at some plot movements going on in the background, and I mentioned yesterday that tectonic plates were moving, even if they couldn't be felt. As I look at the poll results at the current hour, and try to anticipate where they will go and what the sequels will have to look like, it occurs to me that I should issue a caution:

Some choices for an alias will lead quickly to that choice being acted upon; others, as with Lindsay Cho, may be delayed with ground-space preparation and foreshadowing; and others may get knocked askew as the plot twists beneath them.