Stephen King and Character Bread Crumb Trails

My characters speak to me, and the really odd thing is that I never know quite what they're going to say.

Before you creep up behind me quietly with that straitjacket, let me tell you that I know other writers who feel the same way, Stephen King among them.In fact, SK is the one who gave me permission to write the way I do, letting my characters lead the way. Not me, specifically, you understand, but anyone who takes the time to read his book On Writing, which is my all-time favorite writing book.

Photo: amazon.com

In this wonderful book about his writing process, "Uncle Stevie," (as he's known to readers of his now defunct column in Entertainment Weekly), taught me three things:

1. It's okay for your characters to be in charge.
2. Adverbs are unnecessary.
3. Even Stephen King writes things he deems unworthy of publication.

But I digress. Last weekend, I blogged about being stuck. And as I was thinking about being stuck and thinking about how it's my characters who got me into this mess, I decided they needed to help me get unstuck.
And so I put them at the finish line. This is where you end up, guys, I imagined myself saying. Now, leave me a trail of bread crumbs back to where we just were.

The bread crumb trail is a bit scant, but by thinking both forward and backward, and feeling the need to come up with only bread crumbs, not fully-baked desserts, I managed to come up with something for each of the major players to do in order to narrow the gap between where I am and where I'm going.

I just hope I can type fast enough to stave off any hungry birds who think my plot twists look tasty.