A couple of weeks ago I used a Bob Dylan quote for a blog about where characters come from. Today I am going to use a quote that I thought was from Dylan, but is actually from Confucius:

No matter where you go, there you are.

This concept can be applied to writing in several ways. The first one of course is that everything you write—despite my mystical dalliance with the muse last week—is a product of your life, your experiences and the people that you know, or it is your take on what it would be like to be someone you don’t know or have no common experiences with. I have never been to the Amazon nor have I ever met any member of the myriad indigenous tribes that inhabit it. If I got an idea for a story about Amazon rain forest natives, I could do research about their lives and customs and culture, but in the end, when I am writing the actual characters, it will be my take on Amazon natives. Every character that is not based on a real person is a version of you in disguise.

The secret—and this is what I really want to talk about—is making sure that disguise holds up.   There are many levels to the art of not being seen. First, we should talk about what writers tend to call “the dream.” This is that perfect state of escape where the reader is completely immersed in your world and the real world is either distant or no longer exists.  You want to keep the reader in that dream, and even if they are aware they are reading and really should start cooking dinner, or they have to pee, you want them to not be able to put the story down.  One of the things that will break the reader out of the dream the quickest is clunky writing. If a reader has to double back to figure out who’s talking, or has to read something twice to figure out what you mean, they are more likely to assume the responsibilities they were shirking and leave your world. This is why it is so important to read and reread your writing and specifically to read it out loud.   Nothing else is better to fix literary potholes than reading your work aloud. If you stumble over something, or something confuses you, it will probably make your reader stumble or confuse them.

The other way to break the reader out of the dream is to inadvertently call attention to yourself.  I say inadvertently because there are many instances where authors purposely call attention to themselves.  Perhaps the biggest practitioner of this is Stephen King, who regularly makes references to characters and towns from his numerous novels. He even references himself in the Dark Tower series. There is also a solid tradition of books where narrators address the reader or reference the story they are telling.

What I am talking about is bloopers, plot holes, and failings in logic. These can be small and trivial, or huge.  For instance, in Raymond Chandler’s book, The Big Sleep, there is a chauffer who is found dead, and Chandler describes the crime scene.  However, he never returns to that murder, and the killer is never named.  There is a famous story where a movie was made of the book, and the producers came to Chandler to ask him who killed the chauffer, and he said, “Damned if I know.” Raymond Chandler, perhaps the all-time master of hard-boiled fiction, can get away with that. You can’t. At least not yet.

I am currently halfway through writing a novel about vampires. The protagonist and linchpin of the plot is named Miranda.  However, she was originally named Beth. Because I have shelved that project and returned to it, when I reread the draft, the character was Beth in some chapters and Miranda in others.  This is nothing that a global search and replace can’t fix, right?  It depends. You have to make sure that the replacement happens for all instances of the name, including possessives, or else you will get an exchange like this one:

Miranda woke up on her couch. She remembered being attacked and Set’s voice asking her where she lived but not much else. She heard sounds coming from her kitchen.

“Hello?” she said. From the kitchen she heard Set’s tenor voice.

“Ah, you’re awake. Don’t get up.” She heard the voice coming closer. “Save your strength.”

Set strode into the living room and placed two cups of tea on the table in front of the couch. He put his hand on Beth’s shoulder. “Miranda, how are you feeling?”

That feeling you have right now, that’s the feeling you want to avoid giving your readers.

Stay invisible, my friends.