My Novel Grew A Brain

I've read about this fascinating phenomenon before, no doubt from better authors than I, which is probably why it's taken almost 30,000 words for me to notice it.

My novel seems to be developing a mind of its own. In the beginning of the process, there's nothing but a word processor. An indefinite amount of blank space which is the playground for your inspiration; a blank canvas for your painting of words. Well, at first, it's just that: blank. You can go in any direction you want. Even after a few thousand words, the novel seems like soft clay; non-solid and nebulous - able to take practically any different route and ultimately wind up at destinations that are light-years apart.

But, as I've pushed forward these last nineteen days, my novel is solidifying. It is growing stiffer and more colorful at the same time. It's starting to feel more like a real book and less like the putrid babbling which it really is. This is all thanks to the one major characteristic which separates the reader from the writer: unpredictability.

When you read a book, you may have a vague idea where it's going. But, (if it's a good book) your expectations will be thrashed about, and you'll never really know what to expect around the next bend. That's what will keep you reading (again, if it's a good book).

Well, that unpredictability has began to manifest itself in my own novel. All of a sudden, I'm writing about characters I had never conceived during the planning stage. There was an incident too. The main characters were attacked by an animal. I hadn't planned on the attack, but it just seemed like it belonged there. And now, I'm starting to see how this attack might be useful later on. I see some interesting conflict unfolding with one of these new characters that suddenly popped up, and another one of my main characters is stubbornly defying how I had wanted him to turn out, and I've had to reconsider how he, and ultimately the whole book will end.

Indeed, it's as though my novel is gaining a mind of it's own! When I first heard about this happening to others, I laughed to myself. I thought that it could only be the result of a person who really had no good clue what s/he was writing about and why.

Well, I guess I was wrong. I look forward to seeing how this all turns out in the end. About 20k words left to work with, assuming my novel doesn't decide it would rather have 30k, or 50k, or even more.