Ray Owen and 'The Hole'

“If I ever experienced writer's block, I didn't know it. I usually have a general ending in mind, but not always.”

This is a quote from Ray Owen, a well-respected author whose book, “The Hole”, is available on ‘Amazon’ and major bookstores in the United States of America; it was a kind response to my previous ‘Blog’.

It raises two very important points.

The first point is that many fiction writers are unaware of getting ‘writer’s block’. The situation that you will see portrayed in films and television series of a writer sitting at a typewriter hurling crumpled up sheets of paper at the floor in apparent despair is a rarity.

We do not, by and large, sit at our typewriters or computers with our heads in our hands exhibiting expressions of sheer anguish. If this horrible thing happens to us we will generally not sit at all; rather we will get up and go for a walk or a mug of tea. In my case I should go and watch football or have a sandwich. In either case the story is forgotten; it is dispensed with and other things are focussed upon—perhaps a fresh story. Some of us have many stories wandering around in our heads, often they clamour for attention and push their way forwards to be written next.

In casting the story that is being worked on aside it is often the case that an idea will form. The mind is a fermenting pot of ideas, one will push its way forward—presenting itself as the answer to the dilemma. Sometimes it is the answer but at other times it might be the key to unlocking the next part of the story.

We all get ‘blocks’ from time to time. It is a natural part of the process in our plotting a course to that destination point. The route to ‘The End’.

Ray Owen says that he sometimes has a general ending in mind. You do not need to have a precise ending. The details can be conferred upon the situation when you get there in the same way that you may go and visit a place where you have never before been. You may say to yourself that you will visit Florence, Arizona (as opposed to Florence in Oregon), but having never visited Florence you have no clue what to expect or what it looks like until you arrive.

Now you plot the best route, you describe the journey in detail so that the reader will feel the weather and see the view along with you as you travel.

It is not until you arrive that you can now describe the details of the destination. Now you can lay Florence out in intricate detail so that the reader can almost say that they feel that they have visited the town with you.

So it is with your story. This is, I believe, what Ray Owen means when he says he has a general idea of the end of the story before he starts writing but that he will not be able to fill out the details until he gets there.

Some writers can get away with not having an ending. These writers get a great idea for a story and then just ‘go with the flow’. They listen to the characters and follow their lead and conversations until, at some point, an ending will emerge like a light at the end of a tunnel.

For me a short story is sometimes like that. It is a situation that springs to mind along the lines of “what if this were to happen?” and then it goes from there and, hopefully, a story will emerge and an ending will happen to it at some stage in the writing.

This is an insecure way (for me) of writing; it is risky and (for me) excitingly adventurous.

Your method, your system, is one that will suit you. It is one that you are comfortable using and one in which your characters will feel at ease.

Your characters are important because, for you, they are real.