A common writing mechanism

Have you ever been reading a story and gotten really caught up in the action and etc. and suddenly run into a *** followed by the problems another character is concerned with? Yeah, me too. I kinda like it. So long as it advances the story, there's nothing wrong with it. Interesting things happen to other people in the story besides just the main character and this mechanism allows you to learn of them.

We may be completely comfortable with such things in a story, but not be able to apply the mechanism to "real life". Many members of my extended family were, or are, career military and have spent years living in faraway and exotic places. As a boy, I don't think that I was ever more than fifty miles away from home on any sort of trip, so if I had cousins, uncles and aunts that lived across the country; that was pretty exotic.

But many times, they would return home for their once or twice-yearly visit and seem to expect nothing to have changed. Some of them seemed to think that I should still be a young boy, only to find that I had a driver's license, a car, an after-school and weekend job, and was dealing with pretty much adult-type problems. They also failed to comprehend the fact that however much their own lives had changed, the lives of those of us still at home had changed as well.

That's what I like about the writing mechanism that I mentioned. It shows that the characters that are "off-stage", so to speak, have their own problems to deal with while the main character is being suitably heroic. It drives home the realization that life does not stand still for others just because you aren't there. Perhaps it helps us to not be self-centered and insensitive. I don't know. I just like the mechanism and use it frequently in my works.

Leaving that subject for a while, I would like to say that I am currently working on the sequel to my novel, Gulf of the Plains. I am calling it Gulf of the Plains II: Fog and Bog. I am also working on two currently untitled pieces; a tragedy and a thriller. The tragedy has bogged down while the thriller is moving along. Neither of them is moving nearly as well as the sequel. I find that I have trouble dividing my time among them and cannot devote as much of myself to any of them as I should. I am on the verge of telling myself to just pick one and get on with it.

Well, until next time, thank you.
Derek A. Murphy
Author of The Empty Heart: A Collection, Congruencies and others.
Available on Kindle