As I wait for m beta readers to complete my latest novel and hope that the piece survives the process my mind chews over the problems, characters, and themes of my next project.

While I am a plotter, creating outlines of varying detail for my novels, there’s a lot of pre-work that happens in the background of my grey matter before I ever get to the butt-in-chair & fingers-on-keyboard stage of outlining. Not only do I have to I know the ending I need to have a strong intuitive sense of the characters. The key word there is intuitive. While aspects of the character may be derived from plot or designed for thematic purpose large aspects simply fall into place by some sort of narrative gravity. If I attempt to deviate from that aspects there’s a psychic pushback that produces a force trying to return the character or plot to what fell into place.

This new story forming up in my head has already exhibited such a factor. The manuscript off to the beta readers now has my first female protagonist in a novel length work and I had thought that while I wait for the verdict on that work it would be best if I returned to a male protagonist for this new piece.

Narrative gravity disagreed.

A female character is the one that appears in my mental wanderings as I consider the story. She’s the one clearly driving the plot, making the decisions, and while I had wanted to return to a comfortable zone for this writing it is clear now that I do not always get what I want.