Characters and Stories by KM Rockwood

Most of us write because we love creating stories. Sometimes we say we almost can’t help it. Our lives without our writing would be drab indeed.

I enjoy experimenting with my stories. Although there are some characters and circumstances I have used extensively, I am always on the lookout for expanding my horizons.

Sometimes my experiments are successful. Sometimes they result in a work that will justifiably remain abandoned in my files, never to see the light of day. And sometimes they result in stories that seem to me to have fulfilled my intent but are torn to pieces by an editor.

I have to admit I have trouble judging my own work. I have tried to cultivate a circle of critique partners, both online and in person, who give me wonderful guidance. I listen to them, especially when I am writing something outside my usual milieu.

Last winter, I was writing from a dark place. While I don’t feel I am capable of writing doom and despair (which some authors do astoundingly well) my idea of a “positive” ending strikes some readers as bleak. My Christmas story last year for this blog was an example of that. One of my best critique partners (she was an editor for a newspaper! Talk about finding all my silly errors) found it so depressing she didn’t want to finish reading it.

This year I’ve done a complete turnaround. My Christmas story was more cheerful, and I’ve moved onto even lighter, happy-ever-after projects. Ones that are so determinedly positive their endings are really quite predictable. They are fun, though, both to read and to write.

Over the years, I’ve tried several different characters and tactics.

Werewolves. I love werewolves. I can’t explain exactly why (and I don’t feel any desire whatsoever to explore vampires) but werewolves fascinate me. Some of my first published stories were about werewolves.

Robots. My next stories included robots. Several short stories have been published, and I keep returning to a longer unfinished manuscript of a novel where the protagonist discovers that his wealthy “father” indulged his trophy wife’s desire for a baby by purchasing a robot who mimics a growing human child. When in his late teens, our protagonist discovers that he is, in fact, that robot, and he is programmed to self-destruct in several months.

Many of my stories feature characters living on the edge of society, trying to survive and even improve their lives and the lives of those they encounter.

I’ve created an entire fictional world of Santa’s Village at the North Pole, and I’ve enjoyed writing about the elfin community that has evolved in it.

Miss Grayling is a reclusive elderly lady who has discovered a way to deal definitively with those who cross her. She murders them. Lately I’ve been also toying with unreliable narrators, characters who mental or emotional health is such that their interaction with the world at large is problematic.

Do you work to master one type of character and story, or, like me, do you enjoy experimenting with an ever-increasing variety?