Brain Tease
I am driving this writer crazy. It’s even kind of fun. Why would I, a minor character with only a few paragraphs in the spotlight, enjoy torturing a writer so?
Because it makes her write better.
She catches glimpses of me now and again out of the corner of her mind’s eye. Like vapor or gossamer on the wind, I am gone before she can turn. She knows I’m part of the main character’s secret. She suspects I could blow her character’s world open, but even that suspicion is vague and unformed. She tried to pin me down for a few days; now she tries to ignore me.
This writer is convinced I’m cruel, and I’m okay with that. The tension my unformed presence causes drips through her fingers and onto the page. She questions her main character. She foreshadows unaware. She is laying down words that her eyes will caress when she begins revisions. Not knowing is putting tension in her draft.
I will step from the wings into my brief spotlit moment when the time is right. The main character will never be the same. I will never be the same. I think perhaps the writer will never be the same either.
I am a sleeper character.
Brilliant