Hello, friends.
This week the day job was a shitshow. Well, two days were bad. Dealing with people can be tough and it took everything I had to get through. Funny enough, on the two days where the shit really had its say, I also got some good news. One wasn’t really news so much but just hearing about a happy thing that happened between two family members. It really brightened my day. The other news is something that can help my father a lot, which will allow us to help him while he remains independent. Anyway, big lows this week, but big highs, too.
The lows helped inspire this week’s musings about seeing the breaks in someone’s armor, when a person accidentally reveal truths and how that pertains to creating characters.
So, let’s get into it.
Welcome to the 116th installment of Gauthic Times, the newsletter about my writing, my life, and finding the truth about a person through their actions.
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Last Sunday I finished the main revisions to Project: Amusement Park.
The next day I went through the chapter synopses, added places where I could put foreshadowing, and then sprinkled it throughout. The final word count is 179,000 words. I’d wanted to edit it down by about 10% but only managed a third of that. Still, I consider it a win. Now I’ve sent the book to three beta readers (one of which is Pamela) and may ask a few more people to read it, too.
I didn’t do many Daily Progress updates on Patreon because after finishing the revisions, I decided to take the week off.
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One of the components that’s most challenging in writing is characters. Creating and writing characters is such a challenge because people have experiences with other people every day of their lives so it’s easy to recognize what doesn’t work. As a writer, I try my damndest to study people in order to get it right (or as right as I can).
Over time I’ve tried to learn to read people. I think I’m all right at it and this week I got see a lot of real people behaving in ways that revealed things about themselves. Breaks in their armor that showed things they may not have wanted shown. It was interesting and it certainly helps with writing characters.
In Echoes on the Pond, every character has some major issue they have to deal with and every character has a public way of behaving that somewhat opposes their private persona. The 13-year-old Missy Walters has a relatively tough exterior that she uses to keep people away from her because of all the pain she’s felt in her young life. Her counselor, Cheryl, seems to almost have to together in front of Missy but behind the scenes, she’s hurting really bad. Both have violent pasts that interfere with their present and entices a malevolent spirit to try to come back using Missy as a vessel. Throughout the novel, they reveal more of themselves, bad and good, and I tried my hardest to make their growth and their issues seem believable for readers. Based on the feedback I’ve received, I did an all right job.
In this week’s incidents, I saw one person go from cold to warm(ish) based on them listening and attempting to understand what they misunderstood in a huge way. In another incident, I saw someone whose ego is so big that they could not be disagreed with. This wasn’t a surprise but I got to see just how bad this could manifest.
Human moments like that are fodder for the creative person. Two days of this week was a nightmare because of these incidents, but both days also had some big highs with some good and great news (nothing writing-related, unfortunately). As I was reacting to everything, I tried my best to make sure I paid some attention to my reactions, my feelings. If I can accurately remember them, then I may be able to accurately describe them through a character.
Humans are messy, complicated creatures. You know that. Everybody over the age of, like, twelve does. The writer–the creative person–knows that messiness is where the stories are best. In the case of the writer of scary stories, that messiness helps move the story. It helps compound problems so that the characters aren’t just dealing with whatever scary monster or ghost or thing is going on but also with their own responses.
The break in the armor shows what the people are made of. Their reactions show who they are. This is where story happens. This is where truth is revealed. In stories and in real life.
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That’s it for this week’s newsletter. Thank you so much for subscribing, reading, and for your support.
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Gautham: Bill Gauthier.com 
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