Knowing the Author

Late last year I watched one of the most enjoyable movies I’ve seen in years. Stranger than Fiction appealed to me as an erstwhile aspiring author who has on occasion wondered what it would be like if my writing was translated into reality. For many years I have wanted to write a story about a young discontent who wrote her problems away in a story – and as plotline strangely starts coming true for her, but she comes to realize that control of her fellows not only eliminates the sweeter mysteries of life, but causes her to question the motives of herself and others.

I’ve marveled at how some characters tend to take on a life of their own; a few of my minor characters have elbowed their way into center stage and caused me to scrap entire projects because I realized at the end that I’d been focusing on the less interesting of the people in my stories. Stranger than Fiction goes a step further: due to a delicious piece of foreshadowing (“Little did he know that this simple, seemingly innocuous act would result in his imminent death”), the character in question goes on a mission to find the mysterious author narrating his life.

Something interesting happens when the character, Harold Crick, meets his highly neurotic narrator, Kay Eiffel. Understandably, Harold begs Kay for his life – only to be told that his end has already been written. Having but recently finished the hand written draft of her manuscript, the writer gives Harold the rest of his story to read. On a very, very, very long bus ride, Harold reads the story and is so taken with its beauty that he returns to Kay to give the book his blessing, even though he knows that its publication will result in his aforementioned imminent death.

While I have a feeling the screenwriter had other points concerning the ironies of life in mind, I have been turning over in my head recently the concept of knowing the author. Harold spends most of the movie whipping himself into a frenzy to find the strange voice narrating his life. It reaches fever pitch when he actually meets her. They stand face to face – and while Kay is having her own noetic structure ripped into shreds, Harold calms almost immediately upon knowing the one who controls his fate. He trusts her with his life.

I sometimes think that if I knew the plotline of my life – at least the general whos and whats and whens – well, then I could stop fretting and anticipating. But we don’t get handed the script, and therefore too often mistake life as impromptu. We forget there is an Author, one who can be known and has gone to great lengths to make Himself known. If we took more time to consider the goodness and trustworthiness of this Author, I wager we’d worry less about the story. We’d certainly be less obsessed with imbuing meaning to the plot, because we would know it to be worthy based on the Writer Himself. We’d be free to live life, to be swept away by its intricate detail and broad-stroked grandeur, knowing that just around the next corner could be the unexpected plot device that changes everything, despite our best efforts to either induce or avoid.

Good writers may be few and far between, but we’re all trying to be our own authors. For my part, I think I’d do well to take more time learning to be a good character.

“Sometimes, when we lose ourselves in fear and despair, in routine and constancy, in hopelessness and tragedy, we can thank God for Bavarian sugar cookies. And, fortunately, when there aren't any cookies, we can still find reassurance in a familiar hand on our skin, or a kind and loving gesture, or subtle encouragement, or a loving embrace, or an offer of comfort, not to mention hospital gurneys and nose plugs, an uneaten Danish, soft-spoken secrets, and Fender Stratocasters, and maybe the occasional piece of fiction. And we must remember that all these things, the nuances, the anomalies, the subtleties, which we assume only accessorize our days, are effective for a much larger and nobler cause. They are here to save our lives. I know the idea seems strange, but I also know that it just so happens to be true.” ~ Stranger Than Fiction