Co-Geeking

In the acknowledgements for her novella Thornhedge, author T. Kingfisher talks a little about the process of writing this particular story.

“Many characters bolt off with the story, and I am left staggering behind them, frantically trying to take notes, but Toadling was very polite. Her backstory unfolded pretty much as I typed it. I learned she was raised by greenteeth as I wrote the sentence about them; I learned that she could turn into a toad when she did it on the page—all the little discoveries that you always make writing a book, of course, but happening at my usual typing speed, without sitting and staring at the wall for an hour, or nearly rupturing my wrist tendons trying to keep up.”

–T. Kingfisher in the acknowledgements for Thornhedge

I’m not a fiction writer, but I do recognize the phenomenon of suddenly uncovering details from role-playing. It’s delightful to just suddenly realize a pertinent, obscure, or particularly distinguishing detail about your character.

(This kind of serendipitous discovery also makes me think any algorithmically generated (“AI”) content won’t be replacing the most original types of human-generated content terribly soon, nor will machine translation replace human translators in a hurry. Oh, make no mistake, people will try to replace human creators with machines. But at least thus far we’re still more sophisticated when it comes to pure innovative leaps or getting smoother translations.)

There have been many times I’ve wished to be able to tap into the unconscious mulling process or consciously force a creative leap, but of course it doesn’t work that way. It makes the moments when it does happen all the more precious, doesn’t it? 🙂

Kingfisher, T. Thornhedge. London: Titan Books, 2023, p. 122.

Image by Eppu Jensen

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