Alternately titled: An In-genre Exploration of the Role of the Fiction Writer in the Creation of his Characters, and the Role of his Characters in the Creation of the Writer
(...)
(...)
Stiles was only nine when he started writing. It was right after his mother died. He thinks someone probably recommended it to his dad, something about it being good for him to express himself.
It was not a diary. It did not look like a diary, or start with 'Dear Diary…" or any of that silly kid stuff.
It was a book.
It was a novel.
It was pretty awesome.
And absolutely nothing like a diary.
It had only one character. Needed only one character. A young boy. A boy with no name. Stiles liked that. His character didn't need a name. Not like in other books. His character was different.
But the pressure. Oh the pressure. It got to him in the end. Because some characters had great names. There were 'Harry's and 'Tom's and 'Jim's. His character deserved a great name too.
Unfortunately, when he finally caved in, there was only one name that would come to him. Nothing else would fit properly.
Regardless, he was very, very proud of what he'd written. It didn't have an ending yet, but it had a start, and where there's a start the rest can't be too far away.
He kept writing. And kept writing. It was fun, and it made him feel oddly important. People would see him writing and say that he had quite the imagination. He figured he would be a famous writer one day.
His father didn't say much when Stiles finally let him read it, but that was okay. Sometimes they didn't need words.
He wrote for about a year. He didn't decide to stop writing. He just forgot about it one day, and then he was too busy, or he didn't have time for it, and eventually he'd outgrown the story.
Maybe he just didn't need it any more.
(...)
He found it again, six years later. He was cleaning out a box of junk (a.k.a procrastinating) and it practically jumped out at him. He didn't remember exactly what it was, at first. But he remembered when he opened it. Dear god did he remember when he started reading.
It was terrible.
Cringe worthy.
A year's worth of childhood ramblings.
The handwriting alone was like the signs on a dangerous construction site. Keep out. Go back. Abandon all hope ye who enter here.
It didn't get much better from there.
Stiles sat on his bed to read it. Perhaps he would have to bury himself later, just to escape from the shame. Because it was really bad.
Sure, he was only nine, but still. He put so much effort into that story, there should at least be some story to show for it.
Instead, there was no characterisation. No storyline to speak of, unless he just managed to hide it really well in the partially constructed sentences. He read the entire thing in the one sitting, there wasn't not much of it, cringing each time he turned a finger-print smudged page. He hadn't even written in pen.
He found a little solace in the fact that younger Stiles seemed to have learnt the correct spelling of because at some point during the writing process. (At least there's that.)
He put the book down and collapsed back onto the bed, remembering the only thing his father ever said to him about the story he'd painstakingly written.
"You can't call your character Helen, Stiles."
"Why not?"
"Helen isn't a boy's name."
"So what?"
"The character is a boy."
"So?"
Stiles sighed. It was a good thing he found the book. He owed some serious apology to the majesty that is the written word. Serious apology. Leaving it as it was must be some sort of crime, deserving of serious punishment. He had to re-write it. Or try to salvage whatever tiny something he could from the wreckage.
Stiles got up and stalked through the house, looking for an intact note book. He checked through the piles of books and scrap paper on his desk, then through the cupboards in the lounge room. He couldn't find one he hadn't scribbled in at least once. With resignation, he picked the one with the most blank pages, figuring he could just rip out the spoiled ones.
He was back in his room, pen at the ready, when he realised that he didn't really know what to write. He couldn't just start all over again, clean-slate like. That would hardly be an apology. He had to bring Helen back to life.
He collected the book from where he'd left it, lying open on his bed.
Right, he thought. It's you and me Helen. Time to start again.
(...)
By the time his father got home, Stiles had fashioned Helen into…something. The boy hadn't been much to start with, but he'd had potential. Stiles wasn't quite sure what Helen had become.
Nothing about Helen was a mistake, which was to say that everything about him was. He was strangely complete in Stile's mind, as if he was always been there, but had only recently been set free.
Helen was a young boy, starting to understand himself. He'd suffered loss when he was only young, and had done his best to cope. He was a teenager, catastrophically eager and inexperienced. He was awkward and a little lost, but most of all, he was just waiting. He has been waiting for a long time, though Stiles isn't sure what he's been waiting for.
Basically, he was Stiles.
Only he wasn't Stiles.
He absolutely was not Stiles.
It was all strange, and it echoed around Stile's mind as he went downstairs and ate with his father. His fingers were itching by the time he returned to his room, new ideas about his story forming even as he grabbed the pen again. He remembered, remembered what it was like to write. How it felt to get everything onto the page and out of his head for a while.
So he kept writing.
The story seemed to develop almost without him. It almost seemed like all he had to do was hold the pen, Helen did the rest. But it was slightly non-fictiony, erring on just the right side of creative, and he was kind of stuck, waiting for something to happen.
Not that he needed spectacular to write a good story. He personally thought that Tales of a Sexually Frustrated Lacrosse Benchwarmer, would make a good title for a gritty coming of age novel, but the nothingness of it implied a greater something that he just didn't have yet. Besides, the laws of statistical probability were in his favour; nothing had happened in Beacon Hills for too long, someone was bound to outlaw dancing, or a body would turn up in the woods.
When he heard about the body in the woods, he was briefly freaked out by the coincidence, but no-one, no-one, jinxes the fundamental laws of the universe.
(...)
It was dark, and it was cold, and Stiles was very seriously considering going back. The bright patch of light wavered in front of him, showing him a whole lot less than it concealed. He knew that he would be better off with his natural night vision, but he couldn't bring himself to physically reach up and switch the head lamp off.
But excitement Helen needed, so excitement Stiles was there to find. Just as long as he didn't get dead in the process.
Besides, he wasn't out here alone. There was Scott, breathing heavily in the darkness next to him. And there was the body. Out there somewhere. In the deep dark woods.
And there was his father, and half the police force.
So we're very nearly safe, Stiles reassured himself silently, willing himself deeper into the woods.
But there was someone else too. Someone waiting for him in the dark. Something familiar, something he thought he had known a long time ago.
Stiles felt it. He didn't know where it was coming from. He wasn't even sure that it was real. But it urgeed him forward. His makeshift notebook felt heavy, where it sat, rolled up and stuffed in his back pocket. Suddenly, walking out in the wood seems like exactly the right thing to be doing.
It was so right.
Until everything went wrong.
(...)
"Just like…everything." Stiles explained, taking a very short break from shovelling cafeteria food into his face. It was a difficult task, dividing his limited lunchtime and attention span between lunch, his notebook, and his best friend.
"But, like, why?" Scott asked, trying to read Stile's handwriting upside down. Stiles slid the book a little closer to himself, away from Scott's prying eyes.
"I don't know. I just like writing about the things that happen." Stiles was momentarily distracted by a stray thought.
"But nothing happens. Pretty much ever."
Stiles was starting to regret telling Scott about the story. But he needed an excuse for being more distant that usual. Sighing, he put his pen down and folded the book away, shoving it roughly into his backpack.
"Correction. Nothing ever happened. Past tense. Now we've got crazy werewolf bites, alphas, girlfriend," Stiles continued before the lovey-dovey smile on Scott's face got too out of control. "Enhanced senses, transformations, blood-lust, etcetera. I certainly wouldn't say nothing happens any more."
"You write about all that stuff? Am I in there?" Scott looked excited, probably picturing a detailed account of his recent forays in to the supernatural, or even worse, his sex-capades. The story was nothing like that.
"There is a character in it who may or may not be going through something slightly similar to your predicament. But it's not really you. It's still fictional."
"So it is me. Can I read it?" A cheeky light danced in Scott's eyes, and Stiles didn't like the look of it at all. Scott would never be able to take it seriously. Stiles shook his head dismissively, scratching absently at his short hair.
Already his mind was elsewhere, his attention dropping from his friend and running back to the book, to the words that he needed to get down before they disappeared forever. If he took the thing out now, Scott would snatch it from him, read what he could before Stiles managed to do enough flailing to get it back.
He sighed again and pushed his tray away. He'd lost his appetite.
(...)
Stiles always stayed the right side of fictional. Everything in the story was just a little different. More colourful, maybe. Less real. Not by much, but the story of his life recently was not exactly mainstream autobiography material. His best friend was a werewolf. He was busy doing stuff a lycanthrope's best friend was supposed to do, balancing his school work, and trying to figure his way around the mystery Scott's bite had thrown them into.
It was good stuff.
Helen's life has been thrown upside down. Things were evolving, beyond the stretch of his understanding, beyond the scope of his view. He didn't know everything, but he was doing his best to discover what he could.
There wasn't just one character any more. It had a setting, and a whole cast of strange and familiar characters. His puppets danced their way across the stage of handwritten pages.
It was still real. Or very close to real. Stiles liked to think that he was telling his story. Their story, the story of everything that was happening around them all.
It was Stiles and Scott, but it was not Stiles and Scott.
And it was Allison, and Lydia, and his father, and Jackson, and Danny, and Scott's mum. And Derek Hale.
But it wasn't them. It wasn't him.
It was something apart from them, somewhere they didn't exist.
Somewhere they didn't have to exist.
(...)
Stiles leaned back in his chair, feeling it creak against the curve of his spine. He rubbed his face, pressing the back of his hands against his closed eyes. He didn't remember blinking at any point in the last few hours. He didn't remember doing much of anything. He'd only noticed the aches and throbs when he put the pen down, stopped writing for a second.
It was pitch black outside, and Stiles realised that he was really tired. It was late. He'd lost track of time again, forcing forward the arrow of time in his narrative.
He pushed himself away from the desk, falling to the bed. The soft mattress felt like heaven under his sore shoulders. He really needed to stop crouching over himself to write. It would be the death of him. Or at least the pain of him.
But he had to get up. He wanted to read over what he'd written, didn't want to leave it for the morning. So Stiles got up, ignoring the mostly imaginary creaking in his knees.
He changed quickly, brushed his teeth and picked up the note book.
The only light in the room was from the lamp near his bedside, and in his current state of exhaustion he could barely make out the words. He considered getting up and putting another light on, but he really couldn't be bothered. He just wanted to read it and collapse into unconsciousness.
He managed to read through three pages before he had to throw it down. It was only about a thousand words, but it caused his heart to sink. It was bad. Like he'd-just-given-the-story-a-severe-strain-of-the-bubonic-plague bad.
No.
It was worse.
There is one think that, above all others, can turn good writing bad. Sure, occasionally it could be done well, but very occasionally and definitely not on this occasion.
Werewolves.
Not werewolves specifically. But the whole supernatural thing? Nothing can kill a good story faster.
"Now Stiles", Stiles chastised himself. "Didn't we promise not to succumb to the evil temptation of the," he shuddered in the warmth of the room, "paranormal romance?"
He wasn't quite sure what possessed him to do it.
Werewolves.
Werewolves.
Where did that come from? What is it doing in a perfectly-almost-nonfictional story?
He has been keeping it pretty real. He'd been using hisownexperiences, after all. What would possess him to diverge into such a random topic? Where had his head been during those last chapters?
Because: werewolves, that wasn't something…
But it was.
Stiles blinked, feeling almost as though he'd woken up from a very slight daze.
It was what'd been happening. It was his life now.
He lay down, frowning to himself.
Did he seriously just forget about everything that had been happening in the last few months?
Stiles mentally shrugged it off. He was tired, and he'd been stuck in his story for too long today. He just needed a break. Besides, it wasn't too unforgivable that he'd mistaken his utterly crazy life for something fictional.
He could feel his eyes closing, feel himself losing consciousness. He was too tired to care about his slip up. For all he knew, the whole werewolf thing was made up, and he was just too tired to remember. Whatever the truth was, he'd just have to trust that it would remain that way until morning. He'd find out then.
He fell asleep without switching the light off, his notebook lying open on the floor.
Just before he totally lost all awareness, he thought he heard something in his room. A soft, familiar voice, saying his name. But it was no louder than a whisper, and he'd forgotten it by the time he woke up the next morning.
(...)
(...)
AUTHOR'S NOTES:
This story focuses pretty quickly and very intentionally on Stiles, limiting the contact with secondary characters. I wanted to write this very Stiles-centric, to reflect how personal writing is a personal thing which is sometimes hard to share. It's intentionally disjointed, but I know that could be a little annoying.
Thank you for reading.
