The Well

When you were a kid did you ever sing “There was an old woman who lived in a shoe, she had so many children she didn’t know what to do so . . . she threw them out the window, the window the second story window!”?

No? Well, then you’ll have to excuse my analogy, but I believe that Twain has his own method of getting rid of unwanted children . . . or in his case, characters.

In the break between Puddin’head Wilson and Those Extraordinary Twins, Twain relates his frustration in writing the story that he had in his head. No matter how he tried, the characters took control of the story, leaving his intended central characters in the shadows.

What does an author do with disobedient or disappearing characters?

Twain found his answer, not by throwing them out of the second story window, but by drowning them in a well. First one, then two more . . . but soon the well filled up. After all, wouldn’t the readers get a little suspicious of all these “coincidental” drownings in a family well? What’s an author to do?

For Twain, the answer was obvious—write two stories. The first, Puddin’head Wilson, would be the story commandeered by the characters; the second, Those Extraordinary Twins, would be the story he intended to write from the beginning.

So, next time I’m faced with opposition from my fictional characters (which I honestly can’t think of when this could happen, as I do not write fiction), I’ll take a lesson from Twain and drown them in the well. Once that fills up, I’ll write a supplementary novel.

Of course I could always “throw them out the window, the window the second story window . . .”

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