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My current Work in Progress (WIP) is the first novel I have written entirely by the seat of my pants, or less crudely, organically, without any sort of outline to guide me.

When I started the manuscript, I knew a few key things. I knew I wanted to write a story about supernatural occurrences tied to silver nitrate motion picture film, that there would be some sort of ghost involved (my favorite horror genre), and that I would be using a fictionalized version of San Diego’s Ken Theater.

I had planned to create an outline for this book, but before I had completed much research, I felt my enthusiasm flagging, and waiting on the research would likely kill the project. So I dove straight into it with just those elements in my head and a very vague notion of how to make it work in a five-act structure.

Now, some 73,000 words into the project and with the end, if blurry, in sight, the experience has been interesting, particularly with respect to the characters involved.

I have a host of diverse characters—gay and straight, white, black, Asian, young, and old—but it’s two that have caused the theme to leap forward.

Dave, the protagonist of the novel, is the white gay man who owns the independent Kensington Theater, which he inherited from his father, along with a sizeable passive income that allows him not to worry about such banalities as a regular day job. Dave’s father always acknowledged his son’s sexuality with love and acceptance. Dave never faced serious bigotry, even in middle or high school during the 1970s. He has never wanted materially or even emotionally for anything essential—in effect, a charmed life. Dave pays this back by not only being accepting of others who walk a different path but also by making sure his theater is an open and safe place for misfits, geeks, oddballs, and the socially different, particularly during the midnight screenings of The Rocky Horror Picture Show.

Terrance, originally introduced to further the cursed film plot, has developed into a gay character with a quite different backstory. His family did not have the financial resources that Dave enjoys. Adding to the troubles is that Terrance’s father believed in socially dictated gender roles for men and found his sensitive boy a terrible disappointment, which turned to outright hostility at his son’s preference for men over women as sexual partners. Terrance’s mother, retreating from an emotionally distant and abusive husband, left her boy without the affection children desperately require. By his teenage years, Terrance had already begun self-medicating with pot and beer, and in his aborted college attempts, he discovered harder drugs and attempted to fill the emotional void in his heart with anonymous sex in public parks and bathrooms. In order to cover his emotional wounds and project an acceptable self-image, Terrance became a person expert at putting on a public face, making him an excellent salesman.

While Dave thrives in and fosters community, Terrance has none and suffers from silent isolation, making him easily manipulable by the supernatural forces unleashed.

The themes that have arisen organically from the writing are the importance of community and that we are not just who we choose to be but also what the world has made us. I wonder what other new things will appear in the final chapters and the coming serious revisions.