Archive for May, 2020

Strong characters in fiction really capture my memory. One of the best is, The Judge. Probably Cormac McCarthy’s most memorable appearance in Blood Meridian, or the Evening Redness in the West.

The following is a description of what he looked like. “An enormous man dressed in an oilcloth slicker had entered the tent and removed his hat. He was as bald as a stone and had no trace of beard and he had no brows to his
eyes nor lashes to them. He was close to seven feet in height and he stood smoking a cigar…”- Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian, or the Evening Redness in the West

He rode with a group of scalp hunters. Their profession marked them as unsavory beings. The Judge was their interpreter of life and marked as semi divine, although demonic. His spoken words always brought the group to silence. “War was always here. Before man was, war waited for him. The ultimate trade awaiting its ultimate practitioner.” – Cormac McCarthy,

My name is Wally Runnels and I write Border Pulp.

The challenge was daunting in the beginning. I had no idea what I was going to write about.
However I do have a character that I’ve used in a repertory way. No idea of a plot so I started with a scene by simply using the character I am familiar with. From that point on each scene told me where to go. Eventually
what I came up with was a story outline.

Now I can go back and fill out the story and develop links between scenes. Work with the characters and their emotions and their arcs. Get inside them a little more. It was like advertising when you had to come up with a
concept within a given time, because a million bucks in media had been purchased and you had to deliver a concept within a specific time.

It was challenging, but fun and showed me things about my writing self that I hadn’t known before.

Wally Runnels