Between the Lines

“….If this was a story it would be the last half-dozen pages or so; get ready to put this one up on the shelf and forget it. The sun’s going down and there’s no sound but my footfalls and the water in the drains.”

Stephen King’s “It”

I wonder:
Were you a character in a story, would you feel it when the covers snapped together? When the book was slid onto the shelf, would your world go dark, or disappear altogether? Would you sneeze as the pages collected dust, or float obliviously between the lines? When the story was re-read, would you walk through it with a strange sense of déjà vu? Would you feel the ending sliding towards you and try to drag it out or would you run towards it to end it as quickly as possible?


I read a wonderful book by a brilliant author or enjoy a movie that was magnificently written and I again marvel at the beauty and power of the written word. Over the summer I stopped and began to wonder what it would be like if I were to exist only as a handful of pages. My face would never be seen, my voice never heard. Character quirks, personality traits, habits of speaking—all found only in the carefully arranged words that were my body and my mind. Would the power to compel or inspire punch home in a way the words I used to give breath to never could? Could I seduce and manipulate in a way that my physical self could never come close to accomplishing? Would love come easier? Would it be worth as much? What could be gained? What could be lost?
To exist not in the written word, but as the written word. What would that entail?
I wonder.