Ok, my last post said half a scene from the end, and that’s true.  But I haven’t been able to write it.  I’m not convinced, somehow, and I can’t commit to picking an ending.  I’ve been struggling with the technology in my story.  It’s set in the future (sci-fi horror, you see), but the high-tech doesn’t feel like a crucial aspect of the plot.  If I could just as easily set it in the here-and-now, then there’s no point in setting it in the future.  But I’m convinced that setting it in the future is important to the story.  Therefore, my plot has been missing something, some element that could only happen in this time and place and none other.

Today I figured out how to do that, but it requires adding in a whole nother character, probably 2 more scenes, and reworking several of the others.  (But see, since I haven’t “finished” it yet, I haven’t rewritten those scenes yet, and they were going to need work anyway.  So, it wouldn’t exactly be a waste.)  But I’ve gotten rather attached to the parts of the ending that I’ve already written, and I’m afraid it wouldn’t happen quite this way with this extra plot point.  Which would mean that this great scene I wrote, that I totally love, may not make as much sense.  I might have to kill my darling*. *sniffle*

But would this plot addition overcomplicate things?  Can I accomplish the same thing–or something better–in a simpler way?  I’m also concerned that if I do add this plot point, it could change the tone pretty drastically, and by adding another character it would shift the balance of the story.

And furthermore, then I’d have to write two more scenes, and do the work to integrate that into the whole rest of the story–which isn’t very long.  This is major surgery, on a story this short.  Is it really worth it?

Maybe I’ll sleep on it, and come up with something even better tomorrow.  (“Speedy” hasn’t exactly been my name so far.  Have you noticed that it’s August already?)

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* Good explanation of the phrase here: http://wendypalmer.com.au/2008/09/25/writing-rules-misapplied-kill-your-darlings/

Mood:  contemplative

I’m half a scene from the end of my vampire story.  Why half?  Well, I think the rest of the story takes place right now, in the same place.  The ending should be relatively short and simple, a few paragraphs, maybe a whole page, but probably not two.

I haven’t written it yet.  I’ve been thinking about it for three weeks, since I managed to connect the chronological parts of the story up with the almost-last scene that I wrote two months ago.  (Yay! One chronological story!)

One of my goals in this story has been to end it with an ending.  Since I’m so bad at finishing things (not just stories), I figure that endings are the part of story-writing I need the most practice at.

The problem with endings is that they’re really beginnings.  “And they lived happily ever after” is the beginning of the whole rest of their lives.  I wrote a short story last year that was really a prologue to a possibly-novel-lengthed story about a human child who was stolen by fairies.  I wasn’t ready to write the novel yet, but I had this idea about the fairies taking the infant to a shop that sells wings, to have wings put on it.  The fairies want to make it seem that the child is a hybrid, not a full-human.  But the ending wasn’t satisfying–it was really the beginning of the rest of the novel.

I can’t decide how the vampire story should end.  It’s a short story, not a lot of mass to it, so there’s no one obvious direction it’s been going in for chapters.  The way it ends will determine the theme of the story.  The point.  Whatever ending I pick, it will translate into just one summarizing statement that will describe the whole story.  And I can’t decide which statement that should be.  What will be a powerful ending that won’t make the reader want to throw the story against a wall?  (For example, killing the MC* would definitely make my readers want to throw it against the wall.)  What will be the powerful ending that doesn’t obviously lead to a whole rest of the story?

To this end, I’ve limited how much back story is relevant, how many characters are involved, and the time span covered.  I’m now at the point where I know how long is left (about 10 minutes, I think), and I know several ways it can go.  I need to know which way its going before I can revise, so that I can make sure the ending feels surprising-but-inevitable… so I need to pick an ending.  No, I need to pick the ending.  The best one, which has high impact and translates into a theme that matters to me.  And doesn’t feel cheesy, or like a cheat.

And then I can call this draft done.

—-

* Main Character

Ugh, I’ve been having serious issues figuring out what The Plan is to capture the vampire (there has to be a plan, right?).  I’ve known that whatever the plan is, I can foil it (cuz things never go according to plan, right?) and get to an interesting ending (to me, anyway).  But I couldn’t come up with any kind of plan that made sense.  Or at least one that wasn’t just completely dumb, in context.  I don’t believe in having dumb characters, so I refuse to have a dumb plan.  (Furthermore, I couldn’t break the dumb plans, they broke themselves, and generally in really useless ways.  Like, the vampire runs away and never comes back again.  Yawn.)

This problem has been sitting in the back of my mind for most of a month now, and I’d pull it out every so often and kick it around.  I tried to get Ben to brainstorm with me, but he thought my constraints were too limiting, or didn’t make sense.  (They make sense in the big picture, I swear.)  Last night I tried getting my writing group to help, but mostly they just said “watch halloween 2!”, which didn’t help me at all.

Today, I came up with a plan.  I’m not sure if it’s good, but it’s not dumb.

I think it was low blood sugar that finally jarred my brain into functioning.  I haven’t eaten much today, a piece of coffee cake, a bunch of chips and salsa, and a little bit of chocolate.  And caffeine, of course.  (Yeah, it’s nearly 6pm.  I know, I know.  You can kick me later.)  The last big breakthrough I had was in the middle of the night when I’d had too much caffeine and couldn’t sleep.  If my brain isn’t careful, it might just teach me that it functions better when I’m mean to it.

Sometime soon (when I’m not at work) I’m going to implement the plan on the page.  And sometime soon thereafter, I’m going to have a finished first draft.  Yay!!!

(You didn’t think I was going to tell you what the plan is, did you? )

Mood:  excited