In which my plot gets hijacked...
For you writers out there, have you ever been going along, writing on your merry way, throwing daisies and skipping through a sunlit meadow and singing and then a giant bear tries to bite your leg off? And you're like, well, I don't know where that bear came from. Well, you're probably wondering how the hell to get the bear to release your leg from its jaws first off. And then worry about what the bear is doing there. You didn't outline a bear in this story. There was no bear in the meticulous outline that you spent a month working on. But oh well, C'est la vie. Bears happen.
Well, I had a bear show up yesterday. My MC's love interest shows up at her house, after a rather harrowing day, to join family dinner. Sweet and cute and adorable, right? Oh no, she answers the door and then this happens:
"Perfect timing," I say when I open it. I smile at him, and thenhe says the worst words in the English language other than, "weneed to talk." "We have a problem."
Wait, what? What is this problem? I didn't know we had a problem. Who is writing this damn thing?!
*flails*
For you non-writers, it's a bit like reading a story and thinking you know exactly what direction it's going in and then being completely blindsided. Only times a million. Because I'm supposed to be the one in charge. I think a lot of non-writers think that I make up the story. Granted, this is partly true. But most of the time I feel like this other force takes over me. I hear these people saying things and I'm just an observer. I have no control over what they say or when they say it or what they do. They are people I'm following around. Like paparazzi. Only I get to go inside their heads and know almost everything about them. Sometimes they like to hide things from me. Things that become important later that I wish they would have told me. I know it sounds crazy, but as E. L. Doctorow said, "writing is a socially acceptable form of schizophrenia."
I know what the "problem" is now. I just have no idea where this thing is going. Time to do some character wrangling. Which probably looks like this:
Time for some plot wrasslin'!
Well, I had a bear show up yesterday. My MC's love interest shows up at her house, after a rather harrowing day, to join family dinner. Sweet and cute and adorable, right? Oh no, she answers the door and then this happens:
"Perfect timing," I say when I open it. I smile at him, and thenhe says the worst words in the English language other than, "weneed to talk." "We have a problem."
Wait, what? What is this problem? I didn't know we had a problem. Who is writing this damn thing?!
*flails*
For you non-writers, it's a bit like reading a story and thinking you know exactly what direction it's going in and then being completely blindsided. Only times a million. Because I'm supposed to be the one in charge. I think a lot of non-writers think that I make up the story. Granted, this is partly true. But most of the time I feel like this other force takes over me. I hear these people saying things and I'm just an observer. I have no control over what they say or when they say it or what they do. They are people I'm following around. Like paparazzi. Only I get to go inside their heads and know almost everything about them. Sometimes they like to hide things from me. Things that become important later that I wish they would have told me. I know it sounds crazy, but as E. L. Doctorow said, "writing is a socially acceptable form of schizophrenia."
I know what the "problem" is now. I just have no idea where this thing is going. Time to do some character wrangling. Which probably looks like this:
Time for some plot wrasslin'!
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