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At least my latest attempt is complicated.
A complicated character with unique talents in a complicated magical event must navigate a complicated political landscape while keeping complicated secrets.
Like all my better characters, Marsha is unique. But aren't we all? Still, the situation is messy and the more I get into the consequences of actions and the butterfly effects, I think if I plan this out properly I can pull this off. Things need to happen in a certain order chronologically for things to work out.
This is keeping me awake at night. I rarely need to work a lot out in advance when I write because most of the time the story just flows out of me from my brain to my fingertips and onto the screen. It doesn't always work out but it mostly works. Not this time. There's so many moving parts that need to mesh that my usual way of writing isn't working. Perhaps that's why I'm having so many difficulties getting the story rolling. I'll need to outline more with this story.
I tend to write stories without a direct antagonist - a villain that is plain to see and appears early. So many of my stories the protagonist is put up against a Situation, a Problem, The System. There is an antagonist that shows up much later, near the climax of the story but not sooner. It is the Situation and the System that my hero is up against. And I really like my hero: she's cursed. She's a mentalist that also knows - without having to read thoughts - when someone is lying. She also _cannot_ lie. She can obscure, delay, deflect or remain silent but she cannot _lie_.
And she's in deep shite. And it's about to get worse. I love it.
But it's keeping me from sleeping as I'm sorting out all the threads of the story.
A complicated character with unique talents in a complicated magical event must navigate a complicated political landscape while keeping complicated secrets.
Like all my better characters, Marsha is unique. But aren't we all? Still, the situation is messy and the more I get into the consequences of actions and the butterfly effects, I think if I plan this out properly I can pull this off. Things need to happen in a certain order chronologically for things to work out.
This is keeping me awake at night. I rarely need to work a lot out in advance when I write because most of the time the story just flows out of me from my brain to my fingertips and onto the screen. It doesn't always work out but it mostly works. Not this time. There's so many moving parts that need to mesh that my usual way of writing isn't working. Perhaps that's why I'm having so many difficulties getting the story rolling. I'll need to outline more with this story.
I tend to write stories without a direct antagonist - a villain that is plain to see and appears early. So many of my stories the protagonist is put up against a Situation, a Problem, The System. There is an antagonist that shows up much later, near the climax of the story but not sooner. It is the Situation and the System that my hero is up against. And I really like my hero: she's cursed. She's a mentalist that also knows - without having to read thoughts - when someone is lying. She also _cannot_ lie. She can obscure, delay, deflect or remain silent but she cannot _lie_.
And she's in deep shite. And it's about to get worse. I love it.
But it's keeping me from sleeping as I'm sorting out all the threads of the story.
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I find that if I know the ending, everything starts swinging towards it, little messy bits suddenly achieve Chekov status, and it often works out. Whereas I've got (sadly) a WIP that's over a year old sitting on AO3 that I don't quite know how to end...
But yours sounds fantastic.
no subject
I know how it ends. I just have to shepherd the events in the right place and time or else the character ends up clapped in irons. Because if the other characters knew what was really going on with her, they'd clap her in irons. For her own safety, don't you know.