ugh

[kassidy62]

I had this decent little story going on. About a vampire vs two boys in love, complete with a threesome right behind the sideshow trailers at the fair, all fun and I liked it a lot. And the end FELL APART COMPLETELY. I don't know how to fix it. I've never had something happen exactly like this before, getting all trite and rote and tired right at the end. How does this happen? Haven't been able to slog my way out yet, and I was so sure I'd be finished today and here I am instead. So discouraged.

EDIT: I think it's fixed. In short, I panicked, just wanted the thing DONE and in the process stopped listening to how the characters would deal with things, went trite, overboard and lost all feeling. Yeah, panicked, all right. I've since stepped back/settled down and mostly (hopefully) managed to get it in shape. I appreciate those of you who talked with me about it:)

Comments

[clarelondon.livejournal.com]

Step away, take a break and come back to it later *hugs*. Or maybe take a few steps back in the story, take a different fork in the path to the end?

Better to finish it later thasn you wished than a pile of crud you hate LOL. Here speaks the gal who's struggling through a final scene herself at this very moment...:)

[kassidy62.livejournal.com]

aw, good luck to you then, Clare. I don't even know what I did - I was horrified! The worst case of tripe ever, and then I think I fixed it, except for it ends too abruptly. Or something. It's as if I lost my damned mind.

I first started it and it was so easy. Then some things happened here at the house and I got sick for quite awhile, my dog got sick, and I couldn't care about it. TI picked it back up and it threatened to get too long again, but I cut a portion of the original plot completely out and that worked, and then the very ending scene sucked out LOUD. I'm telling you, it was like some 12th grader ended it, complete with bad sex. wtf? I'm scarred. On top of that, I realize now and forever that I am never going to fit into the type of ebooks I was trying to be in unless by accident, not design. I mean, me personally, I like my vampire. He's rather unique and somewhat complicated, but even so, the very best I've wrested out of this is an IMPLIED HFN. Sigh.

[clarelondon.livejournal.com]

*lol*
You're unique, darling, and so should your fiction be :).
We'll have to publish a book one day of Complicated Vampire stories. I'm *sure* there's a market somewhere :).
*hugs*

[hardboiledbaby]

I think writing is its own special kind of insanity, anyway. ::rolls eyes:: Like clarelondon says, maybe you need to back off from it, view it through fresh eyes. *hugs*

(btw, what's "HFN"?)

(ETA: I'm sorry RL's been picking on you, babe. *more hugs*)

[kassidy62.livejournal.com]

I just really want you to know how much I appreciated your reply. This business can get kind of lonesome! Never mind the insanity, I won't even talk about it right now :(
HFN is happily for now, the bare minimum some ebook publishers will publish, especially the romance publishers. HEA is preferred, happily ever after. I understand why people want that but the story doesn't always lend itself to it.

[hardboiledbaby]

Ah. I guess that's what you have to deal with sometimes to get published, huh? "Never mind the integrity of the story, we want a happy ending, damn it." :-P And yet, there appears to be a market for dark stories. Or is that just in fanfic? Hmm.

[kassidy62.livejournal.com]

There is a market for dark fiction and erotica, but I don't know a lot about it. I've sold some horror/erotica for next to nothing and I've scanned the markets, so from personal experience, you get diddly in the way of pay unless you're in a large print pub. That's a whole lot of conjecture, there:)

If you call your story romance, the Romance Writers of America has mandated romance end with HEA or HFN. Yes, that's me being bitter! Sort of, anyway, because I don't like that an organization for writers would tell me whether or not I describe my work as a romance based on how it ends. That is the industry, though, as I know it (and I don't know much, I really don't play there except apparently to get in trouble:).

But I can't ignore the fact that readers of ebook romance really do call for/very definitely feel entitled to that HFN or HEA. They literally swear off publishers if they don't get it. Me, I say I won't tell them how my book ends, no matter what. I've probably paid for that in sales, but oh well.

[hardboiledbaby]

Mmm, 'tis indeed a dilemma. Shit, not all romantic stories have a happy ending--Love Story and Titanic immediately popped into my mind. But I guess if you play in the epub's sandbox, you kinda sorta gotta follow their rules. :-P~

But yay that you fixed your story!!! Knew you could. ;-)

[greenlady2.livejournal.com]

Hmmm. This is just my own POV, and not advice or anything, because I hate giving advice, but... I always think that if a story doesn't go the way I planned, and turns into a mess, it's because the characters have their own agendas and so won't cooperate. In such cases, I step back and let the characters tell me what they want to do. As I say, this isn't advice, just me giving my $0.02. :-)))

[kassidy62.livejournal.com]

I have the story (mostly) fixed now, but I couldn't believe how I let it explode. Hindsight: I lost all feeling for what the characters would do. I was stuck, but determined to finish it up, and so I ended up writing every cliche I could think about instead of backing away. The whole problem was born of some hysteria, really, and I hate that.

It's got a vampire in it and so the inclination is to go capital EVIL, but that's not the story at all. He's as lost as the heroes of the story, and to write him in the penultimate scene purely as a villain was so wrong.
So basically it was me not being true to the characters and especially to their depth. I'm still uncomfortable with myself about it, but not sure it won't happen again.

In some respect, I'd say your experience has quite a lot to do with what I'm talking about. The characters weren't going off on their own, but I wasn't following up what I started for them. Not tracing the logical evolution of them based on what I had laid out so far.



Also I was thinking I needed a bigger ending, maybe something bloody, but in the end that's exactly what I didn't need. Which is harder to write for me.