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

[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.