The Trouble With Fic Writers...
For as long as I’ve been writing, I’ve suffered from a sort of creative-ailment that another writer friend of mine dubbed “Alfred Hitchcock’s Disease”. While I doubt there’s anyone who is not at least a little bit familiar with the great director’s work, not everyone knows of his methods, so I’ll elaborate a little.
Alfred Hitchcock, the mind behind movies such as The Birds, North by Northwest, and Dial M for Murder (some of his most famous works), was a creative genius. Honestly, one of the modern-era’s most fascinating mastermind-of-the-mind, in this lowly nobody’s opinion. The way he chose to tell a story, through image angle, plot pace and revelation, character mystery, all of it was awe-worthy! He loved creating stories, mapping them out; the writing, the storyboarding, planning… but not so much the actual execution; the filming.
When it came down to putting images to celluloid, the genius Hitchcock often lost interest. By then he’d planned everything out so carefully, so meticulously, that by the time the cameras were rolling? There really wasn’t much left to do; just wait for the actors to get right what he wanted. All the creative phases were done, and he became restless, bored.
Something similar often occurs with myself as well, though obviously not on the same level, talent-wise. (I’m not that much of a megalomaniac!)
Often, while writing a story, once I reach a place in my mind where I’ve fully mapped out what will happen and how it’ll come to be, the process of actually writing it down starts to feel almost like a chore. Sometimes it gets so hard to make myself focus and get the words out (in some form not locked away in my mind), that the stories never get finished. In fact, I’ve only ever finished one story before, really… it took more than five years, had 46 chapters, and by the time I reached the end my style had changed so much I balked at reading the earlier chapters. I currently have close to two-dozen unfinished stories floating around online, most of which were abandoned so long ago that I cannot even remember how they were supposed to end anymore.
I suffered a writers’-block unlike any other I’ve ever known in the almost 11 years that I’ve been writing (enough to consider myself a writer, even if only in my own mind), that lasted exactly 600-days. That’s a long damn time. Especially for someone who had found something that made them happy, and then had no way to access it, to tap back into it. I don’t know if it was coincidence, but something broke my writers block right around the time I found the (then already cancelled) show “Legend of the Seeker”, and no sooner had I finished the series? Than an idea for a story of my own came to mind.
At the time it was nothing more than a glimmer, like seeing a randomly selected 2 minutes within an epic movie. It was just a glance into a greater idea, but I felt as though even I had no idea what the whole picture was. But, like with walking into a movie already started, one can pick up parts of the plot so far from close observation. Once I could visualize how the characters might have gotten to that place I’d first imagined them in, I could then start to create what might have happened after that. It started to bounce, back and forth, until the story filled in more and more. And once I was brave enough to start writing the story out, I found that putting to words the littlest nuances from within my brain actually helped to solidify my other growing ideas within the story.
However, I now feel as though I know that story in its entirety… And when I sit down to try and type it out, my mind congers instead other stories. I sit at my computer, the blinking curser almost mocking me, like someone impatiently tapping their foot, and try to call forward what I know is to come next in my heretofore unfinished story…
Instead, what starts as a scene I know, quickly shifts into a scene that is new - set in a world with vastly different circumstances, an entirely different plot, and often holds little to no similarity to the story I should be writing. I become so wrapped up in this new idea, this still shaping and growing story, that I have put nothing to page. And when I finally do notice the blankness before me, the still restlessly blinking curser and the heavy passage of time, my mood shifts for the worse. I have not done what I set out to do, and now the idea of having to write the scene I meant to is even less appealing-because I’ve now imagined this exciting new story.
The truth is, I’ve not tried to put a single bit of these new ideas and stories to page because I know the process will merely happen again. I’ll become excited and fixated on these new ideas, my original story will get left behind, forgotten and unfinished, and once I start writing out these other ideas? Soon they too will fully take shape in my mind, and… wash, rinse, repeat. I’m resisting, though the pull is horribly strong, because I don’t want the temptation. This idea I’m working on fully writing out now, was like a gift; this thing that broke my writers’-block that was so terrible I feared I’d never get it back (and, if I were not writing, I honestly began to wonder who I was, what I was supposed to do, and what could make me as happy and fulfilled).
Writing out this story has given me a new community, among other things it’s made me feel hope, welcomed, embraced, encouraged, proud, humbled, and more than that it has given me friends. I do not want to disappoint them, they have been so good to me. They are worth resisting the temptation, and I feel more determined than I ever have before to try and complete this story.
I will, however, jot down the “Cliff’s Notes”-version of the new ideas, so as not to completely forget them.
The Animal Nature
(The idea is based on the psychological/social-concepts within the stories of both ‘Dr Jekyll and Mr. Hyde’, and ‘The Wolfman’/lycanthropy)
Set post-Tears, Kahlan has been cursed from afar by an unknown source; the spell forcibly breaks down the internal walls between the parts of herself she chooses to show and those which she represses. At first no one notices, because Kahlan resists it, but at night the curse becomes stronger. Eventually it becomes evident that the curse is based in darkness; during the day it is easiest to resist, and it is not so bad when the moon is full, but on the new moon she is almost completely powerless against it. It changes her, brings out more of the ‘animal’ in her; she is much more sensitive (smell, hearing, etc), and impulsive, along with some other physiological changes. The only one who notices the change, really, is Cara, who is oddly in tune to the alterations. Cara informs Kahlan that she knows something I happening to her, but she herself doesn’t mind the changes.
Kahlan becomes more aggressive, short-tempered, snappish, becomes more and more annoyed with the way Richard treats her (especially after the curse takes effect), and is drawn more and more to Cara (who in counterpoint to the Seeker, encourages her to let the curse take effect - it is later learned that as the curse is meant to break down the walls people use to divide themselves, trying to resist it only makes the magic stronger). In an a very literal way, Kahlan becomes a sort of “Alpha Female”, and much to her surprise, Cara willingly falls inline behind her-whereas Richard seems to want the Confessor back in line behind him, wanting “his old Kahlan back”… Kahlan comes to realize that the curse is forcing her to be all that she is, even the darkest parts of her, and Richard doesn’t like what she’s been hiding. Cara, however, accepts it, and encourages it.
Kahlan becomes fixated on Cara, protective, like an animal would their mate-something Cara is aware of. She resists it, sure that without the curse, if Kahlan really had the option to choose who she wanted to be, the Confessor would not choose to be with her. Sexual tension out the wazoo. Eventually, Kahlan and Cara consummate, and finally the curse is acknowledged by the rest of “Team Awesome”; Zedd and Richard. It takes knowing Kahlan would bed Cara for those two to know (or admit to knowing) that something is wrong with the Confessor, and they insist on getting to Aydindrill as fast as they can to find a way to reverse it. Cara agrees, though she’s sure undoing the spell will lose her Kahlan. The Confessor insists it won’t, reminding her that the curse forces her to acknowledge the parts of herself she once hid. Cara says that if that’s true, then it shouldn’t hurt to undo the spell; she wants Kahlan to have complete control of herself back. Things between all members of “Team Awesome” get crazy-tense, and when they get to Aydindrill, things get even tenser when Dennee is added into the mix…
Spell of Undoing, Redo
(Yes, I too hated Cara in a dress, as a heterosexual, and a useless farming-widow-school-teacher bull-shit. So, that whole ‘change the world in mightily unpredictable ways’ qualifier Zedd slapped on there in lieu of a warning? Well. In my world? Cara wears pants, damn it! And furthermore, I fully believe that bad-assery to the degree that Cara had is something your born with, people!)
Much like in the show, when the Spell of Undoing reversed Cara’s breaking as a Mord’Sith, it didn’t undo Dahlia’s being abducted and broken. In this story, losing her best friend from when she was a child effected Cara very much. She became very close with Dahlia’s older brother after the abduction, and after he leaves home to join the resistance, Cara feels even more alone and wants even more to do something to fight against the empire of Rahl. Cara’s father, however, wants her to get married and have a family and be safe (read: boring life without adventure). Cara loves her father, and doesn’t want to disappoint him, but she feels she can’t just stay in Stowcroft forever; that the life he wishes for her to have is just not enough. So, she seeks the guidance and counsel of the town’s Confessor.
Cara has always had a special respect for Confessors, as they are the sworn enemies of Mord’Sith-the horrible people who stole her best-friend to torture and turn into a monster. One day, when going into town with her father to sell (random thing that can be farmed), she decides to speak to the Confessor. As she walks past the town’s Hall of Justice, she sees a young Confessor sitting outside; Kahlan. Kahlan had been sent to Stowcroft to learn and observe how to mediate within a community, like a training mission. Despite being in Stowcroft for a while, no one has really spoken to Kahlan, even the elder Confessor she was meant to learn from; everyone else wanted the elder Confessor’s counsel. Cara actually thinks Kahlan would be a better ear, her similar age giving her a better understanding of her circumstances. They speak, and start to become friends.
Cara, almost without thinking, touches Kahlan as she would anyone else. When the Confessor reminds her of the danger, Cara counters with “doesn’t it take a lot of concentration to unleash your magic?”, to which Kahlan admits is true, so Cara asks why she should be so afraid of a simple touch. When it becomes apparent that not only is Cara not afraid of her, but trusts Kahlan implicitly, the Confessor knows a powerful friendship will come from this. They talk, Kahlan becomes close to Cara’s family, and they and all of the town thinks their friendship somewhat odd; a Confessor is a raised status, and that Cara treats her as such a friend seems almost rude. Cara’s tom-boyish nature is something that she learns to embrace, with Kahlan’s encouragement, and Kahlan eventually teaches Cara how to fight (just as she’d been taught). The each fall in love with each other, but neither says anything, and eventually (after a little over a year) Kahlan is called back to Aydindrill, never to return.
When Kahlan and Dennee set out on the quest to find the Seeker and the First Wizard in Westland, Kahlan is the one who is shot and left for dead. She is captured by the D’Harans, imprisoned, and when she’s loaded into a wagon to be handed over to the Mord’Sith, Kahlan is rescued by the resistance en route. Cara was leading the assault. Her close friendship with Kahlan made her soft spot for Confessors even more pronounced, and so when she heard word that a captured Confessor was being transported, she took action. And the two are reunited, their friendship rebound and new and yet the same. Once Kahlan is well enough, she and Cara leave to follow the Seeker, to let Dennee know that Kahlan survived.
…Okay. So, those are my ideas.
As you can probably tell, even now it’s hard to resist writing out the little pieces that I’ve already thought of, as those “summaries” were not all that… summarized.
And now this whole diatribe is longer than the average chapter that I post, and I feel guilt once more…
(*le sigh*)
~AngelicSinner/VixenRaign