Short Story Angst
I'm writing a short story at the moment, feeling my way into the plot, and it occurred to me that I haven't done anything like that in ever.
When you write fanfiction - and don't get me wrong, I love doing that, and I read and wrote lots of it at a time when it was exactly what I needed. When you write fanfiction like I did/do, there's always just one ending you write towards. In my case, getting character B to love character S. Or at least a fraction of an inch closer to it. All my stories, whether long or short, were a version of this theme, or a deliberate reversal of it, or they wrote about a world where it was impossible that B get S because one of them was dead.
I chose that limitation because that romantic them was what got me writing again, and it never felt it like a limitation.
In my novels, romance has so far been a very respectable B-plotline. But with this embryonic short story, there doesn't need to be any romance at all. And it feels funny. Help! Where are the limitations? Suddenly I have all the choices in the world and all I'm doing is falling on my knees on this enormous plain so as not to get dizzy from the horizons that stretch all around me, covering my eyes and screaming for help…
When you write fanfiction - and don't get me wrong, I love doing that, and I read and wrote lots of it at a time when it was exactly what I needed. When you write fanfiction like I did/do, there's always just one ending you write towards. In my case, getting character B to love character S. Or at least a fraction of an inch closer to it. All my stories, whether long or short, were a version of this theme, or a deliberate reversal of it, or they wrote about a world where it was impossible that B get S because one of them was dead.
I chose that limitation because that romantic them was what got me writing again, and it never felt it like a limitation.
In my novels, romance has so far been a very respectable B-plotline. But with this embryonic short story, there doesn't need to be any romance at all. And it feels funny. Help! Where are the limitations? Suddenly I have all the choices in the world and all I'm doing is falling on my knees on this enormous plain so as not to get dizzy from the horizons that stretch all around me, covering my eyes and screaming for help…