Who's in control?

Roscoe · Post by **Roscoe** » Wed Oct 31, 2001 1:53 am

That's a natural part of writing. You know you're in trouble, though, when the plots/subplots start bossing you around, as unfortunately befell me.

FrustratedPilot · Post by **FrustratedPilot** » Wed Oct 31, 2001 3:05 am

I wrote a short story that took off and became a serial novel I still am writing. It still surprised by its stream of revelations, twists and flashes of brilliance.But yes, you do have to hold the line somewhere:"No Anti-tank rocket launcher...a big hand grenade is okay, but no rocket launcher."

EWHPTIV · Post by **EWHPTIV** » Wed Oct 31, 2001 4:42 am

This happens to me all the time, but unfortunately I usually end up cramming what I've got through the pipes anyway. The fanfic I'm doing here is stuffed with melodramatic glop, and a number of the characters act nothing like what they should...in the end, it increases continuity and preserves the original plotline I had in mind, but it makes the characters go all over.------------------
"Writing is a legal way of avoiding work without actually stealing and one that doesn't take any talent or training." --Robert A. Heinlein, The Cat Who Walks Through Walls

Nodrog · Post by **Nodrog** » Wed Oct 31, 2001 6:18 am

Has anyone here ever have the experience of writing something and have the feeling of losing control, IE of where the charachters veered the story in a direction you hadn't been planning?I have. Once, I was writing a short Gargoyles Fan Fiction story where I had inserted a third person Avatar charachter, with the appropriate writer-self-insertion powers but who was not the primary narrating charachter (I was writing the story from the perspective of a charachter created by someone else). The avatar charachter wound out opening a gateway that started dumping in other charachters from other stories until the Reality Police appeared to stop him. He still managed to escape, but I had NOT planned for him to do that (Opening the gateway.). Wierd, huh?

Maccabee · Post by **Maccabee** » Wed Oct 31, 2001 8:03 am

Happens all the time. I was once writing a love scene in a Star Trek fanfic, and suddenly my characters just turned to me and said enough of this heavy [beep]." It had one of the more serious beginings and middles I've written, but possibly my silliest ending. If I can even call it mine -- it was so not what I was intending.Kurt Vonnegut once wrote that people think writers control their characters with bonds of steel, but it's really more like stale rubber bands. I quite agree.Maccabee------------------
Risus est telum ultimum contra tyrranem. Nullus dictator exercitibus allibus ridiculem vulgi longe resistare potest.

GarrisonBeckett · Post by **GarrisonBeckett** » Wed Oct 31, 2001 11:40 am

I actually never planned to write fanfiction ... until I read the Ratliff stories. I became a fan of the MiSTs, then I got an idea. And I became engrossed. And every time I started, SHE told me where to go, and where to go back. Now I'm in as far as my head will reach, and SHE still wants me to finish what I've begun ... Marrissa Amber Flores Picard demands my life. ANd I owe her just enough to give her a goodly slice, I think.--GB"I'm fairly rich, right? Okay, then I want a crossbow with wooden shaft arrows and silver tips ... better safe than werewolf bait!"