Any author will agree it’s all about the character, but not all will agree that we – the writers – are just the instrument that tells their story.
As someone who started her career writing short stories with no need for plotting, I’ve never really had a problem following the story where it needed to go. In fact, when I look back at all I’ve written I see clearly that the times I’ve really struggled are when my mind fights with what truly needs to go on the page…Learning to trust my instincts, or my muse, was not always easy.
My short story Meandros is the perfect example. I was writing to fill a call for vacation stories for an erotica anthology and I’d planned to write a sexy romp that took place in Greece. I started it with this couple on a plane on their way to Greece, and at the end of the first scene I wrote a sentence that changed it all.
After I wrote that sentence I stalled – literally for a week. That one sentence that just spilled out as I was writing took the story in a totally different direction. Not one I wanted, either. But it was so damn awesome. It was. Shocker, and it felt so right that I just wanted to run with it. But if I ran with it, then the story would no longer fit the call for submissions I was aiming it at.
I followed the story, and it turned out to be one of my favourite stories ever. It’s super short, and erotic, and so emotional. I wrote that story in 2004, and it’s gotten some great reviews, as well as awful ones, but I don’t care either way because that story taught me a very important lesson. Follow the story. You might not get the story you wanted, but it will flow, and it will be what it’s what its supposed to be.
A lesson I sometimes need to be reminded of, as I struggle with rewriting Drake’s Hunt. ????