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Circumstantial flummery from a would-be spoonbean hustler.

Failure – How and when?

Last post mentioned the Coin Convention Heist which only served to voice my aggravation in the fact that I can’t seem to finish this script. Coin Conventions don’t have any bearing on the story now, and even if they did, it’s stupid to be annoyed that someone I’ve never met implemented something I’ve only been pondering for a work of fiction for the last year or three. Really stupid.
Yeah, not a note of sarcasm there. But it’s a waste of energy getting frustrated at that sort of thing, because it happens all the time. Nothing new under the sun. Anyone who is trying to write anything, especially something as cliche’ as a heist script, should already be well aware of that fact.

Where a lot of my frustration is probably coming from as it lashes out irrationally at anything vaguely resembling my story- ‘Oh my god, that protagonists breathes! Oxygen! My protagonist breathes oxygen! Those bastards ripped me off!’ – where it’s coming from is the fact I can’t just put THE END on this and move the fuck on already. Why is this taking so long?

And the question is- how long is too long?

Now every story evolves as you write- characters, motivations, subplots. It’s a fluid, subtly changing thing, writing is. Flexibility is required to get through it. But don’t be too flexible, because structure can be important and useful, I mean, you have to have a page limit, yeah? Every story has it’s confines and caps. But you want to keep it universal, appealing. Just ignore the nosebleeds for now. Sure, I just keep grinding away and sure I’m using super-fine when I should be using 40 or 50 grit and gutting the mechanics probably didn’t help me much, but I have characters and a story, right! Right?

That’s about where I’m at now. I love my characters, I think for the most part other folks will love them too if I can just communicate why they are so awesome. If I stop, if I move on to other characters in another story, it really feels like I’m giving up on this when I feel pretty close. I feel like if I can just get around the next corner the story will congeal into sheer awesomeness.

At least, I hope. I could be failing to understand some vital storytelling concept and everything is just sending me in circles. Seems like that a lot of the time. How do you tell the difference?