I thought I would get to the end of my current WIP, Ghost of a Chance, yesterday…
BUT…
I expect many of you have reached this point, only to have the same thing happen to you.
In my head, one by one, each character had a but, and to be fair, they were legitimate buts.
Consequently, I spent the evening reviewing their ideas. I realised the story was nowhere near finished.
I eventually switched off my brain and went to bed after scribbling several pages of notes and detailed plans for at least three more chapters. As I fell asleep, I knew why this had happened. It had happened before with one of my earlier books. After staring at the story, day after day, I had become obsessed with coming to the end, as if this would magically be the answer. Of course, it never is. On that earlier occasion, the ending I came up with was rushed, and it showed. Badly…
Endings are so essential to get right. It’s a shame they came at a time when we wish we hadn’t started…
Is this bad habit just me, or have any of you had this problem?
Anita Dawes and Jaye Marie 
When I realised Last Dragon was going to be a full-length novel and not a short story as I’d originally intended, (I’ve never met a short story I couldn’t turn into 100,000 words without really trying! 😀 ) I told myself I would just write the story as it happened and not worry about ‘the end’ until I got there. This was a dramatic shift for me because I tend to visualise the ending and can’t understand why everyone else wants all the fluff inbetween … a bit of an exaggeration there 😀 but there was a part of my brain that thought just that … and then I realised it was going to be a series! Oiiiii! 😀
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I didn’t realise Last Dragon was going to be a series, Widds… when did that happen and how far are you already?
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I realised about halfway through, that I was going to need a bigger book. 😀
Hmm … how much to tell you without giving too much away …
When Urch was born and, since then, every adult has those ‘wings’ on their shoulders/back … that had/has/will have global repercussions.
When the Cognate blew the top off the Archive mountain, and real live dragons appeared, the ‘genie’ was let out of the bottle, not to be put back there again, if Mrs B has anything to say about it.
The second world war isn’t going to be between the Germans and the allied nations. Humans, being the xenophobic little darlings they are, will find a different enemy.
And finally, Mildy has barely scratched the surface of what it means to be a dragon, to say nothing of being the High Queen’s Protector.
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You kept all of this a deep dark secret, Widds. Sounds like this series could run for a long time!
How far along are you?
And will your new adventure help or hinder the writing process?
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Ah, but the clues were all in there. 🙂 So far it looks like four books in total.
… not as far along as I’d like … the Adventure isn’t helping, so far. Everything, every task, takes twice as much time and twice as much energy, even before I get to writing.
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And I expect you are enjoying yourselves a little too?
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Hehehehe 😀 Always. 😀
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That’s what I want to hear, Widds…
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Always a problem, Jaye. There are books already published that have a character “but” or two. At least you caught them now.
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Thankful for that,, John…
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😊
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So my characters say to me:
‘OK, we’re done now. Check for your typos, syntax and stuff,’
I am but a cypher and clerke.
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Sometimes I feel like that too. We’re at the mercy of our creations!
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The phrase ‘kill your darlings’?
More than my laptop’s worth. The hard drive would be melted by forces from beyond.
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Personally, I only kill bad people…
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Not just me then🙂
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You are so right, Jaye. When we get close, we can’t wait to cross the finish line, but your ‘buts’ are the perfect example of why we need to take the time to flesh out the entire story. Thanks for sharing!
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I seem to fall into this trap every time!
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