My Two Cents: a.k.a My B.S. Center

Self Restraint... Is Basically Putting on a Mental Straitjacket for Writers.

Self Restraint...

                              Is Basically Putting on a Mental Straitjacket for Writers.

I struggle with this.

I hate writing within restraints; such as High School English class where you're given a prompt. Worst thing ever.

People tell me I rush things all the time, and I am trying to be better. My rewrites will fix it, I promise. But, sometimes the pacing of a story doesn't turn out very well. The end of 700, for example, is horrid. I rush it, and it drives me crazy that I did.

Every time I start a new story, I'm forcing myself not to just jump clear over the entire middle section, straight to the end and write about that cool climax I came up with, and I'm probably way too proud of. Or even that awesome little twist that should go somewhere toward the end and not the beginning.... Sadly, I've had a few of those as well.

It always seems like it takes forever to get to the good stuff, but I have to do all the necessary "plot building" before hand or the ending isn't going to have the impact I want.

This is honestly one of my internal conflicts that is frustrating beyond belief.

But I do my best not to rush through things, because I hate it when other people do.

It kills the book for me, it really does.

I read a few books where the beginning was awesome. I was hooked, ready to go on this sweet adventure, when BAM! it skips everything, and it's the end. Five chapters in and it's over, or so much of the plotline has been revealed that it should be over.

For me, a.k.a. this is my opinion, when stories do this, I leave not caring and most of the time really confused.

Five chapters are not enough to establish character relationships in my mind, so the climax may be this dramatic sacrifice, where the main character dies for the their true love, and it just the sweetest most action pack, dramatic thing ever, but I honestly don't care. I didn't get to read why I should care. I was introduced to the character and then the BAM! happened, and it's over.

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Fun Fact: I write romances, but I really don't care for most romance books.

I'm a hypocrite I know! It's so horrible, but there has to be something else to go with all this love talk. The mushy, gushy book, that have hearts and roses flying everywhere, don't do it for me. I have friends that love that stuff. They want everything to be cute and fun loving.

Not me, I can't stand it.  

I need some heart wrenching terminal, rejection, sacrifice, blood, guts, the whole works. So basically, they have to show me that the two characters actually love each other and not just say it in chapter one and have them get married in chapter two.

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That was a long fun fact... but it explained why I can't read plot jumpers stories. Everything happens too fast, and I can't connect with the character, so I leave not caring about the characters.