I’ve been working on “An Unexpected Wish” polishing the first 3000 words for contests. I had all the grammar fixed, spelling checked and POV corrected. I thought it was as close to perfect as I would ever get. Several read it and liked it. I sent it to my crit partner, Irene, and included what I had written so far, about four chapters.
Irene is a fabulous writer. Her expertise is comedic paranormal. I like to call it paranormal hick-lit. She is a panster and I’m a plotter. She read through Wish and asked me: what happened to the whimsy? Whimsy? Isn’t it still there? Somehow the whimsical part of the plot and the characters have been edited out.
I’ve been struggling of late to get through chapter seven. My characters didn’t want to follow the plot I had carefully laid out in 8 sequence style. Irene’s comment about whimsy made the problem clear. I had forgotten the reason I wanted to do this story in the first place: the myth of a fairy wish and getting what you ask for.
That theme had somehow gotten lost in the stilted scenes I had written to try and carry the day to day of the plot along. My characters were bored, seriously bored. They kept trying to stir things up, but the technical side of my brain pushed it down because it didn’t follow the skeleton of the plot. No whimsy.
Somehow I need to step back into the story and draw the whimsy back in. I’m not sure yet how to do that. In fact, I have been starring at the pages I’ve written and trying to decide how to continue.
If you have any ideas, let me know. Being stuck is making me cranky!
— amy
I hope you post more abt your writing prob. and how you deal with it/them I’d like to follow along
Thanks for commenting! With so much to learn, I’m afraid others will get bored.
Thanks,
Amy
Amy Pfaff, you are walking whimsy! Before you sit down to write, take off the competent business woman hat and put on the imp hat, it’s the one next to your party hat but it isn’t as colorful and wild. Let your characters lead you on a merry chase for a while, see where they take you. You can always edit and it may help you get the whimsy back.
You are right as usual. 🙂