You know, I've never written an honest to goodness love story...

So I'm writing and writing, throwing drafts left and right, and my friend/ editor/pre-reader smacks me upside the head.

The abridged conversation

Editor: What do you think you're doing?
Me: Setting a romantic subplot for my sequel.
Editor: But you've killed everyone off.
Me: Yeah. So?
Editor: YOU'VE KILLED EVERYONE OFF. You can't make a book series off everyone dying. It's too grim.
Me: It's about the grand scale plot. I've read a lot of epic high fantasy novels and that's the kind of story I want to debut.
Editor: But someone told you that you should make a book series.
Me: And that having romance helps endear readers to the corpses, I mean characters.
Editor: *Stares*
Me: *Stares harder*
Editor: You're not doing it right. In fact, your writing has been getting weirder now that I've think of it.
Me: What do you mean weird?
Editor: *Stares*
Me: *Stares harder*
Editor: *Quotes* Holding the cleaver and swinging closer to her prey, Laurel carved a hole through the faerie's chest with a kiss and a well aimed plunge. The faerie bled out as she kicked him to the floor. Laurel snickered, then pulled out her notebook of names. She crossed out Lord of Sunea Hill in a flourish and feeling a bit mercy, decided not to burn the rest of the forest down.
Me: *Stares*
Editor: *Stares harder*
Editor: You know exactly what I mean. The tone is different from what you started with. You wanted to tell a grand fantasy thriller.
Editor: And now you're just padding the story with whatever you think someone wants to read.
Me: I'm not good at writing one project at a time...
Friend: You're not following your own outline. You liked your outline.
Me: With everyone dying at the end. That was in my outline from the gecko.
Me: I have other ideas but I want to finish my novel first before I do anything...
Friend: You're not going to finish anything at this rate.
Me: I'm not all that interested in starting a long series. I don't like most epic fantasy stories that are like that because they tend to start rambling.
Friend: Short stories...
Me: Ehh... I've been told readers like to read stories in a large set and-
Me: I've been researching and I've been told that to cultivate audience I need to provide a certain-
Editor: Shush.
Me: Did you just...
Editor: Get a hobby.
Editor: Explore your ideas. Get them out of your system. Find something that sticks.
Me: But I...
Editor: None of that author talk is important until you start publishing novels. And you're distracted. Write a seprate story.
Editor:Write a love story if that's what you want. Write your novel everyday but get a hobby.
Me: Hobby...
*COMPLETELY IGNORES ADVICE.*
*Clicks through TV Tropes for romance tropes and novels to research*
*Comes across the card game, Twilight's Secret Shipfic Folder*
*Thinks and remembers seeing fics with that name*
*Decides to go to Fimfiction to read them...*
**Hates Meta**
*** Really Hates Meta***
*****Reads out.of.character******

Comments

[Regina Wright]

2649899
I'm working on it.