Of Good Intentions and Story Derailments

Is it just me or are these wordage reports not only perpetually late, but actually have very little of wordage in them? Well at least this time I finally have some words to report.

Two thousand and twenty-seven. That’s how many words I wrote last week, not including emails, a rather lengthy letter to my sister, and blog posts. That’s pretty good considering my mind has been a dust bowl lately.

However, the story was supposed to be a light, fluffy, humorous piece written for the Brazen Snake Books Weekly Story Prompt. It turned into something a little more complicated and a whole lot more serious. Seriously? *sigh*

Last week’s prompt concerned a fountain in a park, and the habit young girls had got into of taking selfies of themselves kissing the stone frog that was attached to the edge of the fountain. Originally I thought about writing the story from the frog’s POV and how he was cursed by a witch and how no matter how many girls kiss him he’s never going to be free because he’s gay.

Trust me, it was going to be really funny.

So I started the story. I cursed my character. I had him sitting in the park, enduring the slobbery kisses from giggling girls. And then I realized my story was at a thousand words, it was really late, and there was no way I was going to make the deadline. Oh, well. Tomorrow was another day and I could finish the story at my leisure for my own amusement. Except that the next day I made it up to two thousand words and I wasn’t done yet.

I only have myself to blame. I started writing some back-story for the main character and he became a whole lot more interesting. And then the story itself turned into a quasi love story and took a darker turn and then I found myself questioning the sex of his love interest. I’ve written gay characters before, that wasn’t the problem, the problem was the whole point of him being gay was for the humour of the situation. Since this is no longer a funny story, I’m wondering if the situation the love interest ends up in would work better if it was a woman instead of a man.

Or maybe not. Even in this day and age there’s still far too much discrimination going on, and gay-bashing, and just plain ugliness. And there are way too many messed up, angry people out there. Should I give the story a happy ending? A tragic ending? There’s a thought, the story could take an even darker turn and become really tragic. Hmmm.

You see how easy it is for me to derail a story?

Maybe what I need is a bigger train. ;-)