caught with a paintbrush in my hand
13 09 09 - 10:41
I've been trying to finish my rewrite on the story formerly known as "Sybilla" for a few days now, and I keep running into the same problem I had when I first wrote the story: according to the rules I've laid out, the protagonist dooms herself with a well-meaning but ultimately foolish decision in the middle of the story. I have myself painted into a corner, and I was really fighting, trying to find a way out. If I change the rules or the decision, I'm writing a fundamentally different story, which is not a story I want to write.
The thing I realized last night is that the story is about the corner. It's an interesting corner. It's a Greek tragedy, which after all is what I originally set out to write. The thing about tragedy is that the progagonists generally don't manage to escape with their lives. The best you can hope for is a noble death.
I should be able to mostly finish the story today, with this in mind. Yay!