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No, brain, you absolutely do not need to write a story wherein Calliope has angry revenge sex with Christoph after Richard makes a jackass of himself.
I love creating fictional lives and filling them with rich and often painful histories, but one of the biggest impediment to their eventual realization is my imagination's penchant for conjuring every conceivable spinoff and AU scenario for a given action. I'm hopelessly addicted to what-ifs. I might set out to write a straightforward story about Character A falling in love with/betraying/hunting down Character B, but before long, I've wandered off the intended path and entangled myself in a thicket of ors and buts, and soon my characters are scuffing their toes in the dirt while I beat back a horde of ravenous plot brambles and spit my shattered teeth onto the parched earth. Sure, my heart wants love and cotton-candy schmoop, but it's also a dreadful sadomasochist that wonders what would happen if A chose B over C because they thought it was the honorable thing to do, only to have that relationship implode shortly thereafter, and call B when they discover they have a critical/terminal illness. It's got a kink for wrenching emotional whump. Which reminds me that I should totally resurrect Et Tu, because that was a megadose of emotional agony.
A possible solution to this conundrum is to write the multitude of AUs and lock them away as digital drawerfic in a separate locked journal. Because as long as I'm immersed in my fictional sandcastle, the momentum carries me from milestone to milestone, but the second I disengage to take stock, my attention is diverted and interest wanes, and before I know it, a promising idea is dead in the water. If I'm writing the nettlesome AUs, then at least I'm not getting distracted by another imaginary world entirely.
I love creating fictional lives and filling them with rich and often painful histories, but one of the biggest impediment to their eventual realization is my imagination's penchant for conjuring every conceivable spinoff and AU scenario for a given action. I'm hopelessly addicted to what-ifs. I might set out to write a straightforward story about Character A falling in love with/betraying/hunting down Character B, but before long, I've wandered off the intended path and entangled myself in a thicket of ors and buts, and soon my characters are scuffing their toes in the dirt while I beat back a horde of ravenous plot brambles and spit my shattered teeth onto the parched earth. Sure, my heart wants love and cotton-candy schmoop, but it's also a dreadful sadomasochist that wonders what would happen if A chose B over C because they thought it was the honorable thing to do, only to have that relationship implode shortly thereafter, and call B when they discover they have a critical/terminal illness. It's got a kink for wrenching emotional whump. Which reminds me that I should totally resurrect Et Tu, because that was a megadose of emotional agony.
A possible solution to this conundrum is to write the multitude of AUs and lock them away as digital drawerfic in a separate locked journal. Because as long as I'm immersed in my fictional sandcastle, the momentum carries me from milestone to milestone, but the second I disengage to take stock, my attention is diverted and interest wanes, and before I know it, a promising idea is dead in the water. If I'm writing the nettlesome AUs, then at least I'm not getting distracted by another imaginary world entirely.
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