The Battle of Wills
I am rather annoyed right at the moment. In the current story I'm trying to write, there is a forest that likes to eat people. Right now my protagonists are in said forest, and for some inexplicable reason the forest is refusing to eat them. I can't say this is all bad; the resulting extended scenes have some added character development I hadn't expected to see in this part. But at the same time I cannot help but wonder at how difficult it is to just have the forest come right out and (try to) devour them.
Why won't it eat them? Aren't they beautiful enough for it? Has the forest already eaten too much this month, and is worried about putting on weight? It feels like I'm having to coax a non-compliant child at the dinner table.
Me (the author): "Come on, try it! Just a spoonful of heroes. You'll see that you like it."
Man-Eating Forest: (shaking its head) "Mmm-mmm."
Me: "What's the matter? We've been planning this meal for months. All you could talk about for a time was eating these people. Just open your mouth a little bit, and try some. It's not bad. Not like that jar of 'creamed ogres' you ate last week."
Man-Eating Forest: "You can't make me."
This could only get worse if the man-eating forest turns out to be bulemic and coughs them back up somewhere. Or else the forest has scanned ahead to the end of the scene, and discovered it actually
doesn't like the taste of our heroes (one in particular). It still seems ridiculously peculiar that despite my being the author, the story is currently putting me through the rigours and not the other way around. This really does throw the whole concept of the creative process out the window (though hopefully someone opened the window first before any glass was shattered), since--at least with me--the story is the one that usually tells me what happens next, and not the other way around.
Certainly there are scenes I have sketched out, endings planned and even specific events that must take place at key times in any story. But to have the story, or to be more precise the man-eating forest in it, pull this filibuster tactic, as if thinking this will prevent me from ever having it try to eat the protagonists, feels like any authority I had as an author is being totally undermined.
In other news that may surely one day bruise my rampaging ego, I have been MSTied. I can't honestly complain, since it's a pretty good MST, and besides I deliberately wrote this story as a horrible piece of self-inserted schlock just for the fun of it. And mostly to hurt people's brains:
fibi.wishing-blue.net/viewtopic.php?t=103
Man-Eating Forest Status: going vegetarian.
posted by Phillip at 5:41 AM
