January 19, 2006
The wonderful thing about being a writer is that you can pretty much be God in your books. Creator, destroyer, manager, etc… That’s not to say that your characters don’t have free will–and exercise it once in awhile–’cause they do.
Which brings me to my problem. I’m stuck. I’ve got my heroine in a really bad place. Really bad. There’s no escape.
So how am I going to get her out?
My husband suggested an earthquake. Wouldn’t that be convenient? I’m God here, so I could make it happen. But will I? No.
The problem is getting her out of her mess without resorting to “conveniences.” But I’ve gotten her in a pretty good mess. So I don’t know.
For the writers out there…what do you do when there’s no calvary in sight?
The second installment of the Gardella Vampire Chronicles takes Victoria to Venice and Rome.
My novel, 
January 20th, 2006 at 9:32 pm
Hi Colleen! I know what you mean; you want to avoid the deus ex machina, but sometimes you just write yourself into a corner. Is it too late to build in any subtle “escape hatches” earlier?
Good luck! I just got my editor’s revision notes today and I’m still freaking out at the amount of rewriting I need to do. Egads.
January 21st, 2006 at 12:14 pm
Thanks Jess. And actually, my husband came up with a palatable idea that got me unstuck…and according to my critique group, it worked very well.
I have to go back and make one more little tweak as a subtle foreshadowing, and then onward and upward!
Good luck with your revisions!
January 21st, 2006 at 7:58 pm
Okay, so I want to know what your character did in the first place to get into a bad situation? You can always do what they do on soap operas–make it a dream or throw in an evil twin! LOL. Found you from my pal Jess.
January 22nd, 2006 at 1:57 pm
Well, Manic Mom, I can’t tell you what she did ’cause that would give away the book…but you’ll be able to read it when it comes out! LOL.
But basically, she was doing her job and got caught in an unexpected, bad situation (that was so unexpected and bad I hadn’t planned for it.). Ooops.
Thanks to my dh’s idea, though, her writer got her out of it, fairly unscathed.