Fiction is what happens while you're busy making other plans.

by Toni L.P. Kelner

John Lennon wrote, "Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans," and that's definitely been my experience. Writing fiction is like that, too. The version of a story the reader sees is rarely anything like what I started out writing. 

This past couple of weeks I've been working on a short story for Death's Excellent Vacation, the next anthology Charlaine and I are editing. The anthology is all about supernatural beings on vacation, kind of an urban fantasy beach book. And even before we decided to do this anthology, I'd had this character in mind to write a short story about:  Pirate Dave.

Pirate Dave was going to be a cranky old guy who works nights as a character at a run-down amusement park in Florida. The twist is that he's a vampire, and really was a pirate. One night he smells that there's a werewolf has entered the park, and being a protective sort, he decides he's going to hunt the beastie down before it can hurt anybody. Except the werewolf isn't the problem at all, and the real danger is a witch who wants to capture the werewolf. Throw in a case of mistaken identity about which park guest is actually the werewolf, and hilarity ensues.

That was the plan, anyway. Unfortunately, I could not make myself write it. I couldn't get the mechanics to work, and I couldn't overcome the problems with the plot and character. In reading this over, I still can't pinpoint what about the story was bad, but it just wasn't working.

Time to reboot.

I still wanted that amusement park setting, and I still wanted a Pirate Dave who was actually a vampire.

Now I've already written one werewolf story:  "Keeping Watch Over His Flock," which appeared in Wolfsbane and Mistletoe. The protagonist is Jake, a teenaged boy who only recently discovered that he was a werewolf and who has been adopted by a clean-cut, loving family of werewolves. So I thought I'd send Jake to see Pirate Dave at Pirate Dave's Funland, and Jake would be the protagonist instead of Dave.

The plot was that Jake comes to the park with his family, but goes off on his own to meet with his buddies for the day. Only his buddies have ditched him, and instead of meeting him at the park, they've gone to a martial arts film festival because ninjas are way cooler than pirates. Jake is left alone and cranky, and gets abducted by Pirate Dave the vampire. At first Pirate Dave was an aristocratic kind of vamp, aloof and lonely. Then he was a young guy, or at least he looked young because he'd been bitten as a youngster. Either way, it was going to be a buddy plot in which the werewolf and the vampire teamed up to defeat some sort of supernatural threat that had to do with children disappearing from the park.  And since the names "Jake" and "Dave" were too similar, I changed it to Pirate Bob.

I worked on that version for several days, but at some point, realized I already had 2,000 words and it was mostly introductory stuff that established the characters. This wouldn't be so bad for a novel, but the word limit for the anthology is 10,000 words--I couldn't spend a fifth of the story introducing the situation. Again, it just wasn't working.

Time for another reboot.

I still wanted my amusement park and my vampire pirate. Since I wasn't using Jake, I brought back Pirate Dave. I still liked the werewolf/vampire dynamic, so I needed a werewolf with less back story than Jake. That's when Hannah showed up. After toying with the idea of doing half the story from Hannah's viewpoint, and half from Dave's, I settled on using Hannah's viewpoint and it went pretty smoothly from there, other than changing Hannah to Joyce and from third-person to first-person.

For whatever mysterious reason, this version of the story worked. Tomorrow I'll take a final look at "Pirate Dave's Haunted Amusement Park" before sending it off. Then I can start making plans for the next project. Any bets about whether it will turn out the way I plan?

Comments

[Chris Adams]

If you haven't already seen it, watch The Unknown Chaplin, a collection out-takes, edits etc from his films.
There is a lengthy section where his work on the film that became The Immigrant, is reconstructed from what he filmed but then threw out.
The story started as "scenes in an artists' cafe"
It is a film version, i think, of what you are describing here.
A lighter and fictional approach can be seen in Shakespeare in Love where, interestingly, the young Shakespeare is struggling with an early draft of "Ethel and the Pirate".
It will eventually become Romeo and Julliet.
I hope your story is equally successful.
I wonder if it is possible to do a written version of this, a sort of reconstruction novel?

[TheLima]

My butler story? Was originally a historical piece set in Victorian times...go figure.

I feel your pain--or at least, your creative struggle.

-- Maria Lima

[Mary]

A lot of my stories have morphed into something better. http://www.menopausemusing.com

[Dana Cameron]

Good for you for knowing how and when to reboot, Toni, and what elements belong! It took me forever to figure out that what became "The Lords of Misrule" was set in 18th-century London with Margaret Chase, and not at a high-tech company's holiday party with Emma Fielding. Whew.

Such a relief when you find the right path...Brava!

[krisneri]

The creative process is both magical and maddening. I'm glad you pushed through it to arrive at the right solution, Toni.

[Charlaine Harris]

Me, too, because Toni sent me a great story.