Imagine my surprise when I reached the middle of what I had just written and out of nowhere, Harry starts to sound like a twenty something semi-psychotic person who’s probably on some sort of drugs.
None of that writing (a good 968 words) is salvageable, Harry is just not Harry. He curses, rolls his eyes way too much, sighs for no apparent reason and has an obscene fascination for blood.
What does that say about my mindset since most of the writing was done via the stream of consciousness method?
I’d love to blame my KHR one-shot for warping my mental picture of Harry, but Harry is actually quite Harry-like and fun in that story, so I had no idea what brought it on.
Then I started to go through my week. What could possible inspire that odd character warp? Let’s see, there was that Criminal Minds marathon, re-watched Blade 3, then there was the newest episode of Supernatural and latest Manga chapters.
Huh, now that I took the time to list all that, I realise my writing was just asking for trouble there.
Anyway, the problem is trying to go back to writing Harry as nice and normal Harry… which I am drawing blanks on. I tried picturing normal Harry and writing more consciously, but it’s not working! He still comes out as a psycho in my writing.
Maybe I should read some of the incomplete future scenes of him I have?
Or should I just try and drain that odd characterization of Harry by continuing to write whatever comes out? Will I eventually end up back to my original characterization of Harry?
Or should I just stop the writing all together and try another time? Maybe after watching some less weird things?
This is the first time I’ve ended up in such a situation. Then again, AtO is my first multi-chaptered story (that I’ve stuck with for more than a year). But Gah!, this totally puts a wrench in my planned update time.
Something or the other always manages to make monthly update schedule impossible to keep. How do other writers manage to update their stories so frequently?
Polar
