Cutting Corners

A lot of cutting going on in my posts recently. Anyway the past week taught me a good lesson in getting too cocky.

I've been working on my submission for BBC Sharps. Lateral thinking had brought up some good ideas. Nothing too predictable. Not a hospital or surgery in sight. Good. I'd then got a rough idea of the characters and I'd knocked out a rough story. So I thought I'd just dive right in this time and start writing. Note all those rough bits in the earlier sentence. Well it was no suprise that the result was... rough.

Stop giggling out there. You've never been tempted to just bypass a couple of stages?

My rough characters were actually screaming stereotypes. My rough plot was so badly knitted together it was more fishing net than cashmere sweater. And that's a net a blue whale could have swum through without breathing in.

I'd start writing a scene and I'd grind to a halt, not knowing how to get to the end I'd planned. I wanted high drama, the characters wanted low farce. It was a mess. So I gritted my teeth and binned it. Back to square one. A week wasted but a lesson learned.

I'm now back with three characters deep enough for that blue whale to go diving in and a plot so tight I can make a cashmere sweater out of it. That or my brain is blubbering in the corner and I'm completely delusional. We shall see.