The main story I'm struggling with right now is called "The Wonder Kid". I finally found a title I like, after having the working title "Elf and Troll" for the longest time.
I have been slowly getting near done with all the scenes I thought I'd need, for about a month now, and then on reading Swain recently I feel like I need to replan the whole drive towards the end, because things don't revolve around my focal character the way it seems they should.
I'm not sure about this yet. What I have is a story told by a teacher, about a kid who is in jeopoardy. Swain's ideas don't seem to take a distinction between a narrator and a focal character into account. However, I think it is true that my narrator character doesn't have enough at stake in the story, and the story would probably be better if he had more at stake.
Well, I have some ideas about how to fix that, but they feel like pretty huge changes. What happened in this case is that I had one story, I went for the ending, and then I decided I didn't like that and added a bunch of material after...but the second plan never accounted for the motivation or risks of the main character enough.
Well, this is all nicely vague. But I wanted to put down some of my ideas and feelings, without getting into the details of the story. It's kind of like being knocked back about a month....I was starting to feel like I was about a week away from a good solid draft I could send around for people to review, and now it feels like there's a lot more to do.
My vote is don't worry about it. Get the draft out and circulating then see what kind of feedback you get. And keep Swain's ideas in mind for your next story, or a major revision of this one if the feedback warrants it.
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