Tonight, it hit me. One of the characters told me I had the ending all wrong. "No," said he, "that most certainly is not how this story goes. Sit down and take notes, bitch."
And I'll be damned if he wasn't right. The ending was all kinds of fuckered up. Of course, the bastard had to wait until the eleventh hour to offer up this revelation, which will require me to delete about 5,000 words and make some major changes to some half-finished chapters near the end. If he was a cooperative soul, he would have informed me of this back in the early stages of the first draft, but nooOOOOoooo...he had to wait. Well, little does he know, I still have to write several other chapters involving him earlier in the book. I will have my revenge. Oh yes, I will have my revenge.
Now, facelift and reconstruction notwithstanding, I like the new ending much, much better. We'll see how it actually looks on paper, but so far, so good. It'll also be a much more emotional ending. I dare say it might cause a sniffle or three in a few places.
So, tomorrow, the outline gets torn to pieces and the last eight or nine chapters rearranged. That means my word count will do all kinds of crazy things, but screw it, the story needs it. It may also necessitate deleting one, possibly two, of those scenes(tm). Ah, well, such is life.
Yes, ladies and gentlemen, this is how a characterocracy works. The characters speak, I listen. This is where my 100% set-in-stone rule of outlining comes into play: If ever the characters and outline disagree, the characters win. Always.
I'm so giddy about this it's ridiculous. These epiphanies and Eureka! moments are what I love for in this job.
To celebrate, here's James Purefoy.
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I hate that they always win. The best I've ever gotten was compromise, but no "I win!".
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