Who's story is this again?

Two posts in one day is unheard of for me but this, this I had to share.

So quick back story: I've been working on a Beauty and the Beast story, trying to get a handle on the characters and work out some problems with the plot so I can start writing it for Camp NaNoWriMo's April session.

It hasn't been going well. I thought I had calmed down about it after my last post but then I just got worked up again wondering if I was ready to write it and if I had enough exuberance to deal with all the themes properly. My MCs (main characters)  were flabby at best but some of the SCs (secondary characters) fascinated me.

Everyone knows how Beauty and the Beast ends so you wouldn't think I'd have a problem there but I did. I had this SC who I really liked, she had a complex journey of her own and I really felt the need to wrap up her story nicely, only I couldn't. There was no way I could fit a happy ending into the story I the idea of leaving her hanging didn't sound good at all.

I ranted and rambled for awhile, pacing my room and trying to figure out what to do. Then suddenly I knew...

You know how in Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings adaption he spends a lot of time building up the Eowyn's story? How she becomes infatuated with Aragorn and gets her heart broken and goes to war because of it? And then in the end Aragorn gets married to Arwen and Eowyn ends up standing next to Faramir at the coronation and nothing more!

Well in the book she gets a whole chapter to fall in love with Faramir and there's this kiss on the wall tops...Its great, we even get to see them get engaged later.

Well I felt like I was doing to my beloved SC what Peter Jackson did to poor Eowyn. After all that character building she needed more of a pay off then the story was giving her, and that wasn't fair, not when she was one of the only characters with any real depth I had at the moment.

Which brings me to the point where, instead of having a story line with a really great SC, I have a MC with a great back story and an as-yet-to-be-defined curse and undiscovered True Love in her future.

I laughed. I mean really? All this time and trouble and in the end my beautiful plot ends up a back story for Beauty's sister's story! Well hopefuly I can work the bits I really liked into flash backs or something. Most of them had to do with the SC anyway.

The morel of this story? Never, ever, think that your in charge. The characters are more then capable of taking over and it's far less painful and far more interesting if you let them have there way.

(Also it looks like I will have to find something else to do for Camp because its a cinch this story's not going to be ready to go in time. Oh well if nothing else I can finish my November novel, I never did get more then half way through the plot.)