I wrote the wrong story

[Writer61]

It could have been worse: https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2z39tr still crops up in my mind.

 

[NaughteeDragon]

Many years ago I was writing a story about a couple exploring their sexual boundaries. It was supposed to be a fun happy group sex story. One day I started writing and let the story take me where it wanted to go. A spanking session went bad, it led to huge argument that led to a divorce after the MMC lost his temper and belted his wife after she slapped him. I finished that track of the story, the deleted it a week later. I went back to the fork and wrote the story I wanted to and was much happier for it.
If the fork you take leads to a good story that you like, then do both, but don’t be afraid to burn out an overgrowth that is harming your story.

 

[Actingup]

That's my general approach as well. For this story, I gave her too much reluctance to the event it was building to, so that reluctance took over the story.

For my Winter contest, I apparently made my FMC too bitchy, or so my comments tell me regularly. As did my beta readers to be fair. But that was the character that was in my head, so she stayed what she was.

I’d interrogate the ‘too much’ elements, in the sense that if you want your stories to be character-driven, they need to have personalities. If your MC has taken control of your plot, it’s a reasonable option to just go along for the ride.

(Also, as aside, in some categories, women are perceived by some readers as being ‘too much’ if they so much as have an independent thought during the story - there are a few comments on the current story from Penny and I along those lines, to which we are replying with a gracious smile and an internal ‘go fuck yourselves’)

I think that your path from here is around whether you will be proud of the finished work. If you are, publish, and then come back to the other idea later. But don’t put something out that you can’t take pride in - life is too short for that.