story twitches

[the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh]

No, not twitches of the "the free will argument is up again in the on-topic part of the forum and here I am sitting at work rather than working on the story that talks to that issue directly" kind...

I hate realising there appears to be a message in a story of mine that not only is not what I put there, but is not what I want there.

Example, and I think this is vague enough, and minor enough an element of the work in question, not to cross any lines on story idea posting.

Suppose you have a character who has gone to a strange place to have interesting adventures.  Suppose that one reason that character is the sort of person who goes to strange places to have adventures in the first place is that their family-of-origin did not really work particularly well and was not home to them; not a horrible abusive background but one with persistent incompatibilities which wore people out trying to fix and which those people eventually gave up on.  Suppose that, from time to time while running around having adventures with the other people in the story, this character occasionally feels somewhat wistful about that family not working - not devastated and traumatised, but kind of wishing it could have worked out better.  This is not a huge driving force in the characterisation of this person, just an incidental detail of who they are.

Trying to write the ending of that story as "this person has made some friendships and there is mutual good in them" without it coming across as "this person has Found A New Family and that fixes everything" is really damned hard. Because family is not what this particular story is about.

[Noey]

Maybe find a way to work in there that though these new relationships have positive in them, there's still aspects of the main character that those particular people won't fulfill. There's no one in the world that can be the perfect fulfillment for a person. There's always a flaw. It can be close, sometimes to a miraculously wonderful degree, but there's always some flaw, little or big.

For a few examples, he loves the same movies as me, but we don't like the same books because I prefer prose to poetry. We're both introverts, but she'll turn her nose up at any of the Mexican food I love. Politically, we're absolutely on the same page, and it gives us absolutely nothing to debate, so we talk endlessly about the weather instead and it bores us both silly. Our life philosophies are totally in sync, yet I love punk rock and my friends are into country. In relationships, there's always disparities and differences, because people are unique. Doesn't make them necessarily flawed, but it means that you're not likely to find a human puzzle piece that perfectly matches you, so we seek out friendships and relationships to connect with people for different types of fulfillment.

So, clearly, if you like rambling, I'm your girl. Anyway, I say maybe find a way to introduce the fact that even though these people are better, they're not necessarily perfect either, and maybe even add in a small thing or two that the family did get right. Maybe overall it didn't work, but one or two small, positive things isn't outside the realm of possibility, if that makes sense.

[the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh]

Maybe find a way to work in there that though these new relationships have positive in them, there's still aspects of the main character that those particular people won't fulfill. There's no one in the world that can be the perfect fulfillment for a person. There's always a flaw. It can be close, sometimes to a miraculously wonderful degree, but there's always some flaw, little or big.

The thing is, having this bunch of friends fail to be a family is still working within the paradigm that a family is what the protagonist is inherently looking for, so...

Metaphor: I am afraid that what it is actually doing at the moment will look to people like "ooh, a nice piece of good cheesecake, everyone is happy."  Changing it to "Regrettably, this cheesecake isn't actually very nice"  still makes the ending read as being about cheesecake. When what it wants to be about is more like "Here is a cat".

So what you've said does not solve my problem, but it was still quite helpful in getiing the problem clearer in my head.

[belial.1980]

Try to pigeon hole the things that are leading up to this ending and remove them. There are probably road signs here and there along the way, and you might very well be putting them in there without consciously thinking about it. If that's the case you may even want to enlist some Beta readers to help you find them. 

Also, you might want to tone down or eliminate instances where the character mentions his/her family. How important is this character's family life? You've already stated that this story is not about finding and replacing the family-of-origin so try to tone down or eliminate that theme altogether. Don't give the readers a chance to relate this new group of friends as a "replacement family."

Keeping your metaphor in mind: if the story is supposed to be about a cat, go back and remove material that relates to cheesecake. Replace said material with stuff about the cat. If it were only that easy, right?

[Der Sturmbrecher]

Suggestions:

* Try having that inner conflict presented as already resolved. Mention it as little as possible. For instance, show your character has made friendships already since the departure.

* Overshadow that with a bigger inner conflict. If you can make it clear that something gnaws at your character more than a small regret of old family, that should take precedence.

Alternatively, you could just make it clear that this person isn't one to be longing for familial company. Maybe it was his/her fault that the old family didn't feel like home.

Hope some of that waffle helps.

[Thrythlind]

more than half the meaning of a particular work comes from the individual doing the reading or viewing at the moment.

try to worry more about what it means to you than what it means to someone else....because that overall meaning is going to come out of how the reader connects their life experiences with the events in the book....in a lot of cases, there's overlap between most people from the same culture, but even so, everybody is going to get something slightly different out of the book than what you intended there to be