laramie

Hmm. I will think about that. I want the conclusion to follow logically from what has gone before, and be in keeping with the character of the heroine, yet I also have to look at it from the author's perspective. The character makes choices, but the author plays a role in deciding what the consequences of those choices are.

Maybe the protagonist's growth is one and the same with her heart's fulfillment (in friendship as well as in love), and maybe it's not. She is someone who is concerned with 'doing the right thing' but she's also human, and that entails a lot of confusion between different values of 'right'. As author I have to decide what values of right work for the kind of story I'm writing.

If I were writing a horror story the characters could make the same kind of choices and events would occur differently because of my approach as writer. Yet, I want the emotional consequences to follow naturally, regardless of external story events.

Maybe I'm having trouble seeing what works because I modelled the conflict on one that's too close to my own issues. Maybe this is all meaningless except to let myself know that I'm not satisfied with the ending as written in the first drafts - I want the story to satisfy my heart, and that may come down to pretty much the same thing as satisfying the hearts of the characters.