IWSG: You Can't Always Get What You Want

Welcome to the first Wednesday of the month. You know what that means! It's time to let our insecurities hang out. Yep, it's the Insecure Writer's Support Group blog hop. If you're a writer at any stage of career, I highly recommend this blog hop as a way to connect with other writers for support, sympathy, ideas, and networking. If you're a reader, it's a great way to peek behind the curtain of a writing life.

Our Twitter handle is @TheIWSG and hashtag is #IWSG. The awesome co-hosts for the August 3 posting of the IWSG are Tara Tyler, Lisa Buie Collard, Loni Townsend, and Lee Lowery! Be sure to stop by and see what they have to say when you finish here. 

August 3 question - When you set out to write a story, do you try to be more original or do you try to give readers what they want?

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Trying to give readers what they want is a dangerous game. For one thing, figuring out what that is can be darn tricky. For another thing, take any two readers, and you might get conflicting desires. 

Really, when I'm deciding where a story should go, it's not the readers I look to, but the story. What does the story need? What's the right tone, plot twist, narrator, setting, or ending for this story? 

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Sometimes doing that means that even I, as the writer, don't necessarily get what I want. After all, I love my characters and I want them to end up well, but fictional people don't get off that easily--they have to face conflict, danger, challenges, and change. Otherwise, they're just not interesting enough for the page. 

But when you get it right--it's like magic. The stars align, music plays, and you just feel it in the center of your being.  That's what I'm looking for: what the story needs. And once I've found that, it might not be what I thought I wanted, but I'm always glad it's what I got.