I Bought My "Bitch" Hat at Office Max

Generally, I’m the easy-going type. I get along with most other people and I generally don’t get into any sort of confrontation. This is due to my tendency to apologize immediately if I feel like I’ve accidentally insulted someone. Like most women, I probably apologize too much. But, I don’t like people not to like me. I’m sort of a “can’t we all just get along” type. That is, in my real life.

In the fictional world I create on paper (read: Word doc), I am the bitchiest of pirates. I break people up, just to get them back together. I wield my sharp sword (read: pen, er… read: keys on my keyboard) and slice happy families apart. I wreak havoc among perfectly laid plans, messing up perfectly comfortable lives, all in the name of telling a great story.

The bitch hat (it's a figurative hat, of course) is my greatest writerly supply. Because, that part of me is what helps me tell good stories.

If I sat at my computer and happily allowed my perfectly contented characters to move about in their perfectly comfortable lives (or even their not-so-perfectly comfortable lives), then what kind of story would that be? It’d be the perfectly boring story that no one would want to read. We live to see people overcome obstacles. It’s what keeps us reading, so we can see how it all works out.

But, sometimes being this bitch hurts the sweet, can’t-we-all-get-along part of me that wants everyone to like me. At times like that, I have to ignore the characters in my head calling me names (“You big meanie!”) and pull my bitch hat down over my ears so that I can continue to slice and hack away at their lives.

It’s hard for me. My heart hurts for them. However, I know it will all work out in the end. I know that when the time comes, I’ll be able to hang my bitch hat next to my computer and let the romantic part of me that is dying for everyone to be happy write everything perfect again.

Thank God for my bitch hat. My computer, my post-it notes, they pale in comparison to how important it is to my writing. I’m not sure how I could have the tough love to do what I need to do to these fictional people without it.

I always wonder about writers who don’t let their characters get their happy endings because they never get to take off their bitch hats.

I’ve read all sorts of stuff in my English major/English teacher lifetime. I swore that American authors, particularly in the 18th and 19th centuries, wouldn’t have known a happy ending if they fell in one. People who write horror, like Stephen King and Dean Koontz, never get the satisfaction of HEA, at least not the way I write it. I picture them writing “the end” and then going off to therapy or to their priests, complaining about the darkness of the world.

I’m so glad I get to spread a little light.

If you’re a writer, how do you feel about causing turmoil in your characters’ lives? Are you of the yay, free therapy school or are you (like me) of the “when can I get to the HEA” school? How do you approach writing conflict in your stories, as I’m certain my “bitch hat” method isn’t the only one out there?

SuperWriter: (W)riting Wrongs & HEAs

I need Happily Ever Afters in my stories.

It’s my biggest failure as an English major, I admit, this dreadful need for a commercial sweet ending, but who cares? I’ve been rewriting the ends to literary stories for years now, at least in my mind.

Romeo & Juliet is a definite beef of mine, especially since it’s proof of why teenagers should wait until they’re 25 before they’re allowed to date. (Idiots.) Admittedly, my interpretation of the story when I was a teenager was actually more romantic-minded, back when I thought there is only one soul-mate, one true love for any one person. Back then, I rewrote the ending for a school project, thus alerting Ms. Yount even then of my intent to write trashy novels.

I’ve been rewriting endings ever since really.

Anyone see the movie Sommersby? Richard Gere and Jodie Foster fall in love in this post-Civil War era flick. I watched it one Christmas Eve, totally a lamb led to slaughter as I bonded with this couple, only to watch Richard hanged at the end. Hanged. I leaped out of my chair, screaming at the television—which went over well in a household that was asleep at 1 a.m.

Shakespeare in Love. Another wonderful flick (one I actually own)—and our couple is cruelly separated at the end, and she has to go off and live with Colin Firth. Oh, the pitiless injustice of it all! (In all fairness, he’s not nearly as dashing or charming as he was as Darcy, but it is Colin Firth after all.)

Titanic. *pauses for the obvious jokes that will abound here* That rat bastard of a fiancée makes it, but poor Jack drowns for his sweet Rose. Mike was completely inconsolable for weeks!

Over the summer, a supposed comedy called The Breakup had an ending where the couple didn’t end up together. It is possibly the only non-together ending where I wouldn’t rewrite it to have them get together. These two were so wholly unlikeable, they didn’t deserve a happy ending. (I still want my $8 back.)

Well, there is a point to this. I’m not the only one who likes to rewrite endings to unhappily ended romances and give the sigh we were all waiting to exhale. Over the weekend, I read an erotica novel by Colette Gale called Unmasqued, which tells a new version of The Phantom of the Opera. Well, well-done. Highly recommend, and I got to thinking about beloved stories in which I wished the ending had been a bit different. And it got me to thinking of story ideas in which I could rewrite the ending to…oh, The Flying Dutchman. Or maybe a modern day Romeo & Juliet, fifteen years after the supposed suicide maybe.

Maybe that’s how I’ll make the world a better place—one HEA at a time. Just call me...SuperWriter.

What stories have you wished for a different ending? How would you have made it different?