The disadvantages of Erik
23 October 2014 01:44 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
igenlodeNot terribly happy with my new "Love Never Dies" story -- although not so unhappy with it as I was yesterday, since I have now at least managed to get to the end of the chapter in a vaguely plausible manner...
Attempting to put Erik into it as a fully-fledged character rather than just a cameo is apparently far more of a challenge than I had realised; I'm constantly worrying about whether he is simply implausible (the canon Phantom in "Love Never Dies" simply isn't a very nice person most of the time) and whether I'm inadvertently 'bashing' the character in order to make the others look better, or whether he's turning Christine into a complete doormat — whether I'm making Raoul far too heroic to fit into my original plot concept (which relies on his being pretty beaten-down) or whether on the contrary I'm making him look completely pathetic. There was what was once conceived of as a central scene in which he essentially gets beaten up by Christine(!), and I'm not sure if I'm even going to be able to use that in conjunction with the Erik material :-(
Also, it appears I'm not terribly good at writing the Phantom: my Erik seems to have just two registers, insane rage and insensitive seduction. Not that the canon LND-Phantom is terribly different, mind you :-p
Attempting to put Erik into it as a fully-fledged character rather than just a cameo is apparently far more of a challenge than I had realised; I'm constantly worrying about whether he is simply implausible (the canon Phantom in "Love Never Dies" simply isn't a very nice person most of the time) and whether I'm inadvertently 'bashing' the character in order to make the others look better, or whether he's turning Christine into a complete doormat — whether I'm making Raoul far too heroic to fit into my original plot concept (which relies on his being pretty beaten-down) or whether on the contrary I'm making him look completely pathetic. There was what was once conceived of as a central scene in which he essentially gets beaten up by Christine(!), and I'm not sure if I'm even going to be able to use that in conjunction with the Erik material :-(
Also, it appears I'm not terribly good at writing the Phantom: my Erik seems to have just two registers, insane rage and insensitive seduction. Not that the canon LND-Phantom is terribly different, mind you :-p
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Date: 2014-11-05 11:46 pm (UTC)Did you say "Love Never Dies" story?
I thought you weren't supposed to write another LND story again... Tut tut.
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Date: 2014-11-06 12:27 am (UTC)But this one really is going to be the last (sez I!) -- I'm running out of areas of the plot to rewrite. It already overlaps with "Waiting in the Wings", though since this one is based off the original London version and the latter revolved specifically around the changes made at that point, the canon events are different.
But I wanted to finish with a 'happier' R/C ending than my previous three LND stories, so right now I'm struggling to write the scene where Raoul gets to Meg first and tries to talk her down before the Phantom can put his foot in it... 'Struggling' being the operative term. For a story that I thought had a couple of good ideas in it, this one is being remarkably uncooperative :-(