No New Ideas...or Why I Really Need to Outline

I'm usually a write-by-the-seat-of-my-pants kind of writer. I don't outline. I don't think too far ahead. I just come up with a character and let them take me where they will. This has made for some exciting discoveries...and some pretty big flops.

I decided that in order to get out of my rut with Last of the Elves, I needed to make an outline. I needed a clear idea of where the story was going and how the characters were going to get there. And I outlined myself right into a wall.

The good thing about this was: it's only an outline. I didn't have chapters and chapters of useless scenes to build up to a pathetic and cliche ending. I saw it immediately and about gagged. Really, Brandi? That's all you could come up with?

Maybe it's because I fixate on certain things. I have a comfort niche and I unconsciously write into it. Bleh.

This comfort niche involves the MC. Usually they are unassuming and not very powerful, but they have a secret power locked inside them and they can use it to conquer evil, if only they figure out how! Looking back at my "completed" works, I see it in FURY and DRAGON QUEEN. Of course, there is a slight variation due to circumstance and such, but now I find myself trying to grab onto it for ELVES. No! Bad Brandi!

So, I have to come up with something new. Something different. But how? Every time my mind tries to go a different direction, the niche pulls me back in. And I'm stuck. Stuck and frustrated.

I don't want to be one of those authors who gives their characters different names and slightly different circumstances, but in the end tells the same story. Just the thought that I might not be capable of anything else makes me want to cry. ::sniffle::

(Ok, moment of self-pity over.)

I will come up with something else...I just don't know what yet!