The problem with having a good setting and characters you like is that they tend to get out of hand. You think that you've got things under control and pretty much ready to go and... ha! Surprises happen and it turns out that you don't.

I've a pair of characters, Ben and William, I very much like. They're sweet and sappy, and when circumstances call for it can kick much ass and wreak massive amounts of mayhem, which is always good for some fun. (They're the two in the Wedding Bells snippet I posted a while back) They first got worked out a year and a half ago according to Word's timestamp on the file -- nothing fancy, just two guys who start out not liking each other trapped in a cabin for a couple of weeks and ultimately get together. More a character piece than a plot one, but it was nice if unexciting, and I kind of liked it, and the characters.

I never got very far on them, since the story was a pain to work on, and I had other things I was concentrating on (like Yankee, which I'm having a heck of a time finishing up, but that's neither here nor there) so they were tabled along with a lot of other pieces. They had a lot more potential, though.

Then a few months ago (Well, OK, six months ago) Myr was complaining a bit about the lack of good fantasy pieces, and I had an idea that worked out well with Ben and William, so I sat down and plotted it out. That story, it turned out, introduced a pair of other characters, so over the next few months I ended up with three more stories -- one each where the two characters get introduced, and a third where they have a fairly harrowing adventure of their own. (Those are only partially plotted, I'm trying not to think about them)

Well, fast forward to thanksgiving, when Yankee looked like it was going to wrap up soon (ha!) and I was trying to work out what to do next. I'd been fiddling with the fantasy piece, and ended up sending what I'd gotten done on it and the background material off to Dio for poking at. He promptly went missing for a few weeks, but when he got back he tore the plot synopsis apart -- which it deserved -- and made a bunch of suggestions and asked a lot of questions.

All that was good, since the plot really was pretty nonexistent. Rewrote the synopsis and sent it off for a second look-see (at which point he got sick. I think I may stop sending him things before his fans hunt me down and hurt me) and put it aside.

This is where the characters taking over comes in. I wanted to wait but they don't -- I ended up burning most of a day banging out a few thousand words of plot synopsis (which doesn't bode well for the thing's length, given that it's not in much detail) and since then another 3500 words of the first three chapters (none of which are anywhere near done). That made me think that maybe I ought to wait a bit -- writing the fourth novel in the series first seems a bit ill-advised, though I'm doing it anyway since the words are flowing. Unfortunately all that putting it aside has done is bring out another 1300 words worth of summary on yet another story, though at least this one should be shorter and the second in order.

I swear, I think I need to drug these guys up -- they're getting too damn busy. At least the action flows pretty fast as do the words when they get going. That's something, I guess...