My one touch with modern pop culture is my BodyPump class. Our instructor’s daughter (she’s 14) creates the music compilations, and she’s not exactly a Brad Paisley fan. My current faves on the soundtrack right now is Miley Cyrus’s “See You Again” (since I’m so that person in the song) and Pussycat Dolls’s “When I Grow Up” (which is me when I was, you guessed it, 14.)

I’m assuming not everyone stays holed up in a cabin on a ship (and listens to Brad Paisley and watching POTC for the 400th time), but the lyrics are:

When I grow up
I wanna be famous
I wanna be a star
I wanna be in movies

When I grow up
I wanna see the world
Drive nice cars
I wanna have Groupies

When I grow up
Be on TV
People know me
Be on magazines

When I googled the lyrics, I got two different versions. One was “I wanna have groupies” and the other was “I wanna have boobies.”—at 14, I definitely wanted both.

Now, what’s funny about this song is that it’s got a “hail the conquering hero back to Rome” sort of lyric that follows. (In Rome, when the conquering hero was hailed in the street, he was riding in a chariot with this guy standing next to him…and the guy would say, as the people screamed like groupies, ‘This too shall pass.’ A sort of reality check to make sure you didn’t behave like a smug bastard, I guess.) So the reality check lyric that follows ‘I wanna have boobies’ (don’t we all?) is: be careful what you wish for, you just might get it.

You just might get it.

Oscar Wilde, whom I adore because he was so damned witty, says something along this line: In this world there are only two tragedies. One is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it.

It just strikes me that so much focus of conflict building is about denying your characters what they want. Deny, deny, deny. It’s a sound strategy; and it’s enough to keep you busy. But the fact is: just because you get “exactly what you asked for” doesn’t mean there isn’t conflict to be had. In fact, it almost takes less work for conflict to occur when you get what you want than when you don’t get what you want. If you’re denied, you just work harder to get it. You focus, you buckle down, you wait for the opportune moment—and when the flag lowers…you snag the booty.

Look, all you ever wanted. Now what?

Think Wile E. Coyote who finds he has the roadrunner clutched between his fingers, and then he realizes he’s just run off a cliff. Beep, Beep.

Which is about the time you go: “Shit. What do we do now?” Why? Because there are still problems. There are always going to be problems. There is always something new, exciting, annoying and overwhelming to deal with. And usually whatever it is you wanted, comes with Bigger Problems. Don’t worry–I’m sure it’ll all work out in the end (the best stories always do), but don’t think it’s clear sailing from here.

After all, it’s a lot harder to keep what you wished for once you get it than it generally takes to just get it. And not only is it hard to keep, sometimes it morphs into something else you didn’t exactly anticipate. It’s hard to deal with the whole picture when you’ve been focused on, oh, the camera this whole time. It’s great character development.

We make our characters suffer so they earn their heart’s most desperate desire–and they have to be “worthy” of it, but this is also a chance to reveal that they are worthy of it. Only those who understand the cost of getting exactly what they want will do what is necessary to make sure they don’t destroy it…or themselves.

Just for a change of pace, feel free to break that “deny-deny-deny” rule and give your characters exactly what they wished for. Then make them deal with it. I mean, think about it: what would you do if you had everything you ever wished for?

Frankly I don’t know what I’d be doing about a pony now…and I don’t want a Mustang because I live somewhere where it snows. Never mind the insurance premiums! And I bet if I had the boobs I always wanted, it would be a PITA doing that move in BodyPump where you flip the bar and push the weight over your head. The bar kinda catches now and throws off the movement.

Have you ever gotten something you ever wished for and after the initial “Yeah!”, went: “F–, what do I do now?” Do you prefer to deny your characters or give them exactly what they wished for? Or somewhere in between? Can anyone think of any book examples (I’m pulling a blank) of where getting what you wished for caused more problems? (The only example I’ve got is that joke email about Lord of the Rings where they say, “Some people will go to any lengths to get a ring; others, having had one for awhile, will go to any lengths to chuck it into a volcano.”)