My Writer Journey – part eight
Replotting or going insane
I am in the middle of writing my new WIP and I hit a snag.
Snag? What am I saying… It’s a hole… a massive sinkhole of timey wimey proportions see, this is my problem! I don’t know where I am going. I know the start and the end but… how am I getting there?
https://giphy.com/embed/iC6oIpZ65mrcc
See, I had a plot… I started with clean paper and an idea. That idea became more ideas, and those ideas became chapters. Those chapters then became segments and those in turn became paragraphs… and then at chapter 14…
Nothing…
Zip, Nada, big fat zero.
So why am I stuck?
I have my MC…. She has a great story. There’s emotional highs and lows, lots of action, magic even. Things happen and its all very exciting. So what is going wrong? In the middle of a chapter 14 I hit a blank.
Not writer’s block but story block. I’d hit a wall and I couldn’t figure out how to get through it. Usually at this point I would jump ahead and start writing another section knowing it will come to me down the line, or I could cliffhanger this part and move on. ACTION! Yes, no… wait.
Arghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
Why am I stuck?
So I went back to basics.
I had to ask my main character…
https://giphy.com/embed/E87jjnSCANThe
So true. It’s not that simple.
What does the MC want, how does she get it and who is stopping her from getting it? I wrote a simple, single page breakdown…
That’s when I realised… things are happening to her and she is reacting to those things (all action and excitement and rah rah fight scenes) BUT…
I realised it wasn’t the character I was stuck on or the story, it was something deeper I was searching for.
I needed my main character to remember she was the point of the story.
It’s her story which mean SHE is in the driver’s seat.
*light bulb flashing above head*
https://giphy.com/embed/14aUO0Mf7dWDXW
I forgot to focus on her.
What is driving her, what does she want, what is she going to do about it. I forgot her AGENCY.
I went back to my plot notes… eeeep! What was I thinking? Lots of things are happening and will happen, there is a lot of emotion and action… but where was the driver?
The car was driverless…
https://giphy.com/embed/3orieWKiwpABZ3yUmc
DISASTER
I scrapped it, everything that was left of my plot. What does my MC want? Aha! Now I know where my story is going and more importantly how it is going to get there. Everything fell into place. First I wrote a bunch of things to insert into my already written first draft (there’s a reason it’s called a first draft peeps) and then I got back to work on chapter 14.
It’s all coming together.
And do you know what, the plot that I scrapped? Wasn’t awful… could make a good story another day. Point is it wasn’t working for me now so I killed it. Easy. It wasn’t working. Cut it. no regret, no remorse. Move on (I didn’t fail the story… the story failed me)
Rambles, writing and amusing musings 
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