"I had been working on this post for a few weeks, well actually just thinking about it, feeling nostalgic. I'm glad i wrote it even though it made me…"
Changing plots in midstream
My novel went through a sudden and surprising change this week. After a discussion with a fellow writer I realised that a secondary chracter was of far more importance than I had given her credit for and she has now elbowed her way in to the position of central character without much conscious input from me. In shifting the bases like this the plot has not compeltely altered but undergone a major and exciting shift. To accomodate this I have had to give one character his marching orders and drop him , pity because I really liked him, he was pretenious to an ubelievalbe degree but he had kind of grown on me, but he has gone, hopefully to resurface elsewhere some day.
I just wondered if anyone else has experienced similar almost organic changes in their novels, where you are happily proceding in one direction and the work decides to progress in another. Which begs the question , how far do we control the thing we write and how much is it, as it often seems to be, its own creature assuming its own form, with the writer as some kind of conduit or incubator?
Tags: character, development, novels, plot
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Rebecca Forster on
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I think this sounds fantastic. If you layer the story with the suggested elements you are going to give the reader quite a ride. I think the reflection is the perfect place for the description. Only self-absorbed if she is giving an honest description.
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Permalink Reply by Elaine Simone on -
Wonderful topic Rhiannon!
This hits home for me right now. I wouldn't say my novel was quite at the happy stage yet, but while working on the concept I've made quite a few shifts, and one that hasn't settled yet is who is the main protagonist! We're discussing this right now in my Revision class, and its been great to get some other inputs. I feel like I'm almost being drawn and quartered by the story sometimes because all of these characters are begging for attention. I'm trying to follow the right thread to make the strongest story though.
I do think some of the structure activities I've worked on has made it easier to change aspects. I have each chapter tagged essentially for which characters appear / talked about... settings... important props... magic concepts (fantasy novel) and subplots. So when I realize I need to make a change for something I can follow the string through all of the impacted chapters pretty quickly. I wish I had done the tagging during planning, or even writing, but I thought of it afterwards... it was a pretty miserable day, but its paying off in flexibility now.
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