Plotting

[osprey_archer]

I have been toying with the idea of trying to write a novel, again, because apparently I am a glutton for punishment and didn’t learn any lessons at all from the last four I tried to write. And I ought to add a fifth in there: Sage also, my magnum opus of last spring, collapsed in an ashen heap.

My kingdom for a plot!

Supposedly if you just keep writing a plot will appear unto you from the ether, and presumably this does in fact happen for a lot of people, but this has not ever worked out for me.

I wrote ~70,000 words last year in the novel about Sage, and I love Sage and her friends and their small town, the problem is that the story never exactly moves forward. It just kept expanding outward, in a sense: it became a melange of subplots, Sage and Her Relationships with Lots and Lots of People, Chiefly Her Friends But Also Her Parents, Her Sister, Her Favorite Teacher Who Doesn’t Like Her, Her Least Favorite Teacher, the Boy She Has a Hopeless Crush On, the Editor of the School Newspaper, and Sundry Others.

This is not a story. There is no way to bring this sort of thing to a satisfactory conclusion. I must become mistress of my subplots.

***

Fun fact: I have yet another idea for a fantasy novel about empire and colonialism and culture clashes and possibly theocracy, although no slavery this time, praise the Lord and pass the ammunition. And by yet another I mean like “ten more,” because apparently all my fantasy novels are about this. including the one about the princess imprisoned in the tower who brings to life an origami bird that eats a frickin’ forest and then, grown to monstrous size, comes back to break her out. Presumably it will eat the shingles off the roof, thus obviating the “So why is she imprisoned in a tower with a window large enough to jump through?” problem.

And then...and then what? I have the first scene written (why yes, this is a tragic plea for a reader); but I know from experience that if I don’t know where I’m going, I won’t get anywhere; and I don’t know where to go. I don’t want to plot a “And then Princess Arenyay bel Nessanen takes vengeance, VENGEANCE on her enemies” story.

Comments

[ladyherenya]

I struggle writing plots, too. Subplots, I can do. Often I know the effect major plot events have on those subplots, but not what the major plot events actually are. So I make up something to fill in the gaps, and then eventually discover it's terrible and have to go looking for another plot which might explain what happens in my story...


Your story about Sage sounds interesting! I hope you're able to find a plot for it (or a way for the subplots to serve instead of the plot).

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

Subplots are so much easier than main plots! I think partly because they're shorter: they may take place over a long period of time, but not as many events have to fall into order. It's much easier to get from A to B than A to B to C to...and make all those jumps make sense.

I'm hoping someday I will write Sage. Thinking about how to make it work...