When the Plot Loses Its Way #writing

We have arrived at the final week of November. Storms here in the Pacific Northwest have created havoc for some, and despite that, the season of parties has begun. My neighborhood escaped the storm damage, but many others are still without power. Also, Thanksgiving is upon us and cooking abounds. I carve out my writing time in the early morning and sometimes in the evening. Sometimes, the writing flows well, and other times it’s like trying to give the dog a pill.

For the last few weeks, many writers have been pouring the words onto paper, trying to get 50,000 words in 30 days. Some have written themselves into a corner and have discovered there is no graceful way out.

This happened to me in 2019 and again in 2023. In 2019, I took one of my works in progress back from 90,000 words to 12,000. I did pretty much the same thing in 2023.

Everything I cut was saved into a separate file, as those scenes weren’t terrible and could be the seeds of a new novel. They just didn’t work in the story I was attempting to write at that time.

I hate it when I find myself at the point where I am fighting the story, forcing it onto paper. It feels like admitting defeat to confess that my story has taken a wrong turn so early on, and I hate that feeling. Fortunately, I knew by the 40,000-word point that last year’s story arc had gone so far off the rails that there was no rescuing it.

I’m crazy, but I’m no quitter. So, in 2019 I wasted several weeks writing more words and refusing to admit the story was no longer enjoyable. On the good side, I had accomplished many important things with the 3 months of work I had cut from that novel.

1. The world was solidly built, so the first part of the rewrite went quickly.
2. The characters were firmly in my head, so their interactions made sense in the new context.
3. Some sections that had been cut were recycled back into the new version.

The sections I cut weren’t a waste, they were a detour. In so many ways, that sort of thing is why it takes me so long to write a book—each story contains the seeds of more stories.

If this happens to you, I suggest taking a month or so away from this project. When I return to a manuscript that was set aside, I will spend several days visualizing the goal, the final scene, mind-wandering on paper until I have a concrete objective for my characters. Then I will write a synopsis of what needs to happen, and each paragraph of that synopsis will contain the seeds of a chapter.

Beginning a novel with half an outline and only a vague idea of the ending is why I sometimes lose my way in a first draft.

Sometimes, something different happens. In 2019, I realized the novel I was writing is actually two books worth of story. The first half is the protagonist’s personal quest and is finished. The second half resolves the unfinished thread of what happened to the antagonist and is what I am currently working on. Both halves of the story have finite endings, so for the paperback version, I will break it into two novels. That will keep my costs down.

2019 and 2023 were not the only times when my plots went off the rails. While I no longer have anything to do with NaNoWriMo.org, I do participate in writing quests each November. In 2020, I was 4 days into NaNoWriMo when things got bad, and I switched to writing a completely different novel.

If you are a regular visitor here, you know what happened. In trying to resolve a twist of logic, I accidentally wrote an entirely different novel with a completely different cast of characters and plot. That manuscript is in the final stages of prepublication.

For those of you who are curious—I have the attention span of a sack full of squirrels. Proof of that can be found in the 4 novels currently in progress that are set in that world, each at different eras of the 3000-year timeline, each in various stages of completion.

And all of this happened because I had to write history in order to avoid contradicting myself in the modern story. In the process of writing that history, historical characters and their stories grabbed my attention.

All writing is good writing. The work I cut out of my failed manuscripts has generated several short stories and novellas, so nothing is wasted.

There are going to be times when writing is work. Sometimes, we must accept that we are forcing something and it’s not succeeding. That is when I take the storyline back to where it got out of hand.

The sections you cut might be the seeds of something wonderful, a short story or a novella that you can submit elsewhere for publication.

I think of Patrick Rothfuss and his struggle to write the books in his series, the Kingkiller Chronicle. The first two books, The Name of the Wind (2007) and The Wise Man’s Fear (2011), have sold over 10 million copies. Yet he is still struggling to turn out the third book in the trilogy.

Rothfuss’s work is original and powerful, but though it is highly regarded, he fights to put it on paper just as the rest of us do. His battle with mental health issues affects his ability to write the book he believes in. The fact that an author of his caliber also struggles to get the story down gives me permission to keep at it.

I believe in the joy of writing, in the joy of creating something powerful. If you lose your fire for a story because another has captured your imagination, set the first one aside and go for it.

We who are indies have the freedom to write what we have a passion for and take as long as we need to do it.

True inspiration is not an everlasting firehose of ideas. Sometimes, we experience dry spells. When I come back to the original work, I’ll see it with fresh eyes, and the passion will be reignited.