How many versions of your original plot do you have?

By BEyre · Apr 10, 2011 · 737 · 2
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  1. It's barely been a week since I started my adventure into writing my first novel.

    What started as a spark of an idea while reading a fan fiction piece has blossomed into a murder mystery novel that is peppered with red herring suspects and clues, witty one-liners, and nods towards individuals and concepts.

    Every day, at least twice a day, just out of nowhere, I come up with a plot twist that just adds another layer. This is just snowballing.

    As I continue to tweak the plot and sub-plots, I am wondering how much of a bear this will be to find that right balance between the main plot (solving a murder) and the sub-plots (various interactions between main characters, including a love connection), without one overshadowing the other.

    Darn it! I need to stop over-analyzing everything from the get-go and just write the story and see what happens! This has been keeping me from going beyond page 2 of my story. :redface:
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  1. dnsralg
    Be careful of plot twists; do you really want a story like the movie The Life of David Gale? It's funny - I'm actually working on an article about plot twists: "The Best Twist is No Twist."
    Again, be very careful of twists! Good luck!
    dnsralg, Apr 10, 2011
  2. mugen shiyo
    It's hard to say because either you have got something genius up your sleeve that I have no idea about, or your going to seriously confuse your reader. I guess it all comes down to how much complexity you want in your story. Imagine diving and having to take sharp turns every so often at random. You can either make that roller-coaster fun or highway infuriating.

    And great point about just writing it down. I read something by Stephen The King :p and he said the best thing to do is just write your story out. Don't worry about mistakes, punctuation, names, factual relevance or the like. Just get it out in front of you. Then you can examine the raw chunk and if you decide it's something you can work with, then comes the editing.

    I do want to ask you a question since I am just, just beginning to write seriously. For a mystery, do you make up the plot as you go along or do you already have the end in mind and simply find to bridge the beginning and the end? Which way is easier?
    mugen shiyo, Apr 19, 2011
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