I wasn't sure where else to post this but I'm looking for help working out my plot. It's a fantasy novel along the lines of the Tolkien books in content (i.e. mythical beings, war, an inexperienced main character, complicated histories) and length and I just need someone who can talk it through with me. And please, be gentle, this is my baby.
Wait, have you written the story yet? If yes, what do you mean by working out your plot? If no, then how do you know it will be the same length?
I'm in the process, it just means I have a bunch of plot details mixed in with character histories and stuff and need help laying it all out in a timeline and filling in the holes.
Hi Lorena, How do you want to do this? It doesn't seem too difficult to put the plot into this thread. As far as being gentle, plots (unless they have massive holes) are generally well enough received. The problem is usually that they get ignored because there is a strong feeling that it's not what you write, it's the way that you write it. It's when you post a draft that you are more likely to get your baby mauled, and when you have to grow some tough skin and accept that what doesn't kill your baby WILL make it stronger. Just post your plot.
You might add a brief explanation of what your trying to do with your story. Is is just an adventure with no particular lesson or concept being espoused (other than incidentally), or do you have an in built hobby horse that you are hoping to get across (good always triumphs, love is unaffected by social and economic differences, Capitalism is good/bad, everybody should be vegan, etc.) That would help everybody consider the shape of your plot.
I agree with the others you could post your plot and then describe where you're having problems. There will be a lot of people that say -- just write it or - we're not here to fill in your story gaps but there will always be someone here that doesn't mind bouncing off ideas. Sometimes just talking about it resolves the issue. My main snags have always been character motivation. I can picture them doing things but it takes a while to discover why they're doing them.
It seems like people either have a story planned out they want to tell and need advice on building the world around it, or have a world they want to describe and need advice building a story around it. I guess there's other possibilities, but is what you need to talk through along either of those lines?
Okay, well here goes. Please don't steal it haha. My main character is Ophelia, the story starts in her home town in new england (nothing specific) where she's attending college and working part time living at home with her parents and two younger siblings. She starts having pretty bad cheat pain but brushes it off as heartburn brought on by stress, it's the last few days of class before summer and she'll be leaving to visit her grandmother in Russia (who she hasn't seen since she was about 13) till she starts a work study program in Africa in the fall. Her boss throws her a going away party at her work and she goes to sleep that night a little tipsy, she has a strange dream about someone running away from her in a forest and she collapses feeling like her whole body is on fire. When she wakes up her mom tells her she's been asleep for about 24 hours straight running a fever on and off. They almost cancel her trip but she insists she goes anyway. She finally gets there (her grandmother lives about 200 miles from any settlement) and her grandmother helps her get settled in. During her first few days there she has another strange dream and sees people in the forest that are gone before she can confirm it's really a person. While she and her grandmother are picking blueberries she sees sprites (tiny fairies) and freaks out, her grandmother tells her to sleep on it and she has a dream of a woman (mother nature) who tells her she's special and has a destiny to fulfill and when she touches her burns her. when she wakes she has a tattoo of a triquetra made of ivy over her heart where the woman touched her. her grandmother tells her she's the same and explains who she is now and what's really going on. basically 'mythics' and humans lived in harmony centuries ago but humans started getting greedy and started fighting the mythics for their land resulting in the 'land wars.' mother earth then created a new type of mythic that's half human called 'seers' who would basically act as mediators between mythics and humans to settle the disputes. in the end the two sides made a truce the humans would take the deserts and plains and the mythics would take the forests and mountains. and to ensure this wouldnt happen again the sorcerers cast a spell on all mythics to make them invisible to humans. because of this mythics soon passed into memory then legend then myth (hence mythics.) now seers are mediators for the mythics and not many exist maybe only a handful. about a century ago the prince of the night elves Zevran and one of the sorcerers Myra fell in love but Myra was the king of the sorcerers Valor's wife, he was never at home because the sorcerers were the leaders of all mythics and had to travel and she was lonely. when the king found out he tried to kill myra but she killed him first by accident, with his dying breath he cursed her, bound her soul inside her so she could no longer love or feel anything. she fought it when she found out she was pregnant (zevrans baby) but ultimately succumbed just before giving birth. when she did she ordered her nurse to kill the baby but she couldnt and instead took him to zevran. myra hasnt told anyone about her curse and in her growing wickedness poisons all her people. meanwhile when zevran gets the baby he immediately calls the princess (whom he's closest to) of the light elves caladwyn for council. she tells him to kill the baby because if myra found out he was still alive she would come for him and if anyone found out they could start a war (cross breeding just isnt something that happens.) zevran starts to consider it but the baby wakes up and looks at him with myra's eyes and he cant, instead he takes him to the centaur king tasking him with hiding the boy who he names Kamoril after his grandfather. the centaurs take the boy to the southern mountains to keep him away from people who might recognize him. because they disagreed so harshly zevran and caladwyn no longer speak and in fact hate each other. a couple years later myra and her people having no goodness left in them launch an attack on all mythics having called to those whose hearts were always dark (vampires, skin walkers, goblins, trolls etc.) to aid them to rule the mythics then ultimately humanity. it seems they might win till the elves rally with mythics from all over the world. when it looks like they'll lose myra and her inner circle run to the northern ice plains leaving her armies to die. they search for her but never find her and assume she's dead. the elves took over leading the mythics after that and it's been peace ever since besides the hate the two elf races feel toward each other. and the dwarves who were considered good till myra used their greed to tempt them into fighting for her, ever since they've never left their halls under the southern mountains. no one has yet found out about kamoril or valors curse. ophelia being a rational woman has trouble at first accepting that these creatures existed all this time under humanity's nose but as she meets the king and queens of all the races that have them she cant deny it. because of her fear of dragons, when she meets the queen Hesia she senses it and offers to take her to the southern mountains where they live, she and her grandmother go with her. they see the dragons and she feels better about them, but when they're stopped talking about the 'great war' (myras war) the centaurs come to find out why their queen was spotted with two humans on her back. when they see it's the seers they insist they take them back to their village to meet their king, they do and she meets Oleander. while staying with the centaurs the generals daughter tika takes an instant liking to ophelia and takes her down to the cave she finds her best crystals in. but an elf meets them, tika thinking he would be asleep because night elves are nocturnal. turns out it's kamoril (he prefers kam) but ophelia doesnt know that or what he is, not having met the elves yet. he takes them down to where they find the crystals and they get to know each other. kam has never met another night elf before having been raised by centaurs so everything he knows of other mythics is from books and tika and her father mahaway when he comes to give him supplies. he has no idea how humans work having only read about them through mythics eyes. ophelia has a vision when she touches a candle he's carves a rune into (he has no idea what they are) she fills him in telling him it's something night elves developed, their only magic, they carve the runes into weapons, sew them into clothes, paint them on skin and walls, it's basically a magical language only night elves use. when the sun starts setting they have to run back to the village, the southern forests house the dark mythics who hunt at night so they have to get back quickly. ophelia knows something us up with kam, she has questions and she goes to mahaway for answers, he only tells her what he knows (not much) that oleander was tasked with hiding kam by zevran. she goes back at midnight having been asked by kam so he could show her something. turns out he wanted to show her the unicorn that's only ever seen at night and is very rare. she confronts him about who he is, he gets angry and she realizes he has no idea, she tells hi she and her grandmother are leaving in the morning and he should come back with them to find out, he refuses. she runs back with the skin walkers on her heels. the centaurs fight them off but kill on that changes back into a man, ophelia has objections to hacking him up and putting his head on a spike on the village wall. mahaway explains that they were once great shaman, revered as closer to mother nature (the races have different names for her) because they could transform into beasts, but as time passed they began to hate their human forms preferring to live as beasts to be closer to the mother, because of that their minds twisted, caught between human and animal, now they're crazed beasts knowing only blood lust madness. they lost the ability to speak long ago and now hunt the southern forests, they have managed to keep them at bay with their walls and using their heads keeps them away till it decomposes. (after that i don't have much figured out, i know myra is preparing to launch another attack soon and i think i know the reason. i know kam will be the savior finally finishing myra during the next war and i know ophelia has to be the one to get him there but it gets confused after that, i know i have a plot line for the dwarves that ties in with myra's plan and i know i want kam and ophelia to fall in love and kam will become the new leader of the mythics but other than that it's confused. that plot i just wrote is what i have written so far besides the back story about myra and kam since it's from ophelias pov. what i need is help with straightening out the future plot, what i don't have written yet, because that's what's messing with my progress.) (i hope it wasn't too long, i wasn't sure how else to lay out my plot.)
People don't steal ideas, it's too much work to turn it into something workable. Even if they did it would turn out completely different. I suggest putting in spaces to avoid the wall of text that makes it daunting to read. You seem to have thought it all out so what exactly are you having problems with?
You have enough to start writing. What's stopping you? As you write the bugs tend to work themselves out.
Hi Lorena, Before I could read this, I just had to stick in some paragraphs...basically one every sentence! I've made a few comments (my opinion only!) but basically you've got most of your plot here already. Just take one sentence at a time, head it up Chapter xx, and then start to flesh that out. The rest will work itself out as you go through. Good luck!
no, my paragraphs aren't usually like this. the story is told from ophelia's point of view so she is the protagonist but the story is driven by kamoril. ophelia is 22. her grandmother and her were very close when she was younger, i didn't tell you this because i wasn't sure i needed to but she stopped visiting her grandmother when she moved to Russia from south america. ophelia went into high school and things got busy, she got a job for the summers, basically life happened and she couldn't so see her anymore. she wants to be a zoologist and while yes she could do work study in a zoo in america there are programs to do it abroad and i figured she'd like that better. i don't see why they wouldn't let a 22 year old fly. a lot of what i wrote down there was back-story that isn't in the actual book, i just typed it out so you would understand the story. and i wanted to start it where i did so you could understand where she is coming from, (i.e she's just like anyone else.) and if i started it where you suggest i'd have to explain why she's there and what's been happening to make her paranoid and questioning her sanity as like a flashback and i hate writing those especially since it would be so long. yeah, my plot is a bit complicated and it was difficult trying to fit as much as i could in a comment, i was hoping it was clear what was going on and who was who but i guess it wasn't haha. (i had to leave some important details out or else i might as well have just posted what i had written so far.) i can try to just keep writing pages, and hopefully it will sort itself out. thanks i guess.
Just going to click copy...then paste... and there, a new addition to my folder of stolen ideas! Thanks!
