Hello, I've been trying to work on my plot for sometime but I'm just not getting any where so wanted to ask for some advice because I have very little experience. I have a problem, after my inciting incident, that I can't seem to find a direction for the story to go into. I know my ending but have no idea how to get there. I don't know if it's that the first half of my book has too many options or not enough. I've tried just writing it, and that didn't work. I also tried working through different plot structures and same thing...I just come up blank. I'm happy to provide a short synopsis of my beginning just so you can see what I mean if necessary. But I don't want to make this question too long. Thanks for some suggestions.
My suggestion is experiment. Try different things. True, you will have drastically different drafts, but you will also come out knowing what works and what doesn't.
Find a characteristic about your MC that’s interesting and write a backstory to reveal how that came about. That always gets me going when I’m stuck. Also find a constant feature that’s tied to the characters in dialog or physicality, which helps identify them along the way. When you speak of to many options, play those out in your mind and pick the one that has the greatest tension or is the most compelling. I’ve written the ending after a few chapters and then used that info to give the story a plot direction. But the end will always change unless your writing formula books like romance and horror. My first novel I hand wrote and wanted to get to the ending, so I wrote that she got on a ship and headed back to France. When I finished the book, it ended with her traveling through France and Spain and it covered another ten years. I had no idea that’s how it would end and I was pleasantly surprised.
Try a brainstorm map. That way you can write your inciting incident in the middle and have branches for either each character and what they do and how that effects the situation and just have all the branches meet at the next significant plot point or you can do map of each potential timeline to get to your ending. The only reason you'll hit a block there is because the events in-between don't culminate in your finale. So then you just have to go again to find the winning combination. Or perhaps you shouldn't work with your ending in mind. Maybe you'll get to that one or maybe it will change. Don't get overly attached to an idea if it's not working for you. Oh, actually, work backwards. From the ending to the start. Map each event from end to beginning.
It really helped me to read/follow the four act story structure. It further helped me to look up genre specific structures/beats (I write romance). The latter broke down the beats that needed to happen each act and gave me a goal going into each new scene. Do you write genre fiction?
I have this problem too. whats weird is, I never thought too much on this and often just shoved the story into a folder in frustration without really thinking about steps I could take to reach the end. Reading your post, i thought about a plot web. " I don't know if it's that the first half of my book has too many options or not enough." make a list of those options. Connect them to the inciting incident. Then branch out potential ways the incident could impact those options going forward. do the options multiply or do they narrow? do the options get neatly tied up/resolved in the end or do more problems crop up. I'd say keep building the web and adding to it before you start writing again. (of course, having just now thought about this, I am going to try to take my own advice right now!) EDIT: @GrJs beat me to it!
Do you have any depth for the story to fall back on. Character back stories etc. Also how long is the story. Is it a Novella, short or full novel?
Synopsis Fantasy/dystopian (I think) Backstory: Set on Earth in the near future. An area similar to area 51 was created by the military to investigate the existence of other dimensions using an experiment intended to create a portal. The scientists and military successfully opened a portal to another dimension. But the experiment went awry. A strange mist came pouring through into our world, followed by reptilian like creatures, that soon spread. The mist turned out to be a host of entities that travel in a vapour like form and can enter other living beings and possess them. Despite human's attempts to fight back we lost the battle. Those who were not killed or possessed where imprisoned and used as salves. Emma is just one of many children who has grown up in this new world. She has lived in the slums all her life, struggling for survival and dreading the selection days when she, her family or any of her friends could be selected for hard labour camps or experiments. Things have always been hard, but they are getting worse. There is barely any food, disease seems to be a constant threat and now babies and children are being collected and taken away. To keep a child is illegal and an entire family can suffer for hiding one. But Emma and her family couldn't give up her sister's baby. However, having the baby with them is making it even more difficult to arrange an escape from the slums. Emma works at the hospice, with her best friend, Nina. When in the hospice they discover a woman has an infectious disease and a panic starts. Returning home to avoid the rioting, Emma discovers her young sister, Beth, is beginning to develop the same symptoms of the disease and with no medicine to fight it. The next morning is selection day and although Emma and her family come through the selection, Nina and her two sisters are selected for “Starlight” - an experiment camp that no one comes back from. They are to be collected the next day. In desperation to save herself and her own sister's, Nina denounces Emma and her family for harbouring an illegal. People are encourages to report any breaking of rules to the guards in return for privileges. Emma and her family are arrested and taken away. This is where I get stuck on what could happen next. Thanks for the questions so far.
You have a great imagination, and I look forward to reading the refined version. First, when Emma and her family are taken, you should have built in a resolution to save them. Go back and write a back story where she had a lover that was maybe a rouge bandit or rebel of some kind. Weave him into the story until he could be the savior. Second, the antagonist needs to have a weak point or a kryptonite to allow some tension and openings for evading the impending doom. I like your style and I would beta read for you when you finish if you’ll let me.
You have a great imagination, and I look forward to reading the refined version. First, when Emma and her family are taken, you should have built in a resolution to save them. Go back and write a back story where she had a lover that was maybe a rouge bandit or rebel of some kind. Weave him into the story until he could be the savior. Second, the antagonist needs to have a weak point or a kryptonite to allow some tension and openings for evading the impending doom. I like your style and I would beta read for you when you finish if you’ll let me. That's very kind of you thank and thanks for the advice I'll give it a try x
It would be interesting for them to experience Starlight and what it actually is, rather than the rumours. Why does no one come back? A good or a bad reason? Perhaps it's a paradise so nobody wants to come back.........or maybe it's a dark desperate place but they can escape or earn their freedom out of there? What is the infectious disease? Could it be used as a way to get out of starlight?
That was what I thought about. Maybe her sister, Beth, who is sick is taken there and my main character has to try and get her out. I wanted the friend that betrayed her to continue throughout the story...maybe she works there? You've raised some good questions that I've copy and pasted into my word doc (if that's ok?) Thanks. Sometimes people just asking questions helps. I find that more useful than people saying "you should have this happen or that happen". I can't write a story that doesn't come from my own brain. Cheers x
