We’ve all been there: basking in the glow of a finished manuscript, only to read it over and realize something is wrong with the plot. Finding ourselves unable to identify the problem only makes matters worse. But take heart! Here are some common plot gaffes and sensible ways to revise without starting over.
1. THE PLOT ISN’T ORIGINAL ENOUGH. Go through your pages and highlight anything that you’ve read in another book or seen in a movie. In the margin, write where you’ve seen it. Then list these sections and make a note for each one about how it could differ from its lookalike. A mental patient escapes by throwing something heavy through a window. Too much like One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest? Instead, the patient walks out with a visiting grandma after convincing her he’s an old friend. Quick notes like these can help you detach from unintentional imitation.
2. READERS ALWAYS KNOW EXACTLY WHAT’S GOING TO HAPPEN. This may be because you’ve chosen a plot point that’s overused, or because you keep giving away the answer in advance. Readers know the villain is going to whip out a picture of the hero’s son and blackmail her by pretending to have kidnapped the little boy because you showed the villain taking pictures of the child and driving away from the schoolyard. You could be less obvious by only showing the antagonist sitting in the car watching the boy on the playground, and no more.
3. THE PLOT IS BORING. Take each page and imagine what different writers might do with the same plot. Choose extreme examples. Would a comedy writer have the cab driver and the villain coincidentally be childhood friends with unfinished business? Would the mystery writer have the taxi pass a clue on a street corner that makes a new connection for the hero? Would the horror writer have the cab driver channel a ghost? Or, imagine the most surprising thing that could happen in a given scene. It doesn’t matter if these ideas don’t fit your story. You’re not going to use them. But often, after thinking of wild ideas to make the story more interesting, you begin to come up with workable ones that are just as stimulating, but better suited to your book.
4. THE PLOT IS ALL ACTION AND THE FRENZIED PACE NUMBS READERS. Let them breathe. Give the readers a little downtime now and then in your action story. Look back at your favorite action novels. Notice the conversations, summarized passages, meals, introspection and releases of emotions that are set in between the car chases, shootouts and confrontations. List them. Then give the readers a chance to breathe in your own manuscript. Find the dramatic respites that come from your characters’ needs, flaws and strengths.
5. THE PLOT IS TOO COMPLEX. Often, a complex plot can be trimmed into a sleek one by cutting out some steps. Does your protagonist have to visit her father in the hospital twice—once to bring him flowers and talk about Mom, and then again to find he has taken a turn for the worse? Couldn’t he take a turn for the worse while she’s still there the first time? Does your villain need to have three motives for revenge? Would one or two be interesting enough? To find the messiness in your overly complex story, summarize it out loud to yourself. When a section takes too long to explain, make a note. When you find yourself saying, “Oh, wait, I forgot to mention that …” you’re probably in need of a plot trim. When deciding whether or not to simplify the plot, ask yourself over and over again,
“Why does she do that? Why didn’t she just do this?” Making a plot less complicated doesn’t have to make it less clever.
6. THE PLOT IS TOO SHALLOW. Sometimes as writers we get caught up in the action. The symbolism. The metaphors. The witty dialogue. The great character names. The slick descriptions. Sometimes we ride these skills over the surface of the story and forget what’s really important. If you or your first readers (friends, family, agent) complain that the novel feels insubstantial, step back and ask yourself these questions: Why am I bothering to write this story? Why does the outcome matter to the characters? How do the characters change? How did my favorite book affect me the first time I read it?
7. SUSPENSION OF DISBELIEF IS DESTROYED. Readers need to buy into the reality put forward by what they’re reading. You may go too far with a plot point or not far enough with preparing your audience for that plot point. If something that sounded right when you outlined it is coming off as farfetched even to you, look back at the stepping-stones that led to the event. If your murderer turns over a new leaf at the end of act two, make sure you’ve given her reason to.
8. TOO MANY SUBPLOTS MAKE THE PLOT OVERLY COMPLEX. If you start to feel weighed down by your numerous storylines, start cutting them. List the subplots (shopkeeper with a crush, neighbor’s dog that tears up the garden, accountant who threatens to quit every day), and then list under each title all the ways it’s necessary.
Only subplots that are so vital that you could not remove them without destroying your novel get to stick around. Be bold.
9. THE SEQUENCE IS ILLOGICAL. Sometimes the sequence set down in an outline starts to show its true colors when you’re writing the chapters. If you feel the order of scenes or events in your story is off, list each scene on a separate index card and, in red ink, write a question mark on every card that doesn’t feel right where it is in the story. Shuffle the cards. I’m not kidding. Mix them up completely. Lay them out again in the order you think they might work best, giving special attention to those with red question marks.
Something about these scenes tricked you the first time. This time, really look closely at the proper place for those tricky bits.
10. THE PREMISE ISN’T COMPELLING. If you fear that a mediocre premise is your holdup, take out a sheet of paper. Make a list on the left-hand side of everything that’s dodgy in your present premise. Then write a list down the right-hand side about all the things that work great in the premise of a similar favorite book, play or movie.
See where you might make the stakes higher, the characters more emotional, the setting more a part of the overall plot. Remember: The premise should make your readers curious.
11. THE CONCLUSION IS UNSATISFYING. Once again, write a list of what bothers you about your conclusion, and next to it, a list of what worked great about the end of your favorite novel. Do you have to create more suspense before you give the readers what they’ve been craving? Do you need to make the answer to the mystery clearer? Does the villain need to be angrier, or perhaps show remorse? Unsatisfying conclusions are usually lacking something. Whatever that is, make your story’s ending have more of it.
Hey guys, check it out. On October 20th, I’ll be reading from my novel in progress, Road Music, at Sky Stage in Frederick, MD. Thanks to the Frederick Arts Council and the Dr TJ Eckleburg Review for having me and the rest of the wonderful readers. If you’re in the area, check out the readings happening at this cool venue every Thursday for a while, from 7-9.
There’s a memory.
You are seven and four, and you have a blanket tied up into a ball with all of your worldly belongings: three GI Joes, a brown round teddy bear with slick shiny fur, seven horse figurines, a large gray cylinder magnet, a sparkling lump of fool’s gold, a satchel of sea shells.
You are walking on the road together, following the double yellow lines. On either side, grasses as tall as you are, flowerheads bobbing, bees drooping from cup to cup. You picnic just off the road, you gather the little white and yellow flowers into your hands and you set them between you and Jay. You both sit cross-legged and you feast. Sour tang, juice from the seed pods, a flower cup for each of you filled with water. You have been walking for a year on the road, you have a year left to walk. It doesn’t seem to bother you.
–Road Music
it is so upsetting listening to so many males talk about all of the times they have gone on road trips alone and slept in their cars alone or on the side of the road, or travelled overseas alone and slept on the floor of strangers homes or in parks or at hostels, and they appear to have such freedom in that they are able to be alone in ways that females, unfortunately, cannot. and there is an ignorance surrounding this in that these boys never seem to comprehend just how fortunate they are that strange people and unfamiliar places and the dark of night are not their enemies but rather exciting, promising things.
“Yes, my consuming desire is to mingle with road crews, sailors and soldiers, barroom regulars—to be a part of a scene, anonymous, listening, recording—all this is spoiled by the fact that I am a girl, a female always supposedly in danger of assault and battery. My consuming interest in men and their lives is often misconstrued as a desire to seduce them, or as an invitation to intimacy. Yes, God, I want to talk to everybody as deeply as I can. I want to be able to sleep in an open field, to travel west, to walk freely at night…”
― Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath
honestly so important, i even have part this journal entry tattooed on me its so important
Yes, because he discovers he can perfectly copy things he’s seen in real life —thievery.
Yes, because it takes tedious practice, and someone showing him how.
Yes, because it takes a lot of work to create a perfect copy, but it turns out there is a level beyond that that takes even more work: creating something that wasn’t there before. Not a copy, something unique.
Yes, because this ability can also be horrific: when you write, or paint, or make music, it’s a reflection of what’s in your head, and that is not always roses.
Yes, because making art is all wrapped up in who we are, and how well we know ourselves, and whether or not we love ourselves.
Yes, because the things we create have the power to support us or to destroy us. Our art reflects our questions about our lives and sometimes that means our created world is more beautiful than the world that we currently live in, and sometimes that means our created world is a dying earth.
Yes, because writing and painting and music are about sexuality and philosophy and theology and humor and desire and fear and the things that make us tick. You can create art without acknowledging these parts of yourself, but it’s never, ever going to be as impressive as the work you do when you stop lying to yourself and hiding yourself from others.
Yes, because when you discover that you can make anything, you begin to ask yourself the questions — am I supposed to make things that change the world? Or am I supposed to make things that change me? What if what I make would hurt someone else? Do I have to make anything at all?
Yes, because every creative person in the world has had that moment that they see the world differently from the others around them, and asked themselves, “am I the only one?”
What is a forest? Is it the trees or the space that exists between them?
‘A forest is what exists between its trees, between its dense undergrowth and its clearings, between all its life cycles and their different time-scales…A forest is a meeting place between those who enter it and something unnameable and attendant… Something intangible and within touching distance. Neither silent nor audible.*
These images explore the nature and meaning of ‘Forest’ by considering the experience of standing alone in the woods; the eerie and captivating sensation that time has slowed down and that the forest and everything within it exists in a different state. Somehow set apart from our usual perception of linear time the wind drops, the air cools, all is quiet and still and the forest draws in. To enter this other place is to accept a slowing of time and a shift in perception.
I’ve been doing school visits as part of my tour for PRINCESS ACADEMY: The Forgotten Sisters. All have been terrific—great kids, great librarians. But something happened at one I want to talk about.
I’m not going to name the school or location because I don’t think it’s a
problem with just one school; it’s just one example of a much wider
problem.
This was a small-ish school, and I spoke to the 3-8
grades. It wasn’t until I was partway into my presentation that I
realized that the back rows of the older grades were all girls.
Later
a teacher told me, “The administration only gave permission to the
middle school girls to leave class for your assembly. I have a boy
student who is a huge fan of SPIRIT ANIMALS. I got special permission
for him to come, but he was too embarrassed.”
“Because the administration had already shown that they believed my presentation would only be for girls?”
“Yes,” she said.
I tried not to explode in front of the children.
Let’s
be clear: I do not talk about “girl” stuff. I do not talk about body
parts. I do not do a “Your Menstrual Cycle and You!” presentation. I
talk about books and writing, reading, rejections and moving through
them, how to come up with story ideas. But because I’m a woman, because
some of my books have pictures of girls on the cover, because some of my
books have “princess” in the title, I’m stamped as “for girls only.”
However, the male writers who have boys on their covers speak to the
entire school.
This has happened a few times before. I don’t
believe it’s ever happened in an elementary school—just middle school
or high school.
I remember one middle school 2-3 years ago that I
was going to visit while on tour. I heard in advance that they planned
to pull the girls out of class for my assembly but not the boys. I’d
dealt with that in the past and didn’t want to be a part of perpetuating
the myth that women only have things of interest to say to girls while
men’s voices are universally important. I told the publicist that this
was something I wasn’t comfortable with and to please ask them to invite
the boys as well as girls. I thought it was taken care of. When I got
there, the administration told me with shrugs that they’d heard I didn’t
want a segregated audience but that’s just how it was going to be.
Should I have refused? Embarrassed the bookstore, let down the girls who
had been looking forward to my visit? I did the presentation. But I
felt sick to my stomach. Later I asked what other authors had visited.
They’d had a male writer. For his assembly, both boys and girls had been
invited.
I think most people reading this will agree that leaving
the boys behind is wrong. And yet—when giving books to boys, how often
do we offer ones that have girls as protagonists? (Princesses even!)
And if we do, do we qualify it: “Even though it’s about a girl, I think
you’ll like it.” Even though. We’re telling them subtly, if not
explicitly, that books about girls aren’t for them. Even if a boy would
never, ever like any book about any girl (highly unlikely) if we don’t
at least offer some, we’re reinforcing the ideology.
I heard it a
hundred times with Hunger Games: “Boys, even though this is about a
girl, you’ll like it!” Even though. I never heard a single time, “Girls,
even though Harry Potter is about a boy, you’ll like it!”
The
belief that boys won’t like books with female protagonists, that they
will refuse to read them, the shaming that happens (from peers, parents,
teachers, often right in front of me) when they do, the idea that girls
should read about and understand boys but that boys don’t have to read
about girls, that boys aren’t expected to understand and empathize with
the female population of the world….this belief directly leads to rape
culture. To a culture that tells boys and men, it doesn’t matter how
the girl feels, what she wants. You don’t have to wonder. She is here to
please you. She is here to do what you want. No one expects you to have
to empathize with girls and women. As far as you need be concerned,
they have no interior life.
At this recent school visit, near the
end I left time for questions. Not one student had a question. In 12
years and 200-300 presentations, I’ve never had that happen. So I filled
in the last 5 minutes reading them the first few chapters of The
Princess in Black, showing them slides of the illustrations. BTW I’ve
never met a boy who didn’t like this book.
After the presentation,
I signed books for the students who had pre-ordered my books (all
girls), but one 3rd grade boy hung around.
“Did you want to ask her a question?” a teacher asked.
“Yes,” he said nervously, “but not now. I’ll wait till everyone is gone.”
Once
the other students were gone, three adults still remained. He was still
clearly uncomfortable that we weren’t alone but his question was also
clearly important to him. So he leaned forward and whispered in my ear,
“Do you have a copy of the black princess book?”
It broke my heart that he felt he had to whisper the question.
He
wanted to read the rest of the book so badly and yet was so afraid what
others would think of him. If he read a “girl” book. A book about a
princess. Even a monster-fighting superhero ninja princess. He wasn’t
born ashamed. We made him ashamed. Ashamed to be interested in a book
about a girl. About a princess—the most “girlie” of girls.
I wish
I’d had a copy of The Princess in Black to give him right then. The
bookstore told him they were going to donate a copy to his library. I
hope he’s brave enough to check it out. I hope he keeps reading. I hope
he changes his own story. I hope all of us can change this story. I’m
really rooting for a happy ending.
Thedan Script - used extensively by Gardnerian Witches Runic Alphabets - they served for divinatory and ritual purposes, as well as the more practical use; there are three main types of Runes; Germanic, Scandinavian/Norse, and Anglo-Saxon and they each have any number of variations, depending on the region from which they originate Celtic and Pictish - early Celts and their priests, the Druids, had their own form of alphabet known as “Ogam Bethluisnion”, which was an extremely simple alphabet used more for carving into wood and stone, than for general writing, while Pictish artwork was later adopted by the Celts, especially throughout Ireland Ceremonial Magick Alphabets - ”Passing the River”, ”Malachim” and ”Celestial” alphabets were used almost exclusively by ceremonial magicians
Reblogging for future reference, I love learning how to write in these alphabets.
Seasoned fiction writer Lynne Jamneck announced that she is editing an upcoming anthology called, Dreams from the Witch House, which Dark Regions Press will publish in 2015.
She is curating dark fiction stories written by women writers. The anthology will include diverse stories and viewpoints that embrace the axioms and motifs of Lovecraftian fiction, including the strange, the weird, and the eccentric.
