TOO MUCH GOING ON?
I'm happy to report that I've gone a good month or so where I've written something every single day. Big accomplishment, right? Well I believe it is, considering I petered out after a couple weeks. Or did I? Oh well, all I remember is hitting a road block in Chapter Seven and I couldn't work my way around it, so I just stopped, assuring myself I'd be back once I figured it out. Over a year later, I finally figured out the problem: Chapter Seven! And Six, and Five, I think. Really all of them were a bit of a problem.
I had this subplot where one of my characters, Vincent, betrayed two others, and they stopped him from shooting them. Following that attempt on their lives, they just kind of lugged him around the rest of the time as an annoying sidekick that they hated. The problem with this betrayal was that it kind of lost the motivational steam for one of my two protagonists, Liam. He wasn't a driving force for the plot anymore as all he wanted to do was get rid of this little bastard who tried to kill him, then get home.
My solution for that was that I was going to introduce my other main protagonist, Jenna, to Liam much earlier in about the end of Chapter Five (see, this is where it went downhill! Coincidence?). She was going to be a larger driving force for the story moving forward, but the issue is that I put Liam in a situation of distrustfulness, making him much more of a reluctant question-man. By that I mean he was always asking why he should do something, which became exhausting.
When I picked up last month, I actually rewrote a good portion of the first few chapters to make Liam into more of a driving force from the beginning, but I kept the subplot with the betrayal, and with the introduction of Jenna. I got a tiny bit further with the story, but in the end I reached the same conclusion: I couldn't move forward effectively. There was going to be way too much explanation and placation needed to get the story going. I think I could have realistically gone a good two chapters without anything major happening, and that sounded horrible to me! I can't imagine how a reader would have felt.
Anyways, long story short, maybe the year of growth and maturity helped me out with it this time because when I hit the roadblock I knew exactly what to do: a major overhaul. I removed the betrayal by Vincent, and I changed an intercutting chapter of Liam and Jenna to two separate chapters so I could establish Jenna as a character better individually. I also eliminated the introduction of Jenna into Liam's story until much later. This freed me up to do a lot of exploration from the two different points of view and establish them as strong characters, rather than have them in the same scenes constantly from Chapter Five onwards, forcing one to take a back seat to the other. In fact, I'm currently on Chapter Thirteen of my revamped story and Jenna and Liam still haven't met. It'll most likely happen in the next chapter or two, but I've been able to do so much more with them.
Unfortunately I'm now facing the question of whether my story is becoming too busy. Both Jenna and Liam encounter a number of characters on their adventures, then there is the primary antagonist, and the secondary antagonist, and then there are some characters here that I want to tie back in from the beginning who may become antagonistic themselves. There are some plot lines I can cut, and I already have ideas on how to improve in the second draft, but part of me just wants to stop what I'm doing and correct the issues now. After all, each chapter is built on the foundation of the chapters before it, right? At the same time, as I've been working through the book towards my November 1st deadline goal, I've come across solutions to perceived plot holes that I never would have thought of had I not pressed forward.
In the end, maybe there will be a little bit too much going on in my novel when I'm done, but that's the beauty of writing: as crowded or convoluted as it might get, there's always the chance to go back and fix it, rewrite it, delete it if you must, or keep it as you have it. It's never set in stone until it's set on paper. Then you're screwed.
I had this subplot where one of my characters, Vincent, betrayed two others, and they stopped him from shooting them. Following that attempt on their lives, they just kind of lugged him around the rest of the time as an annoying sidekick that they hated. The problem with this betrayal was that it kind of lost the motivational steam for one of my two protagonists, Liam. He wasn't a driving force for the plot anymore as all he wanted to do was get rid of this little bastard who tried to kill him, then get home.
My solution for that was that I was going to introduce my other main protagonist, Jenna, to Liam much earlier in about the end of Chapter Five (see, this is where it went downhill! Coincidence?). She was going to be a larger driving force for the story moving forward, but the issue is that I put Liam in a situation of distrustfulness, making him much more of a reluctant question-man. By that I mean he was always asking why he should do something, which became exhausting.
When I picked up last month, I actually rewrote a good portion of the first few chapters to make Liam into more of a driving force from the beginning, but I kept the subplot with the betrayal, and with the introduction of Jenna. I got a tiny bit further with the story, but in the end I reached the same conclusion: I couldn't move forward effectively. There was going to be way too much explanation and placation needed to get the story going. I think I could have realistically gone a good two chapters without anything major happening, and that sounded horrible to me! I can't imagine how a reader would have felt.
Anyways, long story short, maybe the year of growth and maturity helped me out with it this time because when I hit the roadblock I knew exactly what to do: a major overhaul. I removed the betrayal by Vincent, and I changed an intercutting chapter of Liam and Jenna to two separate chapters so I could establish Jenna as a character better individually. I also eliminated the introduction of Jenna into Liam's story until much later. This freed me up to do a lot of exploration from the two different points of view and establish them as strong characters, rather than have them in the same scenes constantly from Chapter Five onwards, forcing one to take a back seat to the other. In fact, I'm currently on Chapter Thirteen of my revamped story and Jenna and Liam still haven't met. It'll most likely happen in the next chapter or two, but I've been able to do so much more with them.
Unfortunately I'm now facing the question of whether my story is becoming too busy. Both Jenna and Liam encounter a number of characters on their adventures, then there is the primary antagonist, and the secondary antagonist, and then there are some characters here that I want to tie back in from the beginning who may become antagonistic themselves. There are some plot lines I can cut, and I already have ideas on how to improve in the second draft, but part of me just wants to stop what I'm doing and correct the issues now. After all, each chapter is built on the foundation of the chapters before it, right? At the same time, as I've been working through the book towards my November 1st deadline goal, I've come across solutions to perceived plot holes that I never would have thought of had I not pressed forward.
In the end, maybe there will be a little bit too much going on in my novel when I'm done, but that's the beauty of writing: as crowded or convoluted as it might get, there's always the chance to go back and fix it, rewrite it, delete it if you must, or keep it as you have it. It's never set in stone until it's set on paper. Then you're screwed.
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