Writing a Novel, Or Why Do My Characters Keep Changing My Plot Without My Permission

[PraetorZorak]

About 4 months ago I started to genuinely start working on a project that I've meant to complete for some time: writing an original novel. In the past few years I've had a few abortive attempts to write books, most of which I got frustrated with, lacked the time to work on to my satisfaction, or their topics were rendered outdated by current events.

This time, I started by focusing on one clichéd (but still good) piece of advice: write what you know. I used to be a wilderness survival instructor. My book is about people who are forced to survive in the wilderness for unexpected (and somewhat mysterious eventually) reasons. I know what will kill you, typical mistakes made by the uneducated, the small-group pressures, etc. It has been going well.

Since I decided to be serious about this attempt I also went out of my way to go about it properly. A couple resources that have been very helpful are the Absolute Write forums and the book Novelist's Boot Camp by Todd Stone. I made character cards, plot flow charts and relationship diagrams....and they've all become extremely useful quick-reference tools.

The biggest problem is my characters. They have this annoying habit of doing things that don't particularly go along with the plot. I'll be writing, minding my own business, when I will suddenly realize that the character in question wouldn't really act in the way I had intended to advance the plot. I have no choice (in my own mind) but to write the character as honestly as possible, which means I then have to also alter my entire plot to accommodate what may or may not be a relatively minor character. Looking back at my original plot chart, it's almost laughable what I had expected some of my characters to do before they had developed themselves within what I was writing. I'm becoming increasingly pleased with the quality of my character development and the fact that I'm not having to suspend disbelief when I'm reading over my own story. On the other hand, my writing time frame has been blown completely to hell. While I enjoy the writing part, it is becoming increasingly difficult and time-consuming to alter the plot to correspond with my characters' new actions and still resolve the story to my satisfaction.

So I've pretty much discarded any illusions I've had about time frames. Instead I've decided to work on it at least one hour every day. If I'm doing well, I keep going. If not, I stop there, even if it means that I am going to be deleting half of what I wrote anyway because it keeps me in the routine of it. This system has held me in pretty good stead so far, but there are some days when I wonder how some writers manage series and the associated deadlines.

In any case, I've reached the midway point in my plot. Something else I've learned is that this has no effect at all on how much I have left to write, only that I'm going downhill and will hopefully start to pick up speed. I'm also interested if any of you folks would like to help me out once I'm done by reading over my pre-edit, as Gorefiend and Big-Mac have already offered to do. I wouldn't be asking any of you to edit it, just skim over it once I'm done for a general third-party perspective and to maybe catch any glaring errors before I try to shop it to an agent.

Ah, sorry for rambling a bit, but I've gotten to the point now that I can type faster than I ever though I'd be able to. Yippee.

[Amake]

Deadlines suck. Why did you have one to start with? Sounds like your book is getting much better the slower it's done.

It's great that your characters surprise you with their choices. It's a sign of very believable characters, and I believe believable characters is the foundation of good fiction.

Just thought I'd point that out. Afraid I don't have the time or energy to help out.

[Professor Smarmiarty]

Well my mother is a published author and she ridicules plots.
And the modernists like Kafka and Proust spit on plots and they are totally awesome.

[Mirai Gen]

As an aspiring writer myself, just know that most agents (And to a lesser degree, publishers) are going to reject you unless you've had published experience. That's pretty much why I'm deciding to go online and work from there.

As to the story; Plot is tricky. I don't think of plot as a big path that the characters need to travel because I think they should, I think of it more as a path I know the characters will walk because I understand them. It sounds like you have a big problem of getting that to work.

Strange as it is to say, you really can't convince your characters to do something they don't want to do. Doing so makes them wishy-washy. Having another person help you out - my editor Dawn and my best friend John have helped me in that respect many times - often leads to them turning and going, "Well, why doesn't he just do this?" resulting in head-slaps from the author.

As to fix your problem, well, quite simply change your motivation. If the character wouldn't go to the wizard's tower because he doesn't give a shit about the maiden trapped inside, maybe it's because the wizard slighted him and he's a bit pissed about it? Or maybe because that one maiden is actually a person that cold-hearted person secretly kind of liked, thus promoting character development.

You can't really change the character - what you can do is change the scenario to alter the motivation.

[Bells]

Well, im having trouble with the same thing actually...

DOnt know if it is YOUR case, but in my case, the characters were better and deeper developed than the plot. So you may have this tight story with start, middle and end. But when you try to respect your reader by being faithfull to your character, you see they "cheat". They outsmart the plot and can cramp you ability to develop tension...

I know of two ways (quick ones) to deal with that... you can either "drive" the characters with Plot Devices (something beyond their control or skill that just forces them to take certain course of action) or you can abort the plot. Just Pick the ending you want and go nuts untill you get there and get satisfied (i called it the "Forest Gump" Writing )

The problem with the first one is obvious. If you use it too much or wrongly the story will become a sea of coincidences... the second one, well, it has the risk of you never getting anywhere.

[Professor Smarmiarty]

Originally Posted by Mirai Gen

As an aspiring writer myself, just know that most agents (And to a lesser degree, publishers) are going to reject you unless you've had published experience. That's pretty much why I'm deciding to go online and work from there.

Well it depends. I gues I have different experience being from a smaller country where we don't have big literary names and things but with the authors I've met in the NZ scene they all say that publishers are pretty good as long as you avoid the big ones and find an indepedent one run by people you understand and connect with.

[Mirai Gen]

I've met in the NZ scene

Lucky bastard.

[Tiako]

Originally Posted by Barrel-Hating Sycophant

Well my mother is a published author and she ridicules plots.
And the modernists like Kafka and Proust spit on plots and they are totally awesome.

Well, we need to realize that most modernists are full of it.

As for plots in general, it really depends on the author. Charles Dickens very obviously never had his plots worked out in advance, which is why the endings revolve so much around coincidence. Arthur Conan Doyle always had his plots worked out to the last detail. So saying definitively one way or the other is useless at best.