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most of which I got frustrated with, lacked the time to work on to my satisfaction, or their topics were rendered outdated by current events.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.