So I am writing a fantasy story that I've been working on for who knows how many years. The plot has changed and transformed into something completely different. I now have no idea what the original story used to sound like, what happened, or who the characters were. To be honest, only one character survived the changes. Only one character made it to the current draft: Eriif. The others either died in the earlier parts of the story or were completely left behind and forgotten. I have to say that the one character that did make it is the most developed character I have ever used to write something.
The changes in my story would happen so quickly that I had a hard time keeping track of what was going on. I don't think this is uncommon for young writers. We plot out our stories carefully after establishing loose outlines in our heads. Then we try to put our ideas into stone and write boring little outlines (some writers are gods and can write without outlines. If you are one of those people who can keep a story straight without a written outline of some sort then I applaud you immensely). We get into the beginning of our books and start chipping away at our little projects. Suddenly, ever so suddenly, a new idea decides to go BA BAM into existence and our character's lives get turned upside down. Unexpected plot changes (dun dun dun). Yeah, they happen, and they tend to happen a lot. That's what occurred in my book, which is probably the reason why I'm still not finished after like, 6 years of writing on it or something (I hate math). the other day I discovered that my story has changed so quickly and so much that my solid outline isn't so solid anymore. And its kind of frustrating.
I think that the extremity of those surprising plot changes depend on the amount of strength we put into connecting ourselves with our books. Once a book has been with you for so long, you find that you have become apart of it. Sometimes, like in my case, you find that the characters are starting to take control. They begin to write the story for you, and things start to spin out of your hands. That's how you find yourself writing something late at night and thinking that its one thing then waking up to read it in the morning only to find that you wrote something completely different. Its weird, and kind of agonizing, and you search frantically for some sort of control over your hurricane of a plot.
Lately I've been battling unexpected plot changes and I've found that its really hard to keep your story under control after an unexpected idea for your story line attacks you. I've spent late nights working on the structure of my book rather than actually writing like normal people (as if normal people could write). How do you survive such a difficult task? Here is a list of things that I have been doing to keep my story and my head on track as I try to understand what's going on and how to keep the plot from changing so much.
1. Take a deep breath and drink some tea to calm your nerves. Try not to spit it. If you fail at trying not to spit it, then congratulations, you have become one of us.
2. If a character decides to die, just you know out of the blue lies down and dies, then find a way to keep it from happening and bring them back to life. That's terrible advice. Wow. It doesn't even make sense. But I'm too tired to delete it and replace it with something better.
3. Go back and read your outline. Yeah I know, outlines can be boring, but re reading your previous plans for your book might help you figure out if you want to keep your new change and where to put it.
4. If you really need to rewrite your outline, do it in a different format. Don't use a formal outline if you don't like formal outlines (duh). Dare to be slightly unorganized. Sometimes changing the way your outline looks helps you to remember what it says and it keeps your head on track.
5. Don't limit yourself to certain plots and certain amounts of changes. If something crazy comes your way in your plot, try to accept it before throwing it away. It could turn out to be something awesome.
6. Sleep on it, let your new ideas sit for a bit. Once you've taken a nice break come back and see if you still like the new change for your story.
I followed these six rules (actually five rules because number two doesn't really count ("three sir" "right, THREE" (Monty Python reference))) and decided to keep a part for my story that I really like. Its my favorite part actually, even though its kind of sad. I hope this will be a good reference for you when you are drowning in overflowing outlines and unorganized story plots. I also hope that this post makes some sort of sense, because its past midnight over here and I'm tired and a bit loopy. Loopy as in I tried to convert one of my friend's characters from a hot fantasy guy to a gangster. So bear with me.
Peace ya'll, and don't let your characters or your plots get too far away from you!
-I forget what my tea/blogging name was and I'm too lazy to go look so I'm just gonna put my main character's name: Eriif. You know who I am. The weird one.
-I think I just remembered it was Fuze right? Or something like that? Oh well.
-Fuze
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