Fixing Your Plot & Story Structure Problems by Janice Hardy

Author:Janice Hardy
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-948305-94-5
Publisher: Janice Hardy

* * *

If You Want to Deepen the Plot

There are some plot problems almost every writer runs into in almost every draft. Sometimes you need to write the first draft so you know enough about the story to be able to fix these issues, and they clean up with little trouble. Other times, they’re deeper-rooted problems that take more work to fix.

In this session, the goal is to address any plotting issues discovered in your analysis.

If you get stuck, remember the cornerstones of plot: What do your characters want and what are they going to do to get it?

Step One: Fill in Any Plot Holes

A common plot hole is a scene where the characters are doing what they need to do for the plot to unfold, but the reasons might be weak or non-existent. Readers don’t know why this event or situation is happening, or there’s no explanation of how it could happen based on what’s been seen so far.

To make it all seem logical, look for:

A previous event or situation that can affect the problem scene: Chances are your scene doesn't exist in a vacuum. If it does, you might want to look at the sessions on fixing episodic chapters in Step Three. Something had to happen for your characters to be at this point. Go back and look at each of the key scenes that led the protagonist in this direction:

Where did the protagonist make a choice that would affect this scene?

Where did something unforeseen occur that affected this scene?

Where did the protagonist miss a clue (or where could she miss one) that would affect this scene?

Can the antagonist cause a change through her actions?

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.