Friday, January 29, 2010

Missing the Plot

Finally finished the ..th draft of Spring's Reign. Now I can break it down into chapters and sort out the plot line I missed - this is what happens when you don't plan a novel; you get to do more work after you've written the first draft.

How do you miss a plot line? I mean, really? A plot line? Left out? It's actually easy. You get so caught up in the now of the story, in the information to progress the story, you sometimes forget to put in a break; something to interrupt the flow and shake the characters out of their... well, not comfortable situation, but to present the information in a different way, a more active way.

And when you're writing romance, a way to throw the characters closer together. And the missing plot line will do just that.

The draft reads fine as it is now, but in that reading, I felt there was something missing; now I know what it is. Action doesn't have to be biffo, it can be verbal; for my characters, however, travelling thousands of miles together in close confinement, something outside that atmosphere has to happen. And so it will.

Hopefully, it won't affect the direction of the manuscript; that would be... bad.

At this stage, I've added nearly thirty pages, or about ten thousand words. With the added plot line, the word count might lift by another ten to twenty thousand, bringing the book to between 90-100,000. A nice size for the final in the series.

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