Changing in Mid-Stream

by Ann Roth
©2004

Changing in mid-stream - Writing through when the plot isn't going where you originally thought

You're working away on your manuscript. The story is shaping up just as you imagined. Then half-way through the book your heroine plants her feet on the ground, crosses her arms and shakes her head. "Uh-uh," she says. "I'm not going that way. Let's head this way instead."

You try to ignore her but she refuses to cooperate. She may even convince other characters to follow her lead. Suddenly you have a mutiny on your hands. Your muse, who is confused and perplexed by the situation, goes AWOL and you can't write another word. You stare at the computer screen, grit your teeth and will yourself to do it anyway. No luck. Your wonderful story with its fabulous plot has nose-dived into the mud, and you have no idea how to dig it out.

This is not fun and not pretty. In fact, it can be downright agonizing. But it happens. If it's happened to you, be assured you are not alone.  

I'm a glass-half-full person. Allow me to put a positive spin on what the glass-half-empty folks might see as disaster. At first look you may think the character who insists on moving the story in a different direction from your carefully-constructed plot is out to sabotage you. However if you question her, she'll explain. You've created, developed, and breathed life into her. What she now wants is to tweak the plot in the direction that suits her personality and background, given the situation in which you've placed her. In other words, the plot you laid out doesn't work for this unique, three-dimensional character. She has her own ideas how to handle the situation. This is known as a character-driven story.

When characters make up their own minds and insist on going their own way, my advice (most of the time) is, let it happen. You might be surprised at the freshness and spontaneity this adds to your story.

It is somewhat scary to hand over control to the characters and story you created. Learning to trust your characters takes time and comes from experience--believe me, I know. But the results of taking this risk are remarkable and even magical.

Here's how I learned to trust this process. When I first started writing I plotted every scene in every chapter before I even started the book. Talk about left-brained! I even developed a template I could use with every novel. It was a table with room for each scene and each chapter. For every scene I meticulously mapped out which character's point of view would I use, that character's goal for the scene, the conflict that kept her or him from obtaining that goal, and the disaster that propelled them into the next scene or sequel. Doing this for every scene of every chapter took days, and sometimes weeks.

Sounds like a great idea, doesn't it? I thought so. The process worked well enough for my first novel (which will never see the light of day, thank goodness!). With the second novel, however, things soon went awry. Mid-way through the first chapter the characters had evolved and the plot changed. Not a great deal, but enough that if I didn't make changes, the story wouldn't work. I recall inserting a needed scene into my template. That required moving all the other scenes, which meant re-positioning chapter starts and ends. Fixing the template ate up valuable time the could have been spent writing. I finished the chapter and to my surprise, the characters had evolved some more. Darned if I didn't repeat the same tedious process of adding a new scene and shifting the others. This happened so many times and I got so frustrated, I finally ignored the template altogether.

No more outlining for me! This does not mean I quit structuring the scenes. I still do, with the point-of-view character having a goal, running up against a conflict, and ending up in some kind of disaster that propels them into the next scene or sequel. I just don't plan these things in advance.

Even though my writing has become more organic, I still like to know the general direction of the story. I always work from a road-map--my synopsis. Be patient while I digress a moment... A good synopsis focuses on telling, not showing, which we all know is the opposite of how we write our novels. The synopsis highlights the main points of the story, not the details. It acts as a framework, similar to the foundation and structural beams of a building under construction. You don't/can't always exactly follow your synopsis. But if you make the thing general enough, you leave room for your characters to lead you from point to point, often throwing in clever twists you never imagined. That's part of the magic. Somehow by the end of the story everyone winds up where they're supposed to. That's magic, too.

Another reason to use the synopsis as a framework is because some characters are trouble-makers. They'll pull you off the story path and take you on a tangent totally unrelated to where the story ought to go. Don't let that happen! Remember, you are in charge (mostly) and you have the synopsis to guide you. So make sure your characters are headed in the right direction before you turn them loose and hand over the reins.

Sometimes whether you have a synopsis or not, a character simply will not cooperate. I recall a writer friend under contract for a specific story. She wrote two-thirds of the novel only to have the villain emerge as the hero. Imagine how frustrating this was. The book was nearly finished and suddenly it was all wrong. My friend fought this character tooth and nail, even tried begging him to behave. But he refused and she couldn't finish the story as she'd sold it. When she at last gave in and let the character have his way, the words flowed easily. (Luckily, her editor okayed the change.) Of course she had to go back and rewrite most of the book, but in the end she was satisfied and so were her characters.

If this sounds painful and hard, it is. Could she have avoided all that work? I wish I knew. Is it possible to keep your characters in line and force them to bend to your will? Maybe, but you risk contrived plots and cardboard characters. What can you do to cut down on the possibility of changing your plot midstream? Get to know your characters as well as possible. Trust them when they want to move in a slightly different direction. Write a synopsis before you start the novel so that you have a road map of where the story will go.

Once the major plot points are in your subconscious your characters should be able to move forward in their unique ways, allowing you to write a strong, fresh and memorable story.

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