Merry Christmas and Happy Plot Holes

This happens to me all the time. :p Hmm…do you know anything about her journey? Like where she goes, who she meets, etc? Or do you have just the beginning and ending?

@emily I don’t know if you’re the same way, but settings tend to get my creativity flowing. What I did for a couple of story ideas was I created a map–the more cities and places, the better. As I named them and imagined what they were like, ideas for mini-adventures/scenes flowed out of the different places themselves. If you come up with a lot of settings–cities, forests, deserts, mountains, etc–you’ll hopefully end up with more mini-adventures/scenes than you’ll need. Then it’s just a matter of making a list of them and figuring out which ones work best with your plot. I did this with one story I never ended up writing, but I got a lot of great ideas from it that I might revisit eventually. Hope that made sense 🙂

Ah, yes. The stubborn middle of a book. Makes you almost wish the middle didn’t comprise the whole story, doesn’t it? But. To business.

I struggled with this ONLY MONTHS AGO. But I’m pretty sure I have a rather decent strategy now. Here goes!

First, find really fun stuff. Such as, pirates, lava worms, vessapedes, snowstorms, volcanoes, Tnelns, giant rhino things, changelings, venomous reptiles, and so on. Drop them in wherever you want. This not only creates action scenes, but you can use trials to further character development. (Especially if your couple has to work together to overcome them. Hehehe…)

Second, create minor characters. They are super fun to just whip up, and sometimes I fall in love with minor characters just as much as MCs. The more Katalina interacts with other people, the more her personality, yearnings, and arcs will develop. Make innkeepers, soldiers, peddlers, farm girls, random knights, little old ladies, ferrymen, noblewomen, etc.

Third, make “happenstances“. Little problems that may or may not have any significant impact on the general mission, but HUGELY impact your character. Maybe they stay with a farmer’s family for a night, and helps them bring in their harvest. Maybe they hadn’t realized how hard common people worked before, and they have new respect for them. Or, if they are very closed and aloof, they can be part of a celebration with villagers, and finally be a part of a group.

Fourth, visualize it. My favorite way to do this is before I go to sleep, I lay in my bed, eyes closed, and play out certain scenes in my head. I plan exact phrasing, dialogue, and descriptions. Its really very fun, and its my favorite part of planning.

I hope this helped, @emily! Have fun writing Katalina’s story! (And, um, don’t tell her I suggested vessapedes and tnelns. I don’t want other people’s characters mad at me too….)

@emily Well, tnelns are rock-eating lizards that live in Everly. I made them up.

Vessapedes, on the other hand….they’re from a decently written fantasy trilogy called The Vengekeep Prophecies and…they are not fun. At all. They are giant poison wormy things that like to eat people.

Not fun.