Demolition

By: Unknown on 8/20/2012

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I've decided to tear my story apart.

BOOM!

That's right, strip it right down to the bone. I wanna get to the core, so I can completely and thoroughly evaluate my novel.

I came to this conclusion one day while I was writing. I had gotten to an intense action scene and suddenly, I stopped. I asked my self, What does my story really mean? What am I trying to convey to readers? What is the plot?. It was then I realized that it had no plot. People who read it would finish the book not knowing anything they didn't know before they read it.

My goal, when I write, is to make people stop and think. What if? The way I think of writing is kind of like science. Scientists ask "what if?" questions all the time, so do writers. Except when we ask "what if?" questions we can be move creative about the answer. Of course, most works of fiction are rooted in fact, but they're also called fiction. Hence, mostly make-believe. This is why I enjoy writing more, because the imagination is unlimited.

So I began to devise a new plot, one that made more of an impact. My problem was that I had had so many plots going on at once I just couldn't focus on the center, or root, of the story. Now that I've completely designed a new story, my characters, setting, and minor details have all seemed more relevant and they fit better into the story.

My new plot will make people think, because I've asked a big question (and yes, it is a what if question). When I thought of it, it made me comprehend how hard it would be to live without. This I think, will hook readers more so than the old story.

And because I've constructed a new plot, I've grown more excited about writing everyday. I've become more connected to the characters, made things seem more realistic by adding something here and taking another thing out there. I hope that when I finish the novel, readers will be able to connect a lot more with the story and be able to get something out of it, no matter how small.


Inquiry of the Day:

Have you ever stripped a story before?

Some people might seem horrified at the idea. All that writing and I'm just going to disembowel it! You must be joking! But it actually helps to find why you wrote what you did. If you're struggling with you're story (if you write, that is) try adding and subtracting some things, add new characters, change the plot, do something drastic. You might find that the story is a whole lot better then before you tore it down. Worst case scenario, you add everything back in and continue with you're previous story if things don't go right.

(Tip: when you make changes, always save the original version, just in case.)