That time my plot outline fell apart at page 40

I was halfway through a fantasy draft at a coffee shop in Portland, and suddenly the villain's motivation just stopped making sense. I had built this whole revenge arc, but I realized his backstory contradicted chapter 3. So I sat there for an hour, crossed out everything on my index cards, and rewrote him as a coward instead. Has anyone else hit a wall mid-draft and had to scrap a character's whole reason for existing?

2 comments

2 Comments

ellis.diana13d ago

Oh no, that coffee shop moment hits hard. I've had a character completely flip on me mid-draft too, and it felt like I wasted weeks of work. But honestly, the coward version ended up being way more interesting than my original plan, so maybe your gut was telling you something good.

jordanc6811d ago

Read somewhere that Stephen King does the same thing, just lets the character wander and sees where it lands. Sounds like your gut knew better than your outline, so I'd trust it.