If making your plot consistent is hard, does that mean you're doing it wrong?

I think it's hard! I'm certainly not the world's best at plotting, so my plots will take more work to come up with than those who have a million plots. But it's OK that it's hard, I think. It's kind of fun that way, no?

Yeah, it can be hard, but it isn't always. A fix to a plot hole suddenly popping into my head is the greatest feeling I've had as a writer (so far ). I run back to my computer excited to get to work, smiling the whole time. I'm struggling with some plot holes in my WIP, and I've decided to just keep writing anyway otherwise I'll be stuck forever.

I think it's too complicated, thus making it more flawed. You don't have to change it, but the more story, more plotting there is, the more flaws will show.

Have you finished writing this? Finish it, with the mistakes and at the end, you'll figure out where to go--this has always happened to me.

First Draft blues.


I've never thought about plotting. I just roll with the blows and sort it out as it comes.
Maybe it's me, but I can balance quite a few character goals and motivations, and set up a sequence of events that everything meets and the worse can result (that's plotting Will!) and I somehow just click it all together IN THE END, after the first draft.

GiantRampagingPencil said:

And the problems and solutions go on . . . frequently the solutions cause problems of their own.

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Huh. I thought that was how it was supposed to work.

GiantRampagingPencil said:

I think I finally have a consistent plot to this part of the book that preserves drama. But it was so hard.

Here are my questions: Is this par for the course, or does it mean my story is too complex, too flawed? Or is it a positive? Maybe I'm just a meticulous plotter? Is it this hard for all writers?

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[pats on Pencil] There there.

It can be hard for some writers. It's easier for others. If it's working for you, go with it, even though it's hard now. There's not a thing wrong with being a plotter. It may save you some heartache at the end, even though you feel like you're beating your head against the wall now.

Are these aliens humans or humanoids or human-like? If not, why make their motives so humanistic? Perhaps they're driven by forces and factors that, to us, would make little sense. (Or appear to make no sense.) Maybe destroying ships on one day, but not another, is completely normal to them. Maybe there are special times or days when the destruction of 'others' is taken for granted, so for humans to even question where the ships are or if they are destroyed - well the aliens don't understand the question, so how can they even answer it?

It's hard to get outside a human perspective as that's what we are, but take the novel, 'Footfall' by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle. The aliens in this story operate under quite different morals, values and perspectives than humans, (which is a fairly common theme in science fiction.)

Anyhow, just my opinion ...

Dude. This is me almost every day. I have this crippling fear of making my characters come across as TSTL. Having an intelligent, if somewhat naive POV character be manipulated by one of the masters of the art is easily one of the hardest things for me to "show". Something is constantly popping up that makes the little critique circle in my head go, "Well, why wouldn't they just do this?"

Along with simplifying, I think you're on the right track by creating an environment that will let the reader answer those pesky "Why not" questions on their own. In fact, the more I addressed those concerns by "telling", the more questions I came up with. It's just like real life self-doubt. Giving it too much attention just means it will clamor for more.

GiantRampagingPencil said:

Whoa there, bearilou. I love your posts and all, but I'm a married man!

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My hand slipped! I swear!

GiantRampagingPencil said:

Here are my questions: Is this par for the course, or does it mean my story is too complex, too flawed?

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Sounds par for the course for me (I often think Why the heck do I do this to myself? mid book, but it works out in the end). Working out the knots is the fun bit Solutions causing more problems just means you haven;t figured it all the way out just yet. You will if you work at it.

But maybe you're a plotter. If so, no biggie - use the experience to help find a way that works for you.

Just want to say I feel for you. Been there too many times.

BTW I know its just an example, but I think your questions 1 to 4 could be answered if there is a secret cadre of aliens who wants something from the colony ships.

Too Stupid To Live. Sorry. I'll even be merciful and spare you the TV Tropes link.

Too stupid to live. I can't tell you how often I've said that.

Colony ships are surely only sent to colonise what has been assessed as being a suitable place to colonise -no?

What is the reaction of the Fleet's commanders to discovering there is alien life on this planet?

I may be thick, but why send a whole fleet to trace missing colony ships and why to this particular planet?

What is the protagonist's goal? Simply to find the ships? If the missing ships and colonists have been destroyed the story seems to end in a pffft!

Who is the protagonist? A female MC is mentioned earlier.

Is the story about the aliens and their leader or the search for the missing ships?

Happy hunting as your story unfolds. Walking through treacle is a wonderful experience.

Well, I did ask. Good luck.

Plot is never easy. Even when you outline, plot changes, causes problems, makes you create excel sheets detailing which delegate voted which way and plot out the story changes by vote.

But I digress.

When plot is easy, you probably missed something. Otherwise it wouldn't be so fun when you solved a plot issue.

I'm pretty sure writer is just a stealth term for masochist.

GiantRampagingPencil said:

Long range scans could tell it was habitable, but not that it was inhabited.

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I find this extremely unlikely, and even unbelievable. Any long range scans capable of telling whether a planet was habitable would almost certainly pick up the signature of an advanced civilization.

But even if they didn't, you would never send colony ships until after you made certain no other race lived there. You would send a probe, or even a single scout ship, but not colony ships.

I think the plot gets even more problematic as it goes along.

GiantRampagingPencil said:

And the problems and solutions go on . . . frequently the solutions cause problems of their own.

I think I finally have a consistent plot to this part of the book that preserves drama. But it was so hard.

Here are my questions: Is this par for the course, or does it mean my story is too complex, too flawed? Or is it a positive? Maybe I'm just a meticulous plotter? Is it this hard for all writers?

Click to expand...

Welcome to the hell that is writing Science Fiction. LOL. Your experience definitely mirrors my own. Someone (in some other AW thread) quoted someone else, who put it brilliantly: it's easier for readers to believe the impossible than the improbable.

Even in Fantasy, all you have to do is create your own world with consistent rules. Not that that's easy, but I feel like it becomes even harder in Sci-Fi, when you're technically (or perhaps, loosely) basing your universe in reality (I guess some could argue that this is done in Fantasy, too, just based in the past. This does happen, but I feel like it's easier to create a universe totally seperate from ours in fantasy).

The rules of our reality have to apply in Sci-Fi. That your setting is in the future can change those rules, but the task then becomes making them believable. Worldbuilding can be the bane of my existence sometimes! I know that if I can't tolerate my own plot holes, no one else is going to.

What I find really interesting is that in the course of fleshing out/filling in my plot, I've had to ditch certain things (to make it plausible) only for those things to re-emerge in some different way, later on. It's like your plot is really just a reflection of the things you meditate on, and the elements of your chosen genre that have always captivated your interest. It can be helpful to identify what those themes are, and then to parse out how your own work reflects those themes/tropes. Some of it might fall away, if it doesn't fit into the overall theme(s) you're exploring.

Another good thing I learned in a writing class is that a good rule of thumb is for a book to have 3 major plot elements, woven together throughout the entirety of the book (each with it's own arc and resolution). Obviously, this doesn't encompass sub plots. But if there are more than 3 major plot elements, your story runs the risk of becoming convoluted.

So it might help you to look at your opening chapters and make some executive decisions. What are your 3 most important plot elements? Can the others be downgraded to sub plots or be stripped away entirely? Try to be objective here -- don't look at this through the lens of emotional attachment to them. Try to imagine your story without certain aspects, and see if it could still play. Maybe it's not an ideal scenario, but it's not the only thing you're ever going to write. And at some point the work is no longer a part of you, it becomes its own thing. You have to figure out what it needs, and sometimes that means letting go of your initial expectations, and not trying to force it down one path or another.

(I sound like I'm talking about child rearing. LOL)

Now, that being said, I'm pretty sure my book has 4 major plot elements, although 2 are intrinsically tied together. I know this because it takes me 3 chapters to launch them all/have the inciting incident occur. This isn't a bad thing, but it means it's going to be tougher to key the reader into everything going on without losing them somewhere along the way.

It's like stitching a quilt -- the threads need to be woven together just right, or you won't be able to process what you're looking at. And there's definitely a tendency in genre fiction to create enormous, ridiculously intricate tapestries (to have a complex plot/involved meta-plot). In fact, that's what I love so much about it.

I know it's frustrating, but one thing I've learned is that when I'm the most frustrated with my plot -- when I'm hitting the wall the hardest, that's when I tend to have the biggest break throughs. You shouldn't be too hard on yourself. You've set yourself a very hard task, and nobody can teach you how to do it. The process is largely trial and error for a good long while. You have to learn to listen to your gut. If something is consistently not working, just not fitting into your plot, maybe it's time to change it or let it go.

This can feel devastating and rock the very foundations beneath your feet, but that's okay. Give yourself a day or two away from the writing, to let the dust settle and see where you stand. I've had this happen in my story more times than I can count. Trying to plot out a trilogy boggles my mind at times. But every time I have a break through, I get one step closer, and that keeps me going, because I must be doing something right.

Good luck, man.