So when you change something about the main character, something about him upon which the whole plot hinges, you need to prepare yourself to rethink the entire plot before beginning to write. As I’m discovering.
This hit me last night, as I realized my character lost a major motivation to advance the plot. Motivation comes in at least two forms: plot, and personality. Plot-based motivation for travel is quest for an item, or a location, or because one is summoned or banished, to name a few. Character-based motivation is to find comfort or solace, or sustainment, to name some there. In literary works, it is best to use the latter more often. Obeying a summons can speak to human character, if there is personal motivation not to obey; but depending on what is driving the character internally, it may teach the reader nothing if the character obeys. “Oh, he was banished on pain of death? Good thing he left, then.”
If, however, there is an internal struggle whether to stay or go, that you can make bread off of. In changing my main character, much of the external motivation was gone, and putting it back would be too easy to contrive. So instead, I sat up for some time last night, notebook and pen in hand, and figured out different motivations for his movement deeper into the story. I had to scratch off some, because they were as cliché as his being an orphan. But a number of them could be combined rather well to give him some complex motivation that grew from his character, not simply the need for conflict.
And so I forge on. Chapter three had a lot of axed material; 2,000 words, to be precise. That’s the “focusing the plot” part of it. And it gets the reader to the meat of the story much faster, even from a simple numbers perspective.
So it’s all good. Three chapters revised. See you on Monday.
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