Friday, November 14, 2008

novel twists

From the NaNoWriMo forum: "Idiotic Plot Twists"

the original post:

"Goodness, I'm at 30k and my MC suddenly acquires a previously unknown twin brother... or it might be her father, see I haven't decided yet, so she doesn't know. I might just write the whole thing so we never actually find out which one it is. I fail. Also apparently around the same time we find out that she's kind of dating, so not only a magically appearing twin brother/father, but a magically appearing boyfriend as well, and she was supposed to be left single so she could be all ambiguous about her sexuality (not that she can't be that with a boyfriend I suppose, but it's not the same thing). Also almost as soon as the boyfriend appeared I stuck him in jail, because that means I don't need to deal with him. *headdesk* Now she insists on angsting about him, because she'd never realised before that she really loved him and she's doing that by acting disturbingly incestuous towards her brother/father who she might or might not realise is related to her.

When did my novel turn into a bad soap opera? This is in no way what I was writing. It's stupid and made of fail. It makes absolutely no sense. And now I have no idea how to continue in a way that might eventually lead to the end that I had all figured out.

Please cheer me up and tell me that someone else has made sudden completely idiotic plot twists. Please?"

my response posted to the forum:

I have a character in restraints/bandages/cast(??) in the hospital. I know it's a "he" - but not which one. It could be the man with a scheme who was in a car accident three scenes ago, but I thought he was dead (although that had not yet been revealed in the novel, but I knew he was a goner - which was a twist in itself because he had another function when he appeared on page one and now that was gone). It could be the driver of the laundry truck (no, I do not know the significance of it being a Laundry Truck) ...that was my first gut reaction - that it would seem to be the scheming man because he was a longer term character, then the thought came to me that that would be the little twist: the reader would think it was DC but it was actually the anonymous truck driver. But as I typed, it became possible that it was the past life character (male) come into the present (female) but unaware that he was in a female body and the body-person is the one who has disappeared...

The mysterious line of French in a book has just received a companion, this time scrawled on a wall. Similar phrase, though the menace level is more overt than the first one.

And I may have a murder coming up. Someone is about to open his office door and I hear the da da da dum music building. I did not want a murder in this story. The characters have other ideas.

Or else the plot bunnies are saying, "Come on. Liven this puppy up! Get moving. You've got a lot of words left to type....."