• Welcome to the Fantasy Writing Forums. Register Now to join us!

I seem to have everything... except a plot!

Weaver

Sage
Maybe I was unclear in what I meant (the woes of writing whilst tired) - my point was that many people obsess about the plot in short fiction and as a result write a piece that has too much plot. I am not suggesting that people go all Virginia Woolf and write epics about nothing at all happening.

What I meant was that plot should go hand in hand with character development - and that a plot should be carefully tailored to the size of the piece. Pieces under 4000 words suffer from a chronic lack of space - and whilst the common advice is 'plot is everything!!' I find that people tend to go too far and try and stuff a novel's worth of plot into a piece and end up either writing a novella or rushing through key action scenes.

My advice is to always focus on the character - really zone into him/her - their motivations, desires and situations. Often, when you've worked out this part - the plot comes naturally.

THAT makes sense. I've seen it happen with longer works, too: novels that have too much stuff in them, too many different things going on and none of those things really developed.

I'm pleased that someone else thinks anything under 4000 words has "a chronic lack of space" -- especially in fantasy (and science fiction), where we have to introduce a world while we're at it.
 
Top