How has your plot changed?

[Androxine Vortex]

I remember when I first came up with the idea for my novel that I am working on and I still have the first rough-outline of it. The other day I found my old draft and it looked totally different from my current draft(s). At first glance you would probably think they were two seperate stories! Just wondering how much your plots have changed from their original conceptions.

 

[Penpilot]

Some bits have changed a lot, others not too much.

 

[ThinkerX]

Hmmm...

'Falling Towers' - not exactly set in stone, but almost from the start I have found myself wondering if one of the characters is a genuine 'bad guy' or a 'good guy doing some really bad things because he knows whats really going on'.

'Labyrinth' - is being rewritten despite a fairly simple overall plot and defined ending because certain things were out of order, and the 'character' of the story itself wasn't quite what I was aiming for.

'Empire' - being rewritten to better account for the actions/motives of certain of the characters, though this doesn't really change how things play out.

'To Cross the Shadow Sea' (also 'Sea of Shadows') - I've had to change the plot a bit because the MC was letting his personal desires drive him more than his duty (basically had to better justify him sailing off in almost exactly the wrong direction). Also, I didn't figure out a suitable ending until recently, despite this being one of my oldest still extant works.

 

[Ireth]

Winter's Queen - was initially something entirely different, about a woman under a curse and the love interest she meets while trying to find a cure. I got thinking about the male lead's motivations (rescuing his kidnapped daughter), and that wound up getting reshaped into an entirely new plot based on the man and his daughter, with no female love interest in sight. I may give the original woman her own story, with or without the love interest, but that remains to be seen.

Low Road - became far more complex and different than the initial, very simple outline I wrote. There are new supporting characters, new villains, a completely unexpected relationship, and the origin story of the first vampire has gone through MANY revisions. Some of the earlier versions will be included in the story as wacky rumors. It's also still possibly going to be revised in light of the way two main characters have developed during the course of the first draft.

 

[Chilari]

The story I'm planning at the moment has changed quite a bit in the last two weeks. Originally the bad guy was motivated by ruthless ambition and little else, and now he's still ambitious, but starts out seeking to improve the world before becoming increasingly paranoid and delusional. I was originally going to have three POV characters, then one, now it's two. I've changed the ending considerably, because the old version seemed a bit dragged out with too many climactic moments, like the ending of LOTR:ROTK (the book, though the film's ending takes a while too). The new ending is tighter and more logically follows from the reimagining of the antagonist. The mood of the new version is less dark, too. Some of the themes and events I'd originally planned on including have been softened or removed.

As I have developed the world, including the beliefs about the supernatural, I've found ways to include those beliefs as plot points - for example, a character decides she'll put a curse on the antagonist, and gets the physical things she'd need to create the curse according to myth, but then changes her mind because she believes so strongly in the power of curses that she sees cursing someone as tantamount to murder.

Also my characters and some locations now have names. The working title has gone from "Bronze Age Town" to "Perenke" (the name of the town).

 

[zizban]

I make my plot up as I go along. I only plotted one novel in my life, my someday to be written King Arthur trilogy.

 

[Benjamin Clayborne]

The general story is the same, but several major elements have been completely redone, such as the ending. The original ending I threw out completely.

 

[Telcontar]

In soon to publish novel: Biggest change I can remember is that a particular important character dies now. Several other plot elements were either excised (as unnecessary complication) or combined/tied together more neatly, especially concerning the eventual fate of another important character and how he manages to execute a particular feat.

 

[Rikilamaro]

In the reverse of Telcontar my biggest change is that a major character doesn't die. I'd have to say other than that it's stayed pretty much how I first wrote it down. Then again the more I revise and edit I may find other plot points that bug me and remove them. It's fluid until published.

 

[Ophiucha]

My pet project for four years must have changed in every conceivable way throughout its lifespan. The first draft was from the POV of the dragons, who weren't sapient and didn't have a telepathic bond with their rider. The fact that Theodore/Thorich/Sabroso/the-main-character-who-had-eighty-names-throughout-those-four-years was tied to non-telepathic, non-sapient dragons was just about the only thing that stuck. He didn't even ride them, they were just his bond animals. The second draft removed an entire layer of the story, and was from the villain's POV. The next draft was from the POV of the human-from-our-world character, which kind of persisted... the later drafts she was the dominant narrator, insofar as the final draft is sort of presented-as-real document where she's commenting and 'translating' the main document, which is from Theo's POV (it's just his diary). Every draft after that was Theo's, but who the 'real' villain was changed a lot (I kind of ended up making the villain Theo in the final draft, but about five people passed the torch along the way) and the story's conclusion changed a lot, too, ranging from the obliteration of magic to the spread of magic to Earth.

So... yeah. Literally the only thing in common with the first and final drafts of my novel was that there were dragons and they weren't able to speak, telepathically or otherwise, though they weren't even the focus of the story by the end.

 

[Jabrosky]

I suffer from a very fickle muse, so I'm constantly revising my novels' plots without ever finishing them.

I'll supply one example pertaining to my current project:

Originally my story had a quasi-historical setting, using real historical cultures like the Nubians and Anglo-Saxons, and was about a princess who ran away to another kingdom to raise an army against her brother and fell in love with a wayward pirate along the way. Now I've changed the setting to a more totally fantastical one, changed all the characters' names, and postponed the romantic subplot to the novel's second act after the princess drives her brother off the throne (it might end up being a separate novel by itself). Oh, and I've added my most beloved monsters to use for fantasy stories, dinosaurs, because everything is better with dinosaurs.

 

[Chilari]

I have made a further change to the plot of my story. The plot is better served by the king of a different city remaining alive, so that is what happens. In the old version part of the plot involved the rivalries between his potential heirs, but that whole part of the plot is now gone, and keeping him alive enables me to have one of my characters motivated by the need for the king's approval rather than his recently vacated throne. It also enables me to explore a subplot in which the king does not withold his approval, but rather that the character who seeks it percieves that it is denied to him (he believes the king sent him to this town to get him out of the way, the king actually did it to give him experience and as a way of testing whether he would make a good heir).