evolution_rex
Inkling
I've written three drafts of my hopefully-first-novel and about three other incomplete drafts. I love the story and characters I've made, but I've become unsure of the structure and flow of it.
When I first started writing it, I needed a way to organize the story, a basic structure to then 'fill in' with the plot. My main character lives with his parents but the plot required him to be alone so I made it to where his parents had gone on a vacation, leaving him a temporary amount of days alone. So I came up with the idea of writing everything day by day in a ten day period. So when I wrote it, I didn't section it off in chapters but days. But writing it without chapters caused it to lack the excitement that chapters achieve through cliffhangers and the day by day style gave me little room for backstory, exposition, and breathing room between exciting moments. When I read it, it just doesn't flow right and comes off as unexciting even though extraordinary weird things happen. My horror scenes (as my story is a horror) are paced well within themselves but are just placed in the middle of a story without, I don't know, punch. Normal things happen, scary thing happens, there is a cool off, and then we go back to normal things again, all in a single 'chapter' (which is a whole day in the story.). The day by day structure just doesn't effectively work with the form of horror I'm attempting.
But I've been working on this story for over a year, I don't know how to tear it apart and make the massive changes I feel I need to make. I'd written out so many of the stuff I felt unnecessary over the drafts I've written, so everything feels so integral.
So my questions are.
1. How can I completely restructure my story?
2. Anyone have any tips on flow when writing a story that goes day by day, if I decide to keep that format? Maybe any books with that sort of format I could take a look at?
3. Anyone with similar stories and how they dealt with it?
When I first started writing it, I needed a way to organize the story, a basic structure to then 'fill in' with the plot. My main character lives with his parents but the plot required him to be alone so I made it to where his parents had gone on a vacation, leaving him a temporary amount of days alone. So I came up with the idea of writing everything day by day in a ten day period. So when I wrote it, I didn't section it off in chapters but days. But writing it without chapters caused it to lack the excitement that chapters achieve through cliffhangers and the day by day style gave me little room for backstory, exposition, and breathing room between exciting moments. When I read it, it just doesn't flow right and comes off as unexciting even though extraordinary weird things happen. My horror scenes (as my story is a horror) are paced well within themselves but are just placed in the middle of a story without, I don't know, punch. Normal things happen, scary thing happens, there is a cool off, and then we go back to normal things again, all in a single 'chapter' (which is a whole day in the story.). The day by day structure just doesn't effectively work with the form of horror I'm attempting.
But I've been working on this story for over a year, I don't know how to tear it apart and make the massive changes I feel I need to make. I'd written out so many of the stuff I felt unnecessary over the drafts I've written, so everything feels so integral.
So my questions are.
1. How can I completely restructure my story?
2. Anyone have any tips on flow when writing a story that goes day by day, if I decide to keep that format? Maybe any books with that sort of format I could take a look at?
3. Anyone with similar stories and how they dealt with it?
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