by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
It doesn’t happen as much as it used to, but I was facing a complete story structure collapse of this novel over the last 24 hours. Something dawned on me that forced me reimagine the first act on a structural basis to the point that I was kind of sweating it there for a moment.
But after a few hours of hard work, I managed to revolve the issue. I have come out the other side of this particular storytelling disaster with a much stronger, cleaner story. The problem was I don’t have a reader to help guide me through the internal logic of the story. I was so wrapped up in a particular set piece I had come up with for how a certain event occured, that I missed sight of how important it is to make the heroine the center of the story.
Or, to put it another way, it wasn’t worth it to defy logic so force a secondary character to be the one to do something that good storytelling would manadate the proganost probably should do.
I also really have a problem with my POV characters being way, way too passive in any particular scene. They keep reacting to events, rather than driving the plot — and the scene — along. If had a wife or a girlfriend to serve as my Reader I think this whole process would have gone by a lot quicker and been a lot more stable.
But, lulz, I have no friends and no one likes me. Wink.
Anyway, the story has its sea legs again. I hope. At least, I have a better sense of the new iteration of it gong forward.
