Continuing with our yearly review, let’s look at the blog’s most popular posts for plotting fiction.
Is plotting a challenge for you? I found plotting horrendous for years: I was convinced that I was a pantser (someone who writes by the seat of his pants)—I was someone who couldn’t plot.
Plotting fiction: you can do it
Perhaps you feel the same way. The good news: you can do it, because “plot” is a verb, as well as a noun.
These posts may help.
Plotting fiction: it’s easy when you focus on your characters
Your characters change and grow throughout your novel, and they have secrets. I like to keep my plotting simple. Once I know how my primary character changes, I know that the midpoint of the novel is crucial. At the midpoint, the character’s life changes in a major way.
Your characters have challenges. Your plot is what your characters do as they strive to meet their challenges.
In the process of doing, they change.
Yes, you can write a series, even if you hate plotting
Be wary of a subplot that could be resolved with a bit of communication between characters. Have your characters do things, which affect your main characters, and cause conflict.
In your reading, look at subplots. Effective subplots not only reveal something about your main characters, but they also involve action.
Henry (Henrietta) Eardley makes a huge mistake. Then she makes it worse. She's never known a man like Lord Devernwood, and he's never met a woman like her.
Although he's a prize on the Marriage Mart, wealthy and twice-widowed Lord Delmere thinks that nothing could ever tempt him to marry again. Until he meets the lovely Lady Kingston.
A Regency time travel romance... What if you could escape across time, and find your soulmate?
Pure evil dispatches gorgeous Tara Ballantine across the centuries, to Regency England. Tara lands on Adam Jervoise, Earl of Hillingworth -- literally -- as he's riding through a bluebell wood.
Hillingworth is handsome, rich, and kind. He's also set to propose to an heiress.
When Tara realizes that she's falling in love with the earl, she fights the feeling.
Writing commercial fiction is a challenge for many authors. Have you ever said: "I can't plot...?" If you have, your struggles with plotting your fiction are over.
