When characters revolt
What do you do when your characters pull a coup? In one of my books, they seem to be doing just that. I can’t get my protagonist on board with my ideas. The antagonist has gone willy-nilly into the background and the whole story line has gone to the dogs. Yes, to the dogs. It seems that they want to be the real stars in book four. No, there isn’t an excerpt to read. It’s not ready for that. It may never be ready for that.
Book four is an idea, one that I add to occasionally. I won’t get around to writing it until after I finish books one through three. However, even in idea form the characters are not cooperating. Book four has become a repository for scenes that don’t work in the other books. It might stay locked in a file under the title of The Big Book of Unused Scenes, or it may be the book where the dogs take center stage and the other characters blend into the background.
In any case, it’s where most of the brilliant but overdone doggy scenes I cut from the other books go when they don’t work.
Posted on March 10, 2009, in Dog related, Misc, My books, Writer, Writing and tagged Author, Beads, Bones, books, Books on writing, Bull Terriers, Care giving, Caregiver, Coffee, comedy, Craft of writing, Crafts, Dead, Disability, Dog humor, Doggoned, Dogs, Family, Fiction, Home, Humor, Life, Love, MS, Multiple Sclerosis, Murder, Mysteries, Mystery, Novel writing, Pet humor, Pets, Rescue Dogs, Writer, Writing. Bookmark the permalink. 6 Comments.
Doggonedmysteries 
Sounds to me like the Bullies have put their heads together and are sending waves of “We want to be stars” over to you and your book. 🙂
That could be, but my agent told me I needed to cut some of the dog scenes from DD because they were taking over the book. Did I know that by doing it I’d take twice as long to get this danged book finished? Nope.
I usually follow them for a while in a parallel document until I see if they’ve gone fishing or have a better idea than I do. Most of the time I found they were taking on a life of their own and it added much needed dimension to my writing. Even if I didn’t use anything from the parallel document directly. This worked in non-fiction with ideas that took off for distant horizons.
The good thing is, I never lose a scene by moving them to another file. Oftentimes, I can rework one or two to fit another situation.
“The good thing is, I never lose a scene by moving them to another file. Oftentimes, I can rework one or two to fit another situation.”
Hi, I agree wholeheartedly with this. Everything should be saved and backed up. Writers can benefit from working on material kept in a special file of sections removed from the original manuscript. I now really regret deleting material set around the Dorset Coast.
When my computer crashed I was very lucky that I am a fanatic about backing up my manuscripts. I lost a few letters, however, not one word of any manuscript was lost.