Plot and Major Changes to Mine

I have discovered that I may have a serious plot problem. This kind of sucks.

What, you may ask, could that problem be? It is that I think I have major events happening in the wrong order and too close together. This equals massive reworking of the whole middle section of my novel. That, understandably, scares the crap out of me.

Why? Well mostly cause I'm not the best with change. I kind of try to avoid it. Like the plague. And here as I'm trying to work out the plot for a completely different story I discover possible major issues the book I thought I was almost finished with. I almost wanted to cry when I came to this conclusion.

See I love my book kind of the way it is. It's taken years to get it to this point, to where it's feeling close to being finished finally. And then I start reading about plot, and I realize, maybe I do need to reorder those two major scenes in the middle. And the idea of having to take those two scenes and swap them after rewriting them to work in their new place and rewriting all the transitions between the scenes, is a daunting idea. So daunting I haven't been able to look at my WIP in a couple of days.

So what am I going to do, you ask. Well I could be a wuss and say nothing, but we both know that's a cop-out. So instead I'm going to do the hard thing. I'm going to finish this draft (Numero 6) including the big chunks I haven't worked on yet. Then, once that's finished, I'm going to give it to my friend who's read two of the other drafts along with the new crit partner I hope to be finding soon (thanks to Natalie Whipple and her fantastic Crit Partner Classifieds), then begin the massive rewrite for draft number 7 while they read it. Once that's done, I'll have them read #7 and see which is the better layout for the story.

It's a seriously frightening prospect, especially because I may do all that work for nothing. But after thinking over it for a couple of days, it's feeling more and more like what I need to do. So I'm going to do it.

So that's my thought for the day. Now I'm off to write or something.