Plot Help! - Weekend of November 9th - 11th

[alison-sky.livejournal.com]

Got a plot? CONGRATS! You're about halfway more prepared then the rest of us!

Of course, with plots come problems. If you've got one, here's the place to post for help!

And if you want to procrastinate from your own NaNo, come on in and help out with the writer's block ice breaking!

Comments

[joanie1803.livejournal.com]

x-posted in my LJ:

Here's my plot problem:

I've got 2/3 of my novel meticulously planned out. I've also got a pretty good idea what I want to have happen in the final third, just don't quite know how I'll get there yet. I've been struggling pretty hard all week trying to keep up a minimum daily word count, though I think that's not going to last much longer. I'm not sick of my novel, I'm not stuck for something to say. But I feel a very strong need to make a major plot change!

Currently, the entire action is supposed to take place in the fictional village where my MC lives, even though I have her leaving on the train to London to run some errands and coming back - while she's gone the plan is to remain in the village with the other characters. There was a reason for this, but it's sort of self-indulgently symbolic and feels silly now. But for that reason and the even greater reason that this village is just plain BORING, I really feel the need to go with my MC to London, and to take at least some of the other characters there too.

Okay no big deal, right? Wrong - all my meticulous plotting! LOL Just thinking about making this change sets my head spinning.

Oh and I have another major problem - I'd decided to frame this whole story within some short scenes from the present day depicting the finding and reading of some of my MC's letters. Those scenes have turned into a sort of mystery plot-within-a-plot that I hadn't planned on but sort of like (I know, Byatt did it better). My problem is, writing a mystery is difficult - it takes lots of thinking in order to make it work, and it's distracting me from writing the rest of it. Am I trying to do too much here??

I really feel like I'm wading up to my neck in muck right now, though that could be my sinus infection, I can't tell anymore LOL. Anyway, I think my word count is going to have to go permanently out the window while I think through these things.....

Help! Thanks.
j

Natural disaster help

[nwc-orca.livejournal.com]

I need ideas for natural disasters that could have to do with air. Any ideas are helpful! Thanks!

[ladysaotome.livejournal.com]

I need ways a guy could get poisoned that would just gradually make him sicker & sicker until he dies - something that wouldn't be suspected by a doctor either (but that, if the poison was discontinued he'd make a full recovery).

[theperfectspy.livejournal.com]

Should I show my darling introverted extrovert to the world, or let her stay peacefully inside her shop? I'm just in two minds about everything at the moment.

I don't know.

Should I show her first kinda date with the guy she's fancied since her mid-teens?

Should Cayden and Patrick fight over Tabitha in a kinda Sabrina the Teenage Witch kinda way (oh Turk, you looked so cute then)?

Should James, her imaginary friend, take over her brain and make her weird?

Ugh. Why can't I get a story forward? I was gonna make it so that the last but one chapter had Patrick in a mini accident, but it's starting to make itself a bit pivotal in my head. If he get's knocked over now (in a kinda Marty McFly in Back To The Future kinda way), Tabitha will have to admit to him pretty darn quick that she likes him, which would make the whole go out on a date plot a bit redunant (because the big thing has happened and she's got her One True Love).

But if he doesn't get run over, she'll go out, get stood up by Patrick and start dating Cayden (who she's fancied since she was old enough to fancy someone, but tried to get over, cause OMFG it was Cayden). Then there'd be the whole, 'But you stood me up' thing where there shall be twists and you realise that OH NOES! Cayden was naughty and didn't tell Patrick that they were meeting in a different pub.

And if James takes over her mind, there'd be chaos! He hates most males (the only one he can stand, I think, is Tabitha's dad, and that's only because he knows that he's not going to try and get in her pants) and does the rudest things in the most awkward places/times.

Actually, kinda liking the OH NOES! plot, but I can't write that, cause my angst is crappy, my character development is stupid, and I never can write believable love triangles. Never been in one, don't really wanna be in one.

Hm... Seems I've taken up space with my rambling of doom. Maybe I'll just have rocks fall and kill everyone. Or have Robin Hood make Achoo sheriff of the town. ('Why not? It worked in Blazing Saddles!' Sorry, couldn't resist!)

Goodnight. I need sleep. Something will come and whack my head sooner or later.

Rach xxx

[grey-sterling.livejournal.com]

I have a silly question about drinking. ^^;

How many drinks (ale or beer) would take to get a 6' very fit man drunk enough to have a fairly gnarly hangover the next morning, minimum? He's fairly young, and a lightweight who doesn't really drink.

I am a very small woman and I don't care for beer/ale, hence my cluelessness!

Thanks in advance to anyone who can help. :)

[triumphantchaos.livejournal.com]

So, I woke up this morning and discovered that my -fantasy- novel thus far has been severely lacking in conflict. (Seriously - it was the thought I woke up with. So weird @_@. And conflict's usually plentiful in this genre ;_;') I have a war planned for the second half, and my main character is going to be kidnapped in the end of the first... But I have to get some stuff in between where I am now, and the kidnapping.

My characters are walking down a road. In the middle of no where. D< I have no idea what to do. Any ideas?