Plot generation

Finding myself with ten minutes to spare and faced with a blank page the other day, I started plotting. The outline of the new novel and its overarching narrative has been established, but the story needs a subplot to allow me to explore the characters’ personalities more deeply and examine their motivations.

I idly searched ‘plot ideas’ on Google and was rewarded with a plethora of plot generator sites. Blimey. A better way to waste my precious few moment of writing time I have yet to find. It’s fascinating; a bit like watching an accident on television: you want to stop, but you can’t look away.

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New beginnings

After casting around in the wilderness for a while, tinkering away at the second novel – the one I began during last year’s NaNoWriMo – I have belatedly realised that I don’t want to continue with it. Not at the moment, anyway.

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Circle of Motivation

All writers need to understand the motivation of their characters. Strong motives produce convincing storylines; weak motives make for flimsy and unconvincing stories. Your characters’ problems and desires contribute towards their motivation; but these must be logical and believable. In fact, they should be inevitable; your characters should have no choice but to act in the way they do otherwise weaknesses and holes in the plot will be revealed and the reader will not be convinced.

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