Have you ever veered off from your initial idea so hard that you need new outline?

[Deleted member 128077]

So I'm working on the first arc of my story. It was meant to be something small so the readers can see the badass stuff the MC can do while trying to take it slow. The initial idea was the MC agrees to save a damsel in distress from a group of slavers, and after saving the day he would say goodbye and never see these characters again.

That is not what happen. After a botched recuse, the Damsel ended up with two contracted demons and now shes killing everyone. To top it off, she will now be traveling with the MC, as she is effectively the new female lead.

 

[LilRora]

Much more than once.

There's that temptation, you know? You have a perfectly fine outline, you just need to write it, but then, in a moment of genius, you get that idea... and how are you supposed not to write it, ruining your whole outline? It just seems sooo much better and more exciting than the previous version.

 

[Deleted member 128077]

Much more than once.

There's that temptation, you know? You have a perfectly fine outline, you just need to write it, but then, in a moment of genius, you get that idea... and how are you supposed not to write it, ruining your whole outline? It just seems sooo much better and more exciting than the previous version.

This is 100% what happened But I could not resist.

 

[Representing_Tromba]

Yes. Currently doing that right now. The plot is mostly the same but how it is experienced is much different.

 

[Deleted member 58005]

When my co-author appeared, yes. The first arc of my story was just supposed to be this normal introductory sequence of chapters.

Instead, it turned into this whopping hellhole that somehow got the No. 1 S rank fighting and losing against a random S demon, 12 major villains making appearances, and my co-author's character battling an old fellow clan member.

 

[Deleted member 113259]

I'd like to say no, but I rewrote my side story for grammar reasons and ended up changing both mc's personalities entirety.

 

[Deleted member 54065]

Yes, that's why, when I put my very first novel on indefinite hold, I swore to make plans for the next one, which is the Saint Series.

DECK was the first novel I've written, going as far back as 2008, when I was in 3rd Year College. It started off as a simple manga, that when I graduated college in 2009, I began writing its novel version. It took me 10 years before finishing the first volume with 25 chapters and an average of 2k words per chapter.

This is because, in my quest to publish a 'flawless' work, I keep rewriting and editing it. My fascination with anime and manga back then influenced me to keep changing the story, because I was inspired by whatever stuff I watched. DECK evolved from a simple school battle story, into a dark, apocalyptic setting with edgy and cringe characters.

By 2019, I'm not the edgy guy I used to be. So I kind of started to hate what I was writing.

So, I decided to rewrite it the final time, though it would have to wait, because by May 2019, I began planning and writing the Saint Series. When I was writing the Saint Series, I was determined to 'finish something', so I wrote my plots and plans/direction, and stuck to it by avoiding watching shows and reading stuff while I was writing.

Now, I'm 17 volumes in, and it's going according to my initial plan.

 

[georgelee5786]

Yes

 

[Rhaps]

I'll just leave these images here

 

[J_Chemist]

I rewrote the first half of my story because I veered so far off the mark. ?

 

[melchi]

Wait you have an outline?

 

[Deleted member 84247]

Wait you have an outline?

I didn't know that was a thing either.

 

[RepresentingWrath]

I didn't know that was a thing either.

Yes.

 

[Cipiteca396]

My novel was meant to be something I could write and write until the end of time. So I focused more on consistency and steady progression than any sort of end goal or overarching plot.

But I ended up getting distracted and now it takes months to finish a single chapter, so I might be the wrong person to listen to.

I think it's probably best to outline the whole story and then stick to it as closely as possible. If you suddenly feel inspired, there's no problem with writing out the new plot in a new short story format instead. If you end up liking it, you can add it back in. But otherwise you can avoid breaking your outline too easily.

 

[TheEldritchGod]

*looks left*
*rooks right*

Psst. Hey... C'mere.

*motions you closer*

Hey, wanna learn the secret to being a good writer? Here's what you do...
Write/work on being a writer 5 hours a day, 5 days a week, for 8 years.

Does it matter WHAT you write? No. Do you know why? Because the goal is to be a good writer and everyone has to start the same way. You start to get it at 100 hours in. You start to be passible at 1,000 hours in. You get good at 10,000 hours in. Give or take a few, but that's how it works.

So, you want to write a good story NOW?

Figure out what the ending is. Start at the beginning, because everyone loves it when you foreshadow shit, then write... THREE TIMES WHAT YOU NEED.

Throw out HALF.

Carefully PRUNE OUT everything you don't ABSOLUTELY NEED.

Even if you only have 100 hours of writing, this trick will get you an above-average story just about EVERY TIME. Why? Statistics. Writing is a numbers game. When you start out 80% is crap. Get to the 100-hour mark, it shifts to 50% is crap. At 10,000 hours, 20% is crap.

So, if you write three times what you need, 50%of that is tossed out, then pair down another 33% of the remaining, you get, even if you are a crappy writer, only about 15% of your story being crap.

Of course, what do you do with the extra 2/3rd of the story you wind up tossing to the cutting room floor? You put it in a folder called, "Cutting room floor" and after 8 years of always writing 3 times what you need when you get to 10,000 hours, you will have a HUGE PILE of okay ideas that you can loot later.

I man currently posting Hotrod Lantern. Guess what? It's 100% cutting room floor. I just feel bad not posting anything while I catch up on my main 3 stories, so I scooped up a bunch of cutting room floor stories and slapped it together in a weekend. Bam. 30K story in 2 days.

And this is before ChatGPT. Holy CRAP. I have a decade of discarded material I can just go in, tweak it with ChatGPT, and BAM, instant story.

My Point is, there are no, "Veering off from the initial idea." There are no tangents. There is only the final product and that which is trimmed away to be saved for later when you need to pull something out of your ass. If you want to be a good writer, you never have writer's block. You only have writer's block ABOUT THE CURRENT PROJECT.

Go walk away, daydream about something else, WRITE YOUR DAYDREAM. No matter how bad it is, THIS IS A NUMBERS GAME. You cannot write perfectly. 50% of everything you write is BELOW AVERAGE. So the more you write, the more you can discard to keep only the 50% that is above average.

So the story you wrote changed. So? No. You have written twice what you needed and you are picking the plotline that is better.

Just get it OUT on the paper. The more you write, the closer you are to that 10,000 hours where you will become an above-average writer without having to write out the below-average stuff first. You'll "write" it in your head and "know" what to keep. With Grammerly to help with the mechanics, and ChatGPT to help write paragraphs to give you a different perspective, it's easier than ever to be a writer.

BTW, ChatGPT should be something you ARGUE with, not lean on. It's a great ENEMY. Every good writer does best when he is in conflict. In the old days, we had to swap stories with other writers. Now we got a woke piece of Shit AI to argue with.

Me Damnit, I love living in the future.

 

[Shard]

I don't even bother with outlines, my characters go against my plan about 90% of the time, so it is pointless to even try. I only know what happens in advance when I'm behind on writing and ahead on watching my chars.

 

[WeissBlatt]

Yes, to the point I decided to scrap it and start from scratch.
Then I changed stuff again, and again...

 

[Bobple]

Yes, but it wasn't by an extreme amount. Basically I wasn't happy with my planned arc 1&2, and after I tried writing them, I realised "Hey the interesting parts happen in arc 3" so I cut two full arcs, a rewrote the story to have that portion be a mystery that would slowly get revealed.

I also had story draft that reached 25 chapters before hitting block. Which ended up causing two separate stories to be created.

 

[Benson]

In my case, my side character turned into the main character, while the og main character has been entirely removed from the story for now. Basically, I wrote an entirely different story, even though it is still somewhat connected to the original.

 

[Grievewriter]

Usually my first step when writing stories is to know where they end, even if I have to break them up into volumes in order to achieve that. This way, even if I find plenty of smaller arcs for the characters to engage in during the course of things, the Outline is still relatively stable enough to keep from needing full rewrites.

Before I did that, whenever I found the plot veering I would panic, overwrite to try and reframe the prior writings and eventually end up abandoning it out of sheer confusion. Now I've got a much more stable grasp of the outline, and have found new and exciting ways to stump myself outside of it.