Most writers hit at least one point in the first draft or outline of a novel where inspiration dries up in regards to plot. One moment you know exactly where your characters are headed. The next your characters are sitting around a room playing cards and checking their watches while you try to figure out what to do next. Whether you’re a Plotter or a Pantser, Plot Confusion is real.
There are a million ways of dealing with Plot Confusion, of course, from the brute force of writing your way through it to pulling a Crazy Ivan and introducing an insane twist to the old Leonard standby of having someone with a gun walk into the room. One trick I like to use sometimes is a little simpler and often offers surprising developments: I break up my characters.
Odd Pairings
As in real life, your fictional characters will have a tendency to clump up into expected and repeated groups. This is sometimes a function of plot; for me, though, it’s also due to a certain linear way of thinking that I struggle with. I dislike jumping around from place to place dealing with different groups of characters so have a tendency to simplify by keeping everyone together. Hey, normally it works for me.
When it doesn’t, though, forcing my characters to separate, especially into unexpected groupings, is often a jolt of energy. You find yourself having to mesh together two different speech patterns, plot roles, and other aspects. It also means that lazy patterns I’d fallen into while writing similar exchanges between the same couple of characters have to be jettisoned, and new patterns figured out.
It’s actually a lot of fun, and just as in real life putting two people together unexpectedly often reveals surprising things about both. Even brief scenes sometimes jumpstart the whole story.
The best part is that unlike real life, if my surprise character pairings turns unbearably awkward and dull, I can always go back to that guy with a gun and really spice things up. Sometimes it’s even fun to write an entire sequence where that guy murders all of my characters and I am, for one wonderful moment, a vengeful god. Like Galadriel, all shall love me and despair and then I save the file and start over.