9 Plot Mistakes Every New Fantasy Writer Makes

so listen if you're a new fantasy writer you're probably making plot mistakes with your novel and they're ruining your story and I say that because over the past year I've edited a ton of different fantasy novels and I see the same nine mistakes come up again and again in most cases the writers have no idea they're making these mistakes but they lead to really big structural issues that turn the editing process into a nightmare now I've been writing fantasy stories for over 10 years and on my road to publication I've had to learn about these errors the hard way so I'm going to show you how to avoid these nine common mistakes and write a structurally sound first draft that only requires minimal editing later in the process and the first mistake is beating the antagonist too early so let's imagine that you open your fantasy story with a confrontation between your protagonist your main character and your antagonist perhaps they're having some sort of duel where they're both using their magical abilities against each other let's say that your protagonist manages to successfully defeat or beat the antagonist in this scenario and then the story goes on and you kind of progress from there and maybe the antagonist comes back and tries to attack them again in the future what's the problem with this setup well if that is your primary antagonist and that is the main force of opposition within your story and your main character has already beaten them within the first couple of chapters the main character has proven themselves more powerful than this antagonist early on there's not really a lot of suspense when they have to fight them again later in the story is there and of course I'm using the word fight here but this can also apply to more verbal battles to confrontations that aren't purely physical of course you can level up that antagonist as the story progresses you can make them more powerful more intimidating more threatening but I often find that when stories start with the antagonist being easily beaten easily vanquished it just really means we have diminished threat throughout the rest of your story and there's not a lot of room for the main character to grow the solution to avoiding this mistake I often find is to have your main character be the underdog so perhaps they fight the antagonist early in the story but instead of beating them easily they just manage to fend them off and they make a desperate Escape but they're doing so from this perilous place where it's very clear that the antagonist is stronger than them mistake number two is repetitive scene formats a scene format is a specific structural archetype that defines the prime memory action taking place in a particular unit of your story an example scene format might be a romantic confession between two characters or a stealthy infiltration into a palace you can kind of think of scene formats as different containers and you could fill these containers with whatever you want but they provide a base level of structure almost like this sort of template and these guidelines for what you might expect to write in a scene like this so there are hundreds of different scene formats and you could perhaps make the argument that within the fantasy genre there are hundreds of fantasy specific scene formats as well but oftentimes when I am editing writer's books inside my story coaching program I usually find that they're just using one or two scene formats over and over again so chapter one might have two characters having a conversation in their house and then chapter two might have two characters having a conversation in their house and chapter three has two characters having conversation in a barn something I like to do at the outlining phase of my writing process and I find that outlining is a really useful tool for avoiding all of the plot mistakes I'm about to talk about in this video I often put down next to each of my scenes in the outline what type of scene format it is so maybe my first scene is a sneaking scene the second scene is an argument between two characters the third scene is a battle and it's just a really easy way to see at a glance am I providing enough variation with my scene formats so that readers are constantly going to be engaged and so that the conflict in the story is always shifting and forcing characters to adapt and overcome new challenges and on the note of challenges this leads to mistake number three passive protagonists so a passive protagonist is a character where the story happens to them rather than the story happening because of them the rule of thumb I like to follow is that if you can easily take your main character out of the story and nothing changes your character is probably overly passive and it probably means the story isn't as interesting as it could be often it feels like a novel doesn't really begin until your main character makes their first truly active choice and if you never have your characters make an active Choice it can constantly feel like you're waiting for the novel to begin all the way to the end and this is something that I notice and often note down for my story coaching clients I often tell them this here this point at 35 of the way through the novel or 65 of the way through the novel this actually feels like it's Where Your Story begins because it's the first active choice that your character made up until that point I felt like I was just waiting for something to happen now of course your character can start out as being passive and a character's passiveness can be an interesting aspect of their design but generally speaking the more active choices your character makes the more interesting the plot is going to feel and as the plot progresses you usually want your character to make more and more active choices becoming increase recently active as the story progresses towards the climax mistake number four no consistent through line so a through line I like to think of as the core conflict that's kind of running through the story in other words what is the one sentence summary of your book that's probably going to touch upon through line and it's going to touch upon the core conflict of your story and this is a question that's very important to ask yourself when you're writing is what actually is the one sentence three line in this story maybe that sounds like stupidly obvious but there are a lot of writers who I talk to who struggle to summarize their story in one sentence and of course your story is about so much more than that one sentence description so trying to encapsulate it in one sentence can be a really difficult task but I think it's immensely valuable to force yourself to do this because very quickly you're going to realize if your story has this consistent through line or not and the problem with not having a consistent through line is that it leads to a lot of meanderingness and purposelessness with your sins oftentimes when I'm reading a story and it feels like there's all of these pointless subplots or it feels like I'm bored within the scene it's usually because the writer has forgotten what the through line is of their narrative and they have deviated away from it in a way that feels like it's cheating me as a reader I came here for this specific conflict and now we're over here doing this different thing instead I want to get back to this conflict that's where my interest is that's where all of my curiosity lies in this narrative this mistake can also manifest as a lack of conflict if it feels like there's just not really anything happening in the story and your main character isn't being challenged isn't being forced to overcome difficult obstacles it may be because you have lost sight of the through line of tension and conflict in your narrative or perhaps it wasn't really clearly defined to begin with now if that is the case and you feel like oh yeah Jed you're kind of right maybe my story has a bit of this mistake right now what do I do oftentimes the through line is there there just might be four or five three lines that you weren't really sure which one to commit to and your job as a writer when you're going back and editing through the book or perhaps you're working through the first draft right now is to write down all the different through lines and I say this with a lot of conviction because I literally told this to a story coaching client the other day write down all the different through lines that you are kind of interested in exploring in the story or that you have explored in your first draft so in the case of this writer she had you know maybe four or five different through lines that were being explored in the narrative but it didn't necessarily feel like there was one that was standing out to me that was driving the spine of the story write down all these different through lines and then ask yourself which one of these is the most developed in the narrative right now and which one am I most interested in pursuing and of course you can have these different subplots but it's really useful to just know what is the core source of conflict and Challenge and growth for your main character mistake number five is a soggy middle this occurs when the middle of your story lacks progression and purpose and feels kind of slow and boring with the pacing oftentimes as writers we come into a narrative with perhaps a very clear idea of our beginning and our end but that middle stretch of your narrative can be quite intimidating and I hear from writers all the time who say ah Jed I got 20 30 000 words into my novel but then I kind of gave up and that's exactly what the Soggy middle is all about this mistake is very common where you see writers maybe have a strong start to their story man in the middle things kind of dip and gets a bit boring and it gets a bit stale and that is probably when readers are going to put down your book and move away so one of the things I think actually creates this soggy middle is the traditional three-act structure now three-act structure has a lot of prose to it but one of the big issues that I see with it is that you've got the First Act the first 25 of the novel you've got the third act the last 25 of your novel and then you've got the second act which is the middle part of the story but that middle part is like 50 and if you look at traditional three-act structure the only really anchoring scene you've got in that second act is perhaps the start of the second act the end of the second act and the midpoint but that doesn't actually give you a lot to go on as a writer because that could represent present like 60 80 000 words of your novel and to give a really quick definition of three-act structure here Act One involves the sort of exposition setting up the world the inciting action that kicks the story off and then the turning point where the character sets off on their Adventure Act 2 involves rising action the midpoint of the story where there's usually some sort of traumatic change and then the Turning Point into act three often described as sort of The Dark Knight of the Soul where it looks like the character has all hope lost for them and then act three is the climax and the ending of your story now of course you can make three-act structure work but for me personally I found it way easier to avoid the Soggy middle syndrome when i shifted to a seven point plot structure and that's because the seven points of this structure provides you with just more stuff happening in the middle part of your story and it just gives you a better guide and template to make sure that there's constant excitement development conflict and tension throughout the narrative to provide a brief summary of seven point plot structure you've got your opening book where you introduce the protagonist and especially his flaws and Desires in a compelling way then you have plot term 1 which is where the protagonist is taken from the Ordinary World and thrusts into the extraordinary world of your story pinch point one where pressure is applied to the main character usually through the introduction or some sort of action from the main antagonist then you reach the midpoint and this is typically where the protagonist fully moves from passive reaction to active action and resolves to stop or fight the antagonist next you have pinch Point 2 where more pressure is applied to the protagonist really forcing them into their darkest and lowest moment possible and that leads to plot turn two where the protagonist discovers or sometimes realizes a key piece of information that helps them defeat the antagonist lastly we have the resolution where the protagonist achieves or fails to achieve his object of Desire now if you want to go deeper with structuring your novel and not only just structuring it by looking at plot points but also looking at the character arcs also looking at how you weave World building and themes and suspense and pacing all throughout an outline in a way that is really comprehensive and sets you up to write a really successful book then you might want to apply it for my six week fantasy outlining boot camp this is a group coaching program where I'll be taking eight writers on and I'll be showing you everything I know about outlining which is the most important part of my writing process it's the thing in my experience that will most help you avoid these nine plot mistakes and the Myriad of other plot mistakes that you can make as a fantasy writer and in the program we'll go through a series of live calls where I basically show you my complete outlining process and how that's evolved over my 10 years of writing and over my three published novels and my video game but then not only will we have these live training sessions but we're also going to have these live group coaching sessions where I'll personally help you develop a comprehensive outline for your own fantasy novel that not only allows you to master story structure character arcs theme design World building suspense pacing and all these other elements of story but makes you excited to write a story and allows you to get over the hump if you have perhaps struggled with finishing novels or perhaps you have finished novels but they are in a really messy place for me outlining was a tool that helped me get over that hump that actually helped me produce really great stories and it's also something that I have shown a lot of writers in my one-on-one story coaching program as well with really great results my outline was pretty sparse I knew what I wanted to do at the beginning and it would be generous to say I had a loose idea of what I wanted to do in the air I gave it to Jed and once he kind of saw where everything was going he then was able to point out parts of the story elements of the story that I had been trying to work in and maybe wasn't doing so successfully but he also was able to point out things that I hadn't even realized I've been doing either wrong or correct and been setting up for the future and so from there we worked together to create a very robust outline having that outline to help me get over the hump and finish my story was crucial I would not have been able to finish without it and I definitely would not have been able to make it as good as it is without Jed's help I'm getting ready to self-publish soon and I couldn't be more excited about how it's going you can apply for my outlining boot camp by going to jettone.com forward slash outline applications closed on October the 2nd and we're kicking off the cohort on October the 16th mistake number six weak consequences many new fantasy writers are really afraid to punish their characters for failure and that's a huge mistake because it's through adversity that a character really gets the chance to grow the depth of adversity that a character faces directly corresponds to the depth of true character that you can reveal that is the deeper the conflict that you put characters through the more you really challenge them and force them to face their demons the deeper we can kind of dive into their psyche as a reader and that's really what causes readers to develop sympathy and connection to your characters and if you think about the characters that you remember well from the fantasy novels that you love they're usually the ones that have to go through hell they go through the most difficult circumstances possible and they somehow manage to emerge from the other side the question I like to ask myself is what is the worst possible thing that could happen to my protagonist in this situation you don't always have to make that thing happen but it can really give you good inspiration and maybe guide you down directions that you wouldn't have initially gone in if you hadn't asked that question mistake number seven misaligning the three p's when it comes down to it a story is just comprised of your promise your progress and your payoff now that framework might sound really simple but oftentimes when this structure of your novel doesn't really feel like it's clicking it's because there's a misalignment between these three p's so maybe you promised readers a particular type of story through the tone and the scenes and the dialogue and the actions the characters were taking in the first few chapters but then as we get to the middle of the story it's not really going there readers will feel cheated and the structure of the story just won't feel like it's working you want your narrative to feel like it's a logical flow from beginning to end where each scene naturally leads into the next moment ensuring that your promise and your progress and your payoff is really nicely aligned is the pathway to achieving that natural feeling flow mistake number eight is the Patriot endings so I've shared this framework with a few story coaching clients but this is the first time I've really talked about it publicly in a video and there have been a few novels I've edited recently where the ending drags on a little bit longer than it should and perhaps there are let's say four or five key plot threads going through this story one of those threads might be resolved in a chapter towards the end then the next chapter has another thread kind of being resolved and then the last chapter has the final thread being resolved and it kind of leads to this slow sense of ending where you're getting these threads gradually being resolved as we go towards the end of the story but oftentimes it kind of leads to this sense of the story petering out or puttering it out towards the end because once that plot thread is done then that source of narrative Drive of narrative energy it is no longer present in the rest of the story the better approach and this is something I've shared with a lot of my clients is look at the moments where the plot threads within your story are being resolved and then ask yourself how can I compress these and move them closer together oftentimes you can turn an all right ending into an amazing Ending by simply taking the four or five plot threads that get resolved over the course of let's say two or three chapters and instead compressing them into a single moment almost taking these plot threads and knotting them together into one knot where they all kind of get resolved in this one moment it usually leads to a much more dramatic and interesting climax because instead of having this little explosion here little explosion here a little explosion here you're just combining all your Firepower into one massive explosion and then the last mistake mistake number nine is luck that helps the protagonist so of course as with all of these mistakes here there are ways to do them well you can have luck that helps your protagonist in a way that doesn't feel like cheating and does actually Advance the story but generally speaking if you're using coincidences or luck to get your main character out of a hole that they've fallen into it's not going to feel very satisfying to readers and it's going to feel like you're cheating particularly within fantasy novels you oftentimes see magic used for this purpose where characters will just invent New Uses of the magic that we've never seen before or they'll discover these loopholes that were never clear before or they'll just use aspects of the magic that weren't really foreshadowed or set up in a way that felt logical and believable on the flip side of this it's totally fine and it often is very satisfying to have luck help your antagonist that is for the main character's plan to be going well but then they get unlucky the antagonist gets lucky and then this throws your main character into Peril now if you enjoyed that video you might like this one over here where I share six World building mistakes so that new fantasy writers make foreign

Channel: Jed Herne

Views: 599,028

Keywords: writing, writing advice, writing craft, story, fantasy, author, jed herne, authortube, booktube, wizards warriors words, self-publish, indie, publishing

Id: 3A3JC3lMJGs

Length: 18min 49sec (1129 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 14 2023