Salvaging the “Afterthought Plot”

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It’s a problem every storyteller will face at some point, but especially starting out: you’ve written yourself into a corner. Maybe it’s that fan fiction you started when you were 12 years old. Or maybe it’s the comic you’re writing right now.

Especially in stories that update on an ongoing basis, such as webcomics, sometimes you just don’t have the whole thing figured out before you start. You just want to get started, then you need keep the updates rolling until the thing ends. It’s very easy to write yourself into a corner.

For me, I’ve most recently run into this problem with the Running Man series here on Azdion. Running Man was intended to stand on its own, and only near the end did I decide to add onto it in later years. However, I only worked out the plots of the next two comics shortly before drawing and posting them. As a result, I quickly lost track of where the story was going.

If you’ve done this, not all is lost! I’m here to help you write yourself right out of that corner and back on track. This post summarizes how I got a handle on the Running Man series again before it was too late.

You might be your own worst enemy

There, I said it. You might be the main thing holding yourself back with your story.

As a creator, you have big visions and plans for your story. You know things about your story that your readers couldn’t imagine. Often this is good, but if you started your story without a plan this can quickly get in your way. You might just need a hard reset on your story, and escape with only what you’ve posted so far.

Think like a fan

You’re a fan of something, right? I bet you’ve read a book and thought long and hard about an interesting character, only for the author to not write them the way you expected. Or you solved a television episode’s plot in the first three minutes, then suffered as the characters (and writers) ignored obvious signs and signals.

You need to think about your own work with this interested, analytical eye.

Become your own obsessive fan

To start, I want you to forget everything you know about your own story. Yes, you read that right. You don’t have to delete any notes or outlines you have, but for the moment you need to forget everything about your story that you haven’t explicitly stated in the text. For now, you’re going to put on your fan goggles: you don’t know anything your fans don’t know.

Now that you’re in “fan mode”, and see only what your readers see, it’s time to start taking notes. Read through whatever you have so far of your story – only what is available to your readers. As you go, open a document or take a pen and paper and make brief notes.

Things you’ll want to pay attention to:

• Timeline of events as they appear in the story (if your story is not linear, include additional notes putting events in order – for your sanity)
• Your characters, including basic info and important details about them
• Your settings and locations, including plot-important details and other unique attributes
• Facts and features of your world, such as any magic, mythology, technology, and culture
• Your plants, so you remember to pay them off later

Be sure to include only information that is part of your story so far! Don’t include that character you wanted to introduce later, don’t record your future plot ideas. At least not right now. Once you’ve taken notes on all the public details of your story, and only that information your fans know, then you can continue.

Start rebuilding your story

From here, with only your public canon in hand, grab your outline and determine the next logical step in the plot. Just focus on getting the plot unstuck.

Once you’ve done this, you can go back and outline the remaining story. At this point you can look at adding back extra ideas you had, if you find that they work. Try to take the time and outline your entire story – remember how we ended up in this situation. You don’t want to rescue your story once, only to have to go through this process again for the same story.

I hope if you were stuck on your story, this helps you get back on track. If this helped you, let me know and tell me about your story! And if you have any additional tips that helped you fix up a stuck story, let me know in the comments!