You Don't Always Need Massive Changes

 I am working with one of my clients right now with her current work in progress. She totally loves when I use her as an example. In any case, we have some plotting issues with a story. Now, here comes the approaches that each of us are taking.

1) She was looking at either major overhauls of the project or completely tossing the story out.

2) I am recommending some small changes and keeping a lot of the story together.

Both ideas work and both are very viable. But with that said, let me explain my position on this one. 

A lot of times, authors (and yes editors and agents) often have trouble looking beyond what they have already written or read in a story. They see the project going one way, and if the solutions do not work to keep it in that direction, they recommend completely dumping the story and starting on something new, or dumping the story and doing a massive re-write. I however, have found that in many cases, it is just an issue of tweaking a small part of a story, or adding in small pieces to the story to take care of issues. 

In the case of the client I am working with, I recommended just changing a small issue in the hero's back story that is really his motivation and conflict. By making the small adjustment, the changes in the middle of the story turn into something more cosmetic instead of full plot changes. 

Sometimes, I have had authors who get revision letters from editors who want more information on why the characters are acting and behaving the way that they are. This is normal. Of course, for many authors, when they hear this, they immediately launch into building these massive back story plot lines to justify the behavior. Yes, this works, but unfortunately, these plot lines end up using a lot of word count space, don't move the story forward, and become more of a nuisance for the reader. When this amount of information is thrown into the story, the reader wants to see more of it. Instead, the writer has just dumped it into the story to justify the behavior and then left it along the side of the road. 

I guess the way I look at it is that you have already put in a lot of time on the story. That is time you will not get back if you throw the whole thing out. 

Although yes, sometimes throwing it out is the best approach. I just suggest looking for the easiest approach first before tossing that story out.