I have seldom worked out my A-Plot when I start writing. So... I just start writing and then something inevitably happens
. Someone gets shot (like Lois in Curiosity Killed the Reporter) or some sourse has a great tip about corruption in the government (like in The Other Woman). So I follow it while I consciously work on the B-Plot that was my motivation for writing the story.
In a story that I just finished a couple days ago, I got about a hundred pages into the story when I realized that I had a dozen different threads with no real idea as to how they all joined together. It is one of the few stories where that has happened to me. So I had to stop writing, send my story to Gerry and Carol and say: 'hey, guys, who's my bad guy?'
And then, after they gave me lots of great ideas, I chose a bad guy. Of course, that meant I had to go back and make some changes since until then, my bad guy hadn't even been in the story
. But in the end, it all seemed to come together.
So I say: 'Just play - have fun and see how things go. You might be surprised as to where your story ends up.' Of course, others work from an outline and that seems to work for them. So it's really an individual thing (I think). I do know that I do a LOT of rewrites - which is one of the reasons I don't normally post in parts. Until I type 'The End', I usually don't know what the end is going to be. If I do figure it out too soon, I tend to lose interest in the story and go on to do something else.
I guess that's not really a whole lot of help
ML
