Hit 100k words on my novel draft and it still feels like garbage

Spent 6 months writing this thing for my MFA program and somehow the plot still makes no sense past chapter 3. Anyone else push through a big milestone just to realize you gotta rewrite most of it?

3 comments

3 Comments

james_ramirez14d ago

You said "plot still makes no sense past chapter 3" and I felt that in my bones. I once wrote a 60,000 word draft only to realize my main character's motivation was basically just "I'm here because the author said so." I spent a whole summer untangling that mess and ended up cutting nearly half of it. Sometimes hitting that word count just shows you where the real problems are hiding. It's frustrating but it's also how you get better.

charliehill13d ago

Kinda gotta disagree a bit though. Plot holes and messy motivations are fine if the voice is strong enough to carry it. Some of my favorite books barely hold together past the first act but the characters talk like real people so I just go with it. Maybe it's just me but I'd rather read something a little broken than something perfectly plotted that feels dead on the page.

amyh219d ago

Honestly, "I'm here because the author said so" hit a little too close to home for me. I've definitely been there where you finish a draft and realize your character had zero real reason to do anything. What finally helped me was writing a one-page letter from my character's perspective about why they're doing all this stuff, even if it was dumb. That made me see where I was forcing them into plot points just to move things along. Sometimes the fix is just stepping back and asking what would actually make them walk away from the whole mess.