Too Much of a Good Thing: Over Plotting Your Novel...

The Other Side of the Story: Too Much of a Good Thing: Over Plotting Your Novel...: By Janice Hardy

Showing All Sides, But Still Needing More 
Layers are good, but adding plots to show another side or perspective because you feel the reader just won’t get it if you don’t should make you pause. Your instincts are in the right place – you know you need more to make the story work – but you’re looking wider, not deeper, and adding things that likely only explore the idea. Are you: 

• Focusing only on the premise aspect of the story and ignoring the characters and their problems?
• Adding characters whose sole job it is to get one point across?
• Getting caught up in really cool backstory for one (or more) of your secondary characters or antagonist and feeling they deserve their own character arc?
• Trying to tell everyone’s story?
• Pulling your protagonist in so many directions you lose narrative drive because it’s hard to tell what the story is about anymore?

An excellent post on red flags for a novel trying to go in too many directions at once. Read the rest.