QUESTION: I’m writing a novel, but I’ve already hit my word count. The thing is I can’t finish the novel. My characters are acting crazy, and I can’t control them. What should I do?
Ask yourself these two questions.
Who is my main character?
What is her/his goal in the story?
Now, start reading your book from the beginning. In each scene or chapter ask these questions. Is the main character driving the plot forward? Is he/she doing something or learning something in each scene to reach the goal? If this isn’t happening in that scene/chapter, highlight that scene/chapter and change the font color so you can look at it later. Keep doing this until you reach the point where you stopped.
Make another copy of your manuscript and give it another name then go through this copy. Remove all the colored sections where nothing is happening. Now reread the whole thing. Does it make sense? Are there reasonable steps the main character has done to achieve their goals? If you are happy with this and see where you are going, you can move forward to finish the main story line.
You can now go back to the original manuscript and reread all those colored font areas to see if they add or subtract from the main story. Characters who are just around can be deleted, and subplots can be kept if they improve the main story, or they can be deleted. Information can be moved to the scenes that remain.
Misbehaving secondary characters may be asking for their own book so tell them to behave in this book, and they may be the main character in their own book. (Yes, this is weird, but authors are weird.)
You should now understand your book well enough to finish it. Good luck.
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