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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/48040
License name: CC BY-SA 4.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/48040
License name: CC BY-SA 4.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

As a discovery writer myself, I do not "plot", but I always write with an ending in mind. I do not WRITE the ending, but I have notes on how the story can be resolved, and I make sure my story will always fit that ending.

Every time I finish a scene, I make sure I haven't done anything that will violate the ending I have in mind. If I have, then I either have to rewrite that scene immediately, or I have to come up with another ending that WILL work. In a full-length novel, I have come up with anywhere from 2 to 4 new endings.

On some of them, I have gone back and fixed numerous scenes in order to support a new ending I did not want to give up, basically re-read the whole book so far in order to do it.

I have also changed the beginning of a book, discarded the whole original scene, in order to support a new ending.

It is for that reason I never get a reader until I think I am done with a book, and even then I get one reader at a time, just in case I really do have to make a significant change. (It has happened).

The same protocol works if I am going to introduce a riddle or mystery: I have to know how it gets resolved, or at least ONE way it could be resolved, so I can write "in that direction". I am not, I should stress, coming up with the plot and scenes and turning points, I will find them as I go, but I have to know at least one way to resolve such issues.

I think that is what you failed to do. That approach is likely to kill your effort, because you are doing the easy part and postponing the hard part, making your final third or quarter of the book almost impossible to finish, the collection of difficulties is too daunting.

You have to do the hard part WITH the easy part. You may come up with a better way to resolve the mystery, but if you don't you have at least one way.

I wouldn't try to finish your current work. What you might do is start it over, keep the idea of the characters and situation they face, but write anew, without adding complications you cannot figure out how to solve, and from the beginning knowing at least one plausible ending to their main problem. Write it in a more disciplined manner.

You can still be a discovery writer, but discovering the plot as you go includes both ends of the plot, how it begins and how it ends.

Original score: 5