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PaperclipPerfector  23hr ago (text post)   848 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for April 24, 2026

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Those of you who dabble in writing fiction, how do you keep your characters from derailing your plot? Or is just the sign that the original plot sucked?

I didn't have a plot to derail.

Mostly i wrote situations and starting settings and only had a vague sense of where things might go in a chapter or two. I would lean towards interesting stuff happening.

This was partly a result of my experience being a dungeon master. The people I played with would always derail whatever I had planned. So I learned to only prepare for the session I was hosting and no further.

I've tried to write out extended outlines and plans for stories. But I always got bored writing those stories, since I knew what was going to happen it stripped me of my main motivation to write more.

I was going to answer from my experiencing writing homework essays in high school since I bullshat practically every one I ever wrote, and it was highly fictional.

How many people here actually write genuine fiction?

I'm not a writer, but I imagine if that happens you either go back and rewrite the character to have a personality that makes the plot work, or you rewrite the plot to accommodate the personalities of the characters, right?

But sometimes I guess it might mean that the original plot was just irrational.

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