Edit with Me: Solving Plot Problems

When you solve one problem by creating another

Early last September, I stopped working on my Enchantress novel. This was partially to start plotting my rom-com for NaNo, but it was partially because I was stuck. I knew a few things at this point:

• In the previous draft, Adam tricked his sister and the hired enchantress, saying that the enchantress would perform a party trick at an upcoming ball, then sending her away and making Celeste do it with no practice. I didn’t like this bait-and-switch.
• In the previous draft, my CPs wanted there to be more reason to suspect the enchantress. I decided to fix this by adding a scene in which Celeste overhears her talking to her mother, and now no longer trusts the enchantress. I wanted it to be her decision to handle the party trick, not Adam’s. I had NO IDEA how I would do that.

Then I came up with a potential solution. What if Adam’s plan was to simply throw better parties for the duke and thus keep his castle? He could see Celeste as his fairy godmother because magic would make his parties the best, and he could be less nefarious. Celeste misinterpreting him could cause all of the problems that happen later in the book.

I was thrilled. Then I realized I was still stuck, for two reasons:

• This new idea doesn’t solve how Celeste would send Marie-Louise away and take over.
• If Adam simply wanted Celeste around and on his side to throw better parties and impress his dad, the king of France, he never would have agreed to Celeste’s plan to dupe the duke through an engagement and figure out how to embarrass/ruin him in the eyes of France. Celeste married to the duke would be the worst thing for this plan.

My first thought when I realized this was annoyance. If not this, why, then, does Adam focus on party tricks when talking to the older enchantress? Why would he agree to Celeste’s ploy of a fake engagement if he didn’t want to fully ruin the duke? But there’s so much I like about the idea that I’d like to save some of it. For instance:

• If Adam’s plan really is this simple (and as an ADHD 14-year-old who canonically is into parties, it could be), Celeste overthinking it is what causes all the Bad Things to Happen, which works in a fall arc/villain origin story.
• It solves what felt like the biggest plot hole for me, with why he was so focused on the ball and not the duke’s downfall, because to him they were the same thing.
• It makes the consequences of how the ball actually plays out all the better because Celeste’s improvised plan to save things when they went downhill would be totally against what Adam really wanted.

If I were to keep this new idea — Adam’s initial plan is throw such a good party the king likes him and sees him fit to maintain control of the chateau — I have to solve two Really Big Issues.

1. Celeste as the duke’s fiancé. If Adam didn’t plan to scare the duke off forever, he never would agree to an engagement, because the part where Celeste betrayed the duke and didn’t marry him isn’t a guarantee under this circumstance. Celeste as his fiancé is non-negotiable.
2. We Still Need To Get Marie-Louise (the enchantress) Out Of The Chateau For The Ball.

In typing that, though, I remembered something. Celeste doesn’t trust this woman at all. Thinks she has ulterior motives for being there. If they fight, and Marie-Louise is all, “You’re on your own, kid. You always have been.” and chooses to leave, that solves issue number two.

Issue number one is still an issue big enough to topple this house of cards.

Why would Adam agree to Celeste’s engagement? Unless… he didn’t know until after the ball.

I think I’ve been struggling because the scene in which Celeste and Adam talk about her engagement is one of my favorites, so I didn’t want to cut or move it. But it’s movable, like a Jenga piece. I think.

Right now:

1. Celeste becomes engaged
2. Celeste tells Adam she’s agreed to the engagement
3. Celeste practices her magic
4. The ball happens

It’s perfectly reasonable that she simply does not tell him. We can skip step 2 entirely. If he finds out about their engagement at the ball, and they fight about it at the ball, the anger Celeste has toward him — which in the current scene is because of how he manipulated her, which he won’t be doing anymore— could be because of this fight about her plans to marry the duke.

This is it. I think this solves it!

My moral: Sometimes what you need to disentangle plot issues is to re-evaluate things that are already working. I was stuck on this for days because I didn’t even consider moving or deleting a scene I liked so much. But moving it and adding one fight should take care of all of the issues, and land me with a plot I’m so much happier with.

Now all that’s left is to… actually write it.

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