A night or two ago I had a nightmare. I dreamed I went through my manuscript line by line and asked WHY after each sentence. Some of my whys had no answers. Most did, but sometimes the answer was implied, or not immediately evident. I remember being very confused.
When I got to the end of my novella, I found a big hole. There was a huge unanswered WHY WOULD HE DO THAT? I know that has more to do with motivation but it sure leaves a hole in my plot. WHY WOULD HE DO THAT?
Yep, I yelled it.
This very important character is not my MC yet the story couldn’t be written without him. He’s the stimulus, so to speak. The stimulus with the gaping WHY. This is one of those why didn’t he just pick up the phone and call instead of manipulating. Manipulation makes him look like a bad guy so there has to be a really, really good reason for it.
I tried to put a band-aid over that gaping hole. Didn’t work. I tried to cover it by attributing the actions of another character to the one with the WHY. Didn’t work.
No, no, I don’t want him to be bad. And this is a novella; I can’t have a thousand characters.
I haven’t worked on my story for more than a week because of this gaping WHY. I’m stymied! Help!
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