Sometimes when you finish a first draft, or even when you’re just partway through a draft, you might sit back and realize that your story makes no sense.
It can be a terrible feeling. This story that you’ve poured months or years of your life into needs to be fixed, but you don’t know how to do it.
One good way to tackle that problem is by getting some practice beforehand fixing stories in books and movies that you don’t like.
Stories can really only be fixed on a case-by-case basis. There’s no magical formula to plug a story into that will tell you how to fix it.
But one way to get better at fixing stories is by practicing. So we decided to try our hand at fixing two stories that chat voted for: Netflix’s Death Note and Twilight!
You can see the process here,
or scroll down to just see our new plots.
Death Note (Netflix Version)
Problem: Packing way too much plot into too little time
Requirements: It still needs to be an American version of the original Japanese Death Note manga/anime, have Ryuk the death god, a Death Note. Also needs to be a 1.5-2 hour movie, no miniseries, that’s too easy.
New Plot:
- The Netflix version tried to cram the manga/anime’s long story into a 2 hour film, and it didn’t work. So rather than trying to remain fithful to the original, instead…
- …abandon the original plot of Light vs. L and have an American teenage girl named Lilith find the Death Note. Rather than killing criminals like in the original, she kills politicians that are corrupt.
- This links the story to real American issues present today.
- Establish Lilith at the beginning as someone who is fed up with current US politics, have her go to protests but sees that they accomplish nothing, have her wish there was a way to make politicians fear the masses.
- Have Lilith be the daughter of a politician or member of the FBI.
- At the beginning when she first gets the Death Note, she only picks off corrupt politicians, but then later she devolves into simply killing politicians she disagrees with.
- Have Lilith not be on one side of the political spectrum or the other but just running against the present wave of issues. Her followers create a new political party based on her beliefs/actions.
- A twist could be that the antagonist, the person fighting against her, isn’t just ONE person, it’s a bunch of people all pretending to be the same person. So even when Lilith thinks she tracks down the person rallying against her and kills him, it actually turns out that there’s still thousands of them left.
Possible Endings and Themes:
- POWER CORRUPTS: Toward the end Lilith becomes the very kind of person she hated originally (taking donations to decide the next victims, her political party becomes totally different than what she wanted, etc.), so she Death Notes herself.
- PEOPLE IN POWER FEARING THE MASSES IS GOOD: Have Lilith win in the end and show the utopia/dystopia she creates. (Could leave open for a sequel where someone rises up against her.)
- AN IDEA IS MORE POWERFUL THAN A PERSON: Lilith is tracked down by police/FBI, and when she is cornered by the, she has one of them kill her, using the Death Note on herself to make her into a martyr.
Twilight
Problem: Lack of plot
Requirements: Still needs to have Bella Swan, Edward Cullen, sparkling vampires, romance. Also needs to be young adult appropriate.
New Plot:
- Bella moves to Forks to a new school. She wants to be an investigative journalist and writes articles for the school paper. She starts writing a story about Edward and his mysterious family. That’s how she starts uncovering their big secret.
- Have her be a journalist paparazzi-like figure, taking pictures of the Cullens and researching them.
- Edward catches her snooping, she runs, flashes him with her camera, blinding him because of his sensitive vampire eyeballs, and causes his skin to sparkle (maybe he doesn’t appear in the photos she takes DUN DUN DUN!)
- Edward begins to stalk Bella too, she calls him out on it and says he’s creepy, but he says she’s doing the same to him!
- The two develop a rivalry, with Bella spreading rumors about Edward and Edward spreading rumors about Bella, so they start off hating each other.
- One night Bella’s uncle goes out and she follows him, using her sneaky journalist skills. Turns out he’s hunting Edward and is about to kill him when Bella stops him. When she saves him they become friends, and he shows her his vampire life.
- But then Bella learns from her father/uncle that they are a family of vampire hunters. There’s magic in their blood that makes them immune to vampire powers (such as Edward’s mind reading, etc.)
- The head of Edward’s family wants to kill Bella’s uncle so that they can live in peace, and he also forbids the relationship with Edward/Bella (an old rule that prevents vampires from being revealed to the world).
- During the final battle between Edward’s dad and Bella’s uncle, Edward’s dad locks away Edward to prevent him from interfering. But Bella sneaks in and helps him escape (using her sneaky journalist skills). They both go to where they’re about to fight and stop them. Bella brings peace between the two factions.
Possible Endings and Themes:
- LOVE KNOWS NO BOUNDARIES – Vampires and humans can totally mack.
- IF YOU CARE ABOUT SOMEONE HELP THEM – Make Bella more active.
- SOMETIMES THE RIGHT THING TO DO IS TURNING YOUR BACK ON YOUR FAMILY – Bella does what she thinks is right, not what she’s told by her family.
I don’t know about you, but I really like the plots to both of those! I was not a fan of Netflix’s Death Note (and I was a huge fan of the original manga), and I’ve always been pretty neutral on Twilight. But with these juicier plots, I feel like they’re something I could really sink my teeth into and enjoy.
So if you’re having issues with your own story, step back and look at it like a movie you just watched and hated. How would you fix it up? If you practice it enough, then it gets easier to do for your own projects!
After that, chat voted that we wrote this prompt: All of a sudden, your pet fish is looking a lot more human than usual. Since we were low on time, we just wrote some very short stories. Here’s the two I came up with:
Story #1
Two years of a dating drought after Stacy left me, my pet fish Winstina was looking pretty hot. I know it sounds weird, but those lonely nights I spent at home with the glow of my TV reflecting in the water of her tank next to me, I swear to god I saw something more than just a love for fish flakes in those round eyes of hers. The way Winstina knew to swim closer to me when I sighed, the way she danced around when I walked by, I know it sounds crazy but I promise I even saw her give little waves of encouragement when I dragged myself out the door for work in the morning.
So when I finally decided to dunk my head in her tank and give her a kiss on her scaly lips, it didn’t seem all that strange at the time. It was only when I saw my roomate, Daryl, staring at me wide-eyed through the blurry upside-down water that I realized I’d made a mistake. I plunged my head out of the aquarium, standing there, dripping wet with Winstina desperately swimming away into a corner.
“Dude,” Daryl said. “Did you just try to French my fish?”
Story #2
When my pet fish first started turning into a human, I didn’t know what to do. One morning I just woke up, cracked open the top of the aquarium, and spilled in some flakes, when suddenly a, “Thanks bro!” bubbled from beneath me.
I thought I’d left the TV on or I’d gotten some sort of weird message on my phone, but after checking both and getting nothing, I looked around, dumbfounded. Maybe it was just someone from the upstairs apartment who–
“Damn son, these flakes are boss!”
I slowly turned around, peering into the fish tank, not believing what I was seeing. Little old Poseidon, a goldfish the size of key, had somehow sprouted a human head overnight.
And not just any human head, but the douchiest head you can possibly imagine.
He had the gaping know-it-all smile, glazed-over eyeballs, and bleached blonde hair that he had to constantly snap his head back to get it out of his eyes. He swam up to the surface, puckered his lips out of the water, and spoke.
“Bro, can you like, do me a solid and get a coral gym up in here? My fins are like crying out for some gains. Oh, and how about some seaweed too?”
If you want to join us and help write a story by trolling in chat, or share your own writing for feedback, then we’d love to have you. We stream on Twitch every Sunday, Tuesday, and Thursday at 6:30pm-10:30pm (U.S. Eastern Standard Time).
And you missed the stream, you can still watch them on the YouTube channel or watch the full stream reruns.
Hope to see you next time, friend!
Scott Wilson is the author of the novel Metl: The ANGEL Weapon,
forthcoming March 2019.
Featured image: Pakutaso