Screwed up a character's motivation in my fantasy novel during a writing sprint at a coffee shop in Denver

I was so focused on hitting 1,000 words in 30 minutes that I made my villain suddenly want world peace for no reason, and now I’m stuck rewriting three chapters to fix it, so has anyone else ever derailed their whole plot by trying to write too fast?

2 comments

2 Comments

finleyf881mo ago

Oh man, the "villain suddenly wanting world peace" part hit way too close to home. I did something similar in my sci-fi thing where my main character got amnesia for no good reason just to meet my word count during lunch. I had to rewrite like four chapters too, and it was a NIGHTMARE untangling that mess. Writing fast can really backfire when you just force some random motivation to hit a deadline.

gonzalez.reese1mo ago

Hate to nitpick but amnesia isn't really a motivation, it's a plot device. Your character can still want things even if they can't remember their past.