Mishaps in writing: Hybrid trilogy mistake

Writing is a process; no matter how long you have been writing, you will make mistakes that can feel like the biggest thing when you realize you made a mistake, but it isn't the mistake that matters. It how you go about fixing it.

In the years I have been writing, I have made both minor mistakes and major mistakes, and recently I realized I had made a mistake while working on my hybrid trilogy, tears were shed but now that I have a plan on how to fix my mistake I decided to write a blog post on how I worked out my mistake and how I plan to fix it as well as what I have learned from making this mistake. 

While I was working on my plan for making the most out of Aprils' Camp NaNoWriMo to finish the third book in the series, I noticed that I have been stuck on a certain part of the book for ages. When I started writing Project Banshee, I struggled a lot, but by the time I hit 11k words, I was officially at a standstill.

I started looking into why this had happened, and I noticed it stems into a bigger issue—the first two books. I had so poorly planned and written Tosha that I had actually made it impossible to write a whole book for her. This is probably the biggest mistake I have made to date when writing or planning one of my books. 

The first thing I realized when I made a mistake is that I need to find a way to fix it. I could start all over again and completely start from scratch with all three books, but I have the first book almost perfect, and I would hate to have to start all over again when my goal was to have the first draft of all three books done by July. 

My first thought was I need to start from scratch but not on my books but on Toshas' book plan; I then need to think of Toshas' story as a stand-alone book and completely start the first draft over once I have finished writing the book I can then go through and edit project hybrid and project choice and fix it up so that Tosha has room to grow and fix any plot holes that form.

This will make life harder on me when it comes to editing, but it's a small price to pay compared to how it could have turned out if it didn't work out. This was a plausible way to fix the issue without completely rewriting all three books and putting years of hard work down the drain.

From this is I have learned the right amount to actually plan for a character. You don't want to under plan and be stuck on developing and writing your character, but you don't want to over-plan so that you have no room for improvising. I also learned that while the book order might be different, its best to write the books in order of age. While project banshee is the last book, its also the youngest any of the characters are in the books.