Writing.Com General Discussion

Wow, ok, you have a lot to work on, so what you really need are ideas to help feed your imagination.

In a purely fictional novel, the story lies in the character and their eventual evolution, with the (entertaining) plot being the sequence of events that trigger and escalate their internal struggle, leading them to the point where they have to resolve that internal struggle - the evolution.

With autobiographical and semi-autobiographical stories, you can play by different rules. For example, instead of plot, you can use cause-and-effect, whereby one scene is the effect of the previous scene and the cause of the next. Charlotte might be a few coins short to buy the newspaper she was sent to get, so the next scene shows her doing something to get the extra coins and only gets herself in trouble. The first scene is the cause of the second, the second is both the effect of the first scene and the cause of the third.

You also have an opportunity to tell two different stories in different timelines - one in the present, one in the past. By intermingling the scenes (make sure the reader can tell which timeline they are in), you can draw both stories to a conclusion, which should (perhaps must) have a commonality - e.g. the lessons learnt in the earlier timeline inform her decisions in the present, particularly the end result of each timeline. If she screwed up in the past, will she repeat her mistake in the present?

Whatever you do, you really ought to consider having your character change at the end (or near the end), to either become a better person, or go a shade or two darker. If you go for the dual timeline scenario, then the earlier timeline could explain what her internal struggle is and how it came about, with the present timeline heading towards some kind of resolution.

It would also help if you determine what the theme of your story is, and what the point is. For the point, it could be a moral one, or it could be a social or political one, or something else entirely, it really doesn't matter. Understand these two things, and and you'll already have a good idea of how your story will play out.