What to Write: What If's

Yesterday we talked about characters and how to build them. Today, we're going to switch off to talking about plot. Yes, plot, aka what you could write. Something that you could be writing is the what if. I have talked about the what ifs before, in the way of creating an AU Earth in world building, but this is now talking about the plots of what ifs. The plot of what ifs are taking something - either an idea, something that's already happened, or something already written but a classic - and flip it around.

For example, Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter is a what if of one of our most famous presidents being a vampire hunter and the Civil War being about vampires wanting to keep the status quo. Yes, it is a lot more than that, but for our boiled down example, that's the plot in a nutshell to me. There are a lot of what ifs like that around, some from the same author, and some from others.

Another type of what if is telling a fairy tale from another point of view. The most popular is taking the view of the villain and showing his or her side of the story. Wicked is a good example of this, with the story being told before Dorothy got to Oz and showing from the Wicked Witch's point of view, and there are a lot of others out there. If you want a movie version, Disney's Maleficent is a good example. It also twists the villain into the good guy, which you may or may not want to do. You can tell the villain's backstory without changing the fact that he or she is still the villain. You do not have to turn them into good or turn the good guys into bad guys.

The last type of what if you could write is about current events. There are a lot of what ifs with past events, but you could take something that happened in recent memory to twist the outcome. For example, you could take a page from the TV show Fringe and go through what would have happened if the 2000 election results were different. The only thing, with current events, is that you need to tread carefully on what your subject matter might be. I wouldn't recommend being completely recent, like from this decade or last decade, because there are raw emotions from them. However, it is up to you what you plan to write but that is something you should think about it.

So, there are the three types of what ifs that you could write about. There are ton others but these are the three that I have thought about or tried writing in the past. I hope that your prep is going well, as we're eighteen days away from the start of NaNoWriMo! Until next time, don't panic.