Despite my age, over the past few years I’ve been making great strides and am becoming a well-seasoned author. Though I make no critical acclaim to being a H. G. Wells or a J. R. R. Tolkien, I do make the claim that I’ve learned a thing or two about plots in my days. You see the most critical part of writing is, naturally, your plot. Now I’d say you should always start out writing using basic plots, but don’t expect them to get you very far. What I have learned is that taking these plots and mixing them is one of the best things you can do; when someone reads your book, they don’t want to be able to trace it as a rip off of some other novel or movie.

The literate arts are constantly defined by their evolution over the course of history, and today’s modern society is no exception to this principle. We do, however, notice that in modern society it seems as though complex plots are becoming a thing of the past; while such a thing personally disgusts me, it is the truth. I say this because of two novel sets in particular: Twilight and The Hunger Games. Though their plots are somewhat unique, as are their details, they lack complexity that was seen in, for example, Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings saga. Yet, they managed to outsell Lord of the Rings by a landslide; it’s because these days, people want easy to digest plotlines rather than something that makes them think.

My point is, if you’re okay with degrading your work, or if you just are not one for complex storylines yourself, you can certainly make a basic storyline without risking popularity. Along with such a thing, it brings me to pure detail and belief. I write in a fantasy universe that I named New Eloise – it’s about five years old, and until late last July, I never had a good plot in line for it at all. So what did I do with these years you might ask? I actually designed the universe for the most part; sure I took a stab at drafting something out here and there, but even when all seemed hopeless I never gave up on New Eloise.

The fact of the matter is, to write a novel (or even a series of novellas for that matter) you have to believe in yourself. Self-esteem is everything and more in literature. If you don’t believe I spent so long writing, you might want to take a look at my blog under the “About New Eloise” page and tell me if you think I could have made such a description in as little as, let’s say a month (in reference to the fact that one of my novels was part of National Novel Writing Month).