The Failed Plot, and the Novel I Gained Along the Way

When I began my sixth novel, I thought I understood plotting. I’d written five published books, worked with many editors, and internalized all the usual advice: Show don’t tell, raise the stakes, escalate tension, plant clues, pay off promises.

(4 Reasons I'm a Plotter, Not a Pantser.)

But despite all that, I decided to try a plotting experiment for my next book. What would happen, I wondered, if I reverse-engineered a thriller?

I chose a bestselling psychological thriller and I stripped it down chapter by chapter to create a detailed spreadsheet of the book’s shape: twists, reveals, clues, and red herrings.

Then I overlaid my own story, with completely different characters, themes, and setting onto that same structural spine. When that book revealed a secret, mine would too. When it destabilized the protagonist, so would mine. On paper, it looked brilliant.

I ended up with an incredibly detailed chapter plan, one which seemed to contain at least two books’ worth of plot. I was a little intimidated as I took the spreadsheet and moulded it into a detailed synopsis for my editor’s approval.

But that approval didn’t come. Many of the elements that worked well in the original bestseller weren’t working in my own plan. My editor’s suggestions dismantled the book, changed major plotlines, and even switched the protagonist and antagonist. Some of the most ‘successful’ elements—the ones that mirrored the original thriller most closely—had to go.

I’m not ashamed to admit that I quietly despaired. I even briefly considered giving up and writing something else entirely.

‘But this is based on a massively successful book!’ I protested out loud to myself as I paced the house. But of course, the origins of this story didn’t matter. What did matter was that it wasn’t working.

So I tore the plan apart and rebuilt it.

Because the thing is, an editor sees patterns an individual can’t, across genres, trends, and reader expectations. Editors see countless books in their job—unpublished and published, bestsellers and flops. So when my editor asked me to change big chunks of the plan, of course I felt disappointed, but ultimately I followed their advice and made the changes they suggested.

I produced a new plan to incorporate their feedback and worked on it until it got editorial approval. And then I sat down to write.

By any conventional measure, my experiment failed. The final novel bears almost no resemblance to the original thriller I used as a model. If you read them side by side, you wouldn’t spot the connection. Readers won’t see the abandoned spreadsheet. They won’t know about the experiment, the borrowed beats, or the editorial demolition.

But maybe they will feel the confidence underneath it, the richness of characters who have been explored from every angle, of a plot which has been turned inside out and back.

The novel itself thrived in the writing process. The story that emerged from this experiment is leaner, stranger, and more emotionally resonant than the one I originally plotted. It’s structurally robust in a way that feels organic rather than engineered.

You know the phrase, ‘Reach for the moon and you might land among the stars?’ Failure isn’t always a bad thing. Ambition, even when it feels unrealistic, can lead to great places.

The failed plot was an essential part of this process, and the book as it stands today wouldn’t exist in the same form if I hadn’t tried this experiment.

The real outcome of this experience isn’t a reusable plotting method or a bulletproof bestseller formula, but a deeper understanding of story shape, one I’ll carry into every future book I write. I don’t regret the process, because I learned so much.

If another writer felt tempted to try this kind of experiment, I’d tell them plotting isn’t about spreadsheets or finding the perfect formula. It’s about trusting your writing instincts and developing an internal compass that tells you when a story is working versus when it’s merely functioning.

I wanted to emulate a bestseller and I found I couldn’t. But perhaps this outcome is even better: if my own book becomes a bestseller too, I will know it’s because it’s a well-plotted and well-written book, not because I hopped on the back of someone else’s success and ideas.

This experiment didn’t give me the book I planned. It gave me a better one.

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