A new direction for NaNo

My story for NaNo has decided on a new direction for itself... mere (metaphorical) inches from its end.

So far, the story has focused on a single group of characters. All humans, hailing from the sole remaining empire in the world. There are good story reasons why no elves or dwarves are featured in this party. The elves were banished from the empire because they all went completely insane, and the dwarves are too busy fighting an endless war underneath the mountains to pop out for an afternoon tea. Unfortunately, without any elves or dwarves in the story, the reader is almost unaware of either race's existence, at least until the humans run into some of the elves.

But, as I said, the story has decided to take a new turn. Although I have four or five viewpoint characters right now, almost everything that has happened so far could be seen through the eyes of only two of them, who are turning into the main viewpoint characters anyway. Thus, the story can be easily refactored to have only two of the current characters be viewpoint characters.

This opens up room for more viewpoint characters. Elves (who, while pretty crazy, aren't nearly as insane as the empire thinks), and dwarves. This will also help solve the problem of the main baddies and the main threats not being revealed until three-fourths of the plot has already happened. The humans have no way of knowing about these threats. But the dwarves have been locked in war with the main baddies for a couple of centuries, and the elves live right next to the main threat. Characters from these places will vastly help reveal plot elements when they need to be revealed, rather than when this group of humans learns about them.

So, major story overhaul, right there. But, and there has to be a but, this overhaul won't be coming along until after NaNoWriMo ends. I'm going to keep writing the story as planned (although limiting myself to the aforementioned two viewpoint characters). This plotline will end up at right around fifty thousand words, not much over a third of the length of an average-sized fantasy novel. Giving me ample room to slip in chapters from the other characters, interspersing them along the length of the story so that three threads of plot run throughout the novel and meet up at the end. This will be helped by the fact that the three plotlines won't share very much until the very end. The elves live outside the empire, which the humans only leave briefly, and the dwarves don't leave their caves.

I think it'll work out. And if it doesn't, eh, it's just a NaNo. If everything works out the way I'm thinking it now, though, the end result might be something halfway readable. Wish me luck!