How do you guys deal with this.....
Scenario:
You have a fantastic idea. It's AMAZING! Yes! You get psyched to write....sit down....shit out a page or two then....
Nothing. You just lose momentum, or forget where you want to go with it, or....I don't know just lose that 'flow' OR even begin to debate it endlessly......
and the worst,
"This isn't my best work."
Thoughts? Help! I have started 6 books like this! The last one I got 150 pages in and stopped dead!!!!!
F###. I call it Monday. Usually, I find a series of small distractions until I feel like I've wasted X amount of time, then I get back to writing.
that happens to me more often than not... your question is not easily answered.
I`m not thinking this will help, but... I find that the ideas I`m the most excited and optimistic about are the ones that dont work out that well on the page. I get better results when I start with an idea that`s ``just okay`` and set out to make it work.... as opposed to being so happy with my awesome idea that I just assume everything will work out.
I haven't tried them, but some swear by outlines. I know Clevenger always talks about the end of a story. As in, he always has a carrot that is the end of the story--or a destination. That way he can ask himself all along the way if a scene is moving toward that ending. I have found this effective too, at times.
On a micro level, each chapter could do this. Where do you want the story to be at the end of that chapter? Or what does the last paragraph look like? More outline stuff I suppose.
Another thing seems to be research. According to a lot of writers, they really stress getting as much (if not all) of your research out of the way before you start writing. Not only does this amplify your original idea, but can also propagate new ones, and even some you never knew about.
There are a lot of great ideas, but is there room for growth from that original seed? I think about the issues you brought up a lot too, Matt.
And like Nick, I have a hard time finding the answers myself.
I do a rough outline in my notebook and start working on a different and less interesting story until I can handle it. Until I find that one angle of descriptive sensations that will provide a intro into the exciting world of my original idea.
The endless debating is the part I identify with most. Shouldn't this be longer? Is this any good? Even if it is, even if it achieves its goals, who on earth would ever want to read this kind of thing?
If an idea doesn't quite click but I like it enough to start it, I don't sweat. I might look over it now and then just in case the residue of inspiration is still there. I have a flash piece that I started 3 years ago but I didn't understand it well enough to finish it until a couple of months ago. A flash piece! The kernel was there but it took 3 years to pop. That's a crazy-long time for an 800 word story, but man it felt good when it happened.
No one's published it yet, btw.
With a short story, I just let it go. It's not you, it's me, and move on. I keep them in a folder on my computer so I can go back and maybe work on them again "Someday". Usually I don't. With longer work, I can't bear to let that much work go to waste. I let it sit for awhile. Sometimes a day, a month, longer--however long I need, then I go re-read what I have got and ask myself what I can do to make it better. Sometimes that means starting from scratch, but hey, a good idea is a good idea, and it's always good to challenge yourself to make those gems of ideas into sparkly stories.
Okay, that was a shit metaphor...but...you get me, right?
Flash is a great tool. I have mentioned I am doing experiments with it. An idea is to think of each chapter as a flash piece. It should propel the reader like that. The other thing is that sense of urgency. Each chapter should have that as well.
Another thing is to experiment with POVs. Take a chapter you have written--a scene--and write it from another perspective. It might help you to 'see' things you didn't notice before. Not only that, it might generate a whole new supporting character. Just shit to play with to try to get unstuck. Vanderpool has that exercise about characters. Basically knowing all you can about them so when you're writing they will take on a life of their own because you already have some of their blood pumping through you thoughts.
Then there is the "Left Field' exercise; throw a wrench in the machine or a girl, or gun or drug or incest. Just to see what happens. Prompts are great for this. Get someone to shoot you prompts. Keep writing what you are writing--but with the prompt as a muse. That works sometimes--it also generates new stories for those 'folders' Renee referred to.
I have a bunch of those too. And I do reopen them as 'kickstarters'. I start writing on those, then jump back on a project with that momentum. That occasionally works.
For me more and more, it is becoming increasingly about letting go as opposed to hanging on, if that makes any sense. Trying to let the voice write the story as opposed to myself.
This is the easy part, it's the quality of the writing I'm working on. What I do is outline all the main parts of the plot and sub-plots. Then I outline the characters and their important scenerio/ personality. Then when I "crap out" that first chapter, I do something odd. Write the last chapter, write the draft ending you picture.
Now all you have to do is spend the next months to year filling in the blank.
GOOD LUCK!
For some reason, I tend to come up with my ideas for books years before I start them.
From my experience there seems to be no easy way of avoiding this. I start like this 90% of the time. Starting a conversation with myself, "y'know this just might work", outlining, laying out some key pieces, probably working on something pretty good then my brin pummels into a brick wall.
If it doesn't end up working out come back some other time and if I still can't continue the file goes back into limbo.
Write something else, even a chapter or two, something you don't care if it is great or not. Just getting my mind off it for a bit makes it seem less overwhelming.
I'm not saying ALL of us are out of shape, just the vast majority of writers. Try getting some rest, drink some water, eat a little better, and maybe work out. A lot of not being able to write for me and the witers I know well is just feeling bad because we don't take care of our bodies. If you feel bad because you are totally out of shape, a rough patch is bad on bad and you just can't make yourself finish.
I use my commute to/from work to sort out my ideas. It feels less like wasted time. Random writing helps, but sometimes the best thing is to pick a character from whatever your writing and work out some development in your head. Twist situations around. Create adversity. Have them lose at something. Kill a character. etc.
I agree wholeheartedly with everything Chester said.
When working on something long, I sometimes view it as problem solving. As in, I know she needs to get to destination C, we are at landmark A, and I can see no way to get us where we need to go. So I brainstorm possible ways of getting there. Sometimes it involves a detour. And no matter if I come up with 150 routes, when I come upon the correct one, it's usually pretty clear. Because it is what the characters would do, and there really is no alternative.
If you don't have a destination, then you must ask if it was a worthwhile idea. Or just a half hearted attempt to create a worthwhile idea. If it is a worthwhile idea, then you must decide what happens next. Easy enough. The biggest challenge I had when writing my book (my very lame awful book - keep in mind) was the three days in there where nothing really happened, but I couldn't just skip ahead, because it was important to show the nothing. (You see why this was bad, right, but hush) And I just kept saying, what happens next? What do people do? Even if later it gets cut, just keep thinking about what people do.
"I just can't write something unless it's my best."
That made me laugh. You'll never get anything done this way. You have to let yourself relax. You make it your best when you edit. If you go at a first draft expecting it to be your best, you'll psyche yourself right out of writing.
Actual example from the actual writing I mentioned above (where nothing happens):
"Jack didn’t know the shelf life of a chicken nugget at room temperature, but he assumed it wasn’t more than a day."
Is this great writing? No. But the point is, I finished it. And is it better to have the ideas completed, but in need of revision, or incomplete and "your best"?
but you're right, maybe I should just focus on polishing more....instaed of getting it right in the first draft....that is a product of my upbringing more than anything.
I wish I could settle with that mindset. My first actual, debut, never been published story, gave me a sign that I'm actually good with this writing thing. So on a 2 hour ride to disneyland I shelled out this 3 page adventure of a boy searching for his missing mother. Nice writing for a 16 yr old, with no title, rarely revised. All I did was put it in a better format than iPod notes and that was it. Man do I struggle to do one of these again but consistently failt to meet up that first milsetone. Feels bad man.
The easiest way for me to fight it is to focus on my characters. I develop intricate back stories and complex histories for them and then let them take over. If the story still doesn't work, my characters aren't right for the plot. So I start over with new characters, and develop histories for them, and then see if it works.
I think once a story has a strong character/narrator, it takes on a life of its own. My entry for our rematch is a good example. I was fighting myself because I couldn't come up with an idea, but once I got a real handle on who the characters were, the plot was laid out before me like I had a roadmap. Even minor details, like what songs and ballets I mentioned, the order of events, the way the story rose and fell, it was all dictated by the characters because I had no idea of a plot when I first started.
Every story I write comes from a first line. I get a line in my head. I work it over and over. I don't write it down. I lose thousands of story ideas because I don't write them down. But once i have that first sentence, I sit down and write it and the rest of the story comes out on its own.
I would say it's like that little hard shit plug that I get sometimes where it's a hard chuck of crap and then diarrhea behind it. Once you push that stubborn plug out of the way... gwoosh.
I wrote a novel based on a first sentence. I've written 3 novels based on a first sentence. Not great novels, by any means... but 3 of them.
Occasionally, that first sentence won't survive to the final draft - it'll get moved around or cut entirely. But it's that first sentence that tells me a story.
The shortest one was, "Dear Jessica." (the story is called Who You Are. No one will publish it). Another (from a story called "Bike") was "At the beginning of summer, painting a dirt bike flame-red suddenly became very important." If you've read Horsepower, you know that story started with "Getting a horse to fuck a guy isn't as easy as it sounds." That's a line that got stuck in my head and the story came out after writing that first sentence.
That makes it sound easy, but sentences that make me write don't come along that often and they are often difficult to get right, and sometimes it fails. I'll write a sentence and then wait... and wait... and finally go "fuck it," save the file, and hope I'll hear that sentence in my head again and that the story will be there. It usually isn't.
Which brings me back to the point of this rambling post. Finding a new first sentence. Where ever I made it in the story (usually only that first sentence or first paragraph), I'll stop there and start thinking about a new 'first sentence'. One sentence that has setting, character, action, raises a question, or just sounds witty (any combo of two is great, three makes it a miracle).
If I can find a second sentence, then I can get back into the story. Try to think of a new first sentence. That's the way I save a story. This hardly ever works, by the way... but that's my method for salvage.
Lots of good stuff in this thread: outlining, working towards an end, letting your characters move a story forward by knowing who they are, allowing yourself to set down an idea that is not 'perfect', taking care of yourself.
Consider also, and this is especially true in longer fiction, 'a' great idea is sometimes not enough. Two ideas, maybe more. If you have a great idea and you sit down to write it, but during that process it feels empty, or confused, or lost, and not worth finishing, consider that most great stories are products of synthesis, combing ideas together to make a more perfect whole. An example many here would be familiar with is Fight Club, which is a synthesis of many interesting ideas: the split-personality of the narrator and Tyler and their interactions, the societal pressures of materialism, the inherent hierarchical pitfalls of secret societies, a twisted modern love story. Each of these would be great ideas on their own, but it is in combining these themes and plots and characters together, allowing them to effect each other, and build on each other, and destroy each other. That is really where the story as a whole shines. And there are more little threads holding that story together; perhaps too many, as Chuck himself has said on occasion. And they don't necessarily have to mix at a genetic level. Juxtaposition, comparison and contrasting, these can be just as effective for ideas that are seemingly isolated from each other, just as in Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World.
But the importance is allowing your ideas to change from your initial inception, because anything that does not change, dies. I find that if I sit down to write a single idea, I work it out in my head and on the page, and it loses its resonance with me in isolation... so I eventually stop. I don't know what to put next, even if I've already got an end in mind. Simply, I just get bored with it, because it feels dead to me. I find that the times I get really excited about writing and finishing work is when I have a 'great' idea that died somewhere along its path, and I think about its relationship to another 'great' idea that wasn't working for some reason and what they bring out and compliment in each other, or what they change or contradict in each other. Making that work is always the most fun and productive for me.
"Jack didn’t know the shelf life of a chicken nugget at room temperature, but he assumed it wasn’t more than a day."
Is this great writing?
Yes, actually. It shows a character (Jack), a conflict (hunger vs. spoiled food [man vs. nature]), heart authority (this is a good confession of how low Jack is that we can all relate to), and raises a few questions (why is Jack so desperate and poor, what is the shelf life of a chicken nugget, what do they taste like, and what are the physical effects of eating them?), and it's entertaining (funny as hell).
Most importantly, it makes me want to read the story.
All of my good ideas started off as failed ideas.
What you need to see is that ideas are (at the very least) three dimensional. This means that the angles of approach for an individual concept are near infinite and connect to every other idea. Writing is the process of mapping those connections.
Don't be afraid to skip ahead and write the chapter/parts you are excited about/know how it goes. Often it's easier to fill in the gaps then just keep going forward 1 to 2, 2 to 3, etc. If nothing else it makes foreshadowing easier.
That has happened to me on few occasions. Once I reach the point where I don't know what to do next I just distract myself with daily activities like laundry or the workplace in general. Out of nowhere it can hit you like a sucker punch and then you're like "Whoa! I got to write that down!" It's happened to me a lot either while I'm in the shower or after I hit my head on something like a sink or hit by a soda can flying toward me. Another good kickstarter is just doing improv, get into character and try to think about what they would do next, where you would like to see them go. One could write a story from the ending and work their way back to figure out where it all began and then it just rolls down hill after that to where they end up. While there is no real answer to this situation there are only suggestions. Best of luck to all.
hey Matt, Just figured I'd toss in my five cents. I think there are some similarities between writing a story and drawing that could be helpful to point out. When I first took an interest in drawing, I'd do continuous line drawings where everything had to be perfect (which dooms a drawing from the start, really). If something was out of proportion, I wouldn't find out until later, and the whole drawing would be riddled with eraser marks, or scrapped altogether.
Eventually, I learned that the sketch is the foundation, the strength of the story upon which everything else is built. So, after feeling the constant frustration of not being able to sit down and write the 'perfect' story, with the flow and tone I wanted, I learned to draft my stories. I start with a spreadsheet, outlining the chapters, or scenes, which gives me a guide. That way, its kind of like what Chester said about each chapter being sort of a Flash piece. The first draft, is often clunky and nothing like what I want it to eventually be. I'll put brackets with descriptions of dialogue or events I want to take place, to fill the dead space, and just push on through, sticking to the bones of the story. All of the flavor comes later on, on the second or even third pass. Then you can concentrate more on the prose instead of feeling that pressure in the moment.
Also, along the lines of what XyZy mentioned about combining ideas, I find a story can really take off if I look back at some of my other half-assed stories that I couldn't finish for one reason or other, and think about how I can combine them with an existing idea. It can produce some interesting results.
If nothing else play with your nipples and fuck a radish.
It always works.
I usually have the ending, and I don't work in order. I work by mood. If my mood suits a certain scene, I'll write that. Then when I'm writing an earlier scene, it's also like reverse engineering. I'll make notes along the way of things that will need to be changed/added in later scenes because of stuff that happens earlier but was written later.
Dulouz is right about the outlining -- I don't know how I wrote without Scrivener. It has a corkboard to map out the scenes on index cards which link to text documents, there are tools for projected word count (invaluable when I have a word limit and want to draw out certain scenes and keep others short) and character/scene sketch tools. Admittedly, I underuse the character and scene sketches because I have such full pictures in my mind, but everything else is insanely helpful.
I used it to write a few stories before I really dug in and learned all of the features (a pop-up window to track how many words you've written in one "session" and how many you want to write, a document pane in which you can type keywords for scenes and notes on revisions and plans for later writing, "status" labels for revisions that you can edit to your liking, etc) and I really believe my writing has improved since. I truly believe it's because I dedicate time to forming the idea of the story first and having an outline.
Also -- it's something like $25 (maybe more) but I torrented it.
And Gonzo is right, too; if I'm listening to a song that reflects a scene, or really need to get a scene out of my head, or know I have the right frame of mind to write it, I jump straight to it and then make notes on what should be developed earlier. It helps to be hyperorganized, honestly, when writing like me. I have a gigantic binder filled with hard copies, hand-written notes, journals with revision notes, etc. that keeps me focused and then Scrivener.