This speaks greatly to me. I have perhaps been misunderstanding your meaning... that there are two distinct tracts, writing my story for myself and only myself and if I wanted to maybe (obviously there would never be any guarantee of this, no matter how well it is written) published and sold and in which case I would have to write a different story. I am good with writing it how ever it needs to be written to be written well in its own way, for the story's sake, and if that happened, amazing!! What did you do with the 350k word document? Did you ever "finish it" or anything like that or what was the outcome with it? Was it a story? I have ever so much writing from early on that- when my first computer died and I had the files recovered and couldn't really open them at will with ease like I had before on my new computer I felt like I was ruined, because it was too tedious hopping around to my files and it seemed like a great loss. It is a bummer but not so much that in slowing going through them most are useless. Some- I really surprise myself. eiter because I totally forgot what I had written (I came across one last night that was very accurately described being in NYC during the 9-11 aftermath/recovery period) which was the original start of my story, Ben visiting NYC after 9-11 long after relocating to Pennsylvania and his trip to the city sparks his memory of Chris. Originally, it was that he hadn't thought of him in many years since they last saw each other and it makes him look him up and Chris is still alive despite his uncertainty that he would be and they plan a get together and reunite and this time around, when they had previously been intimate friends only, they get involved and basically start a life together. Chris still dies lol lol but different reasons. I realized Chris couldn't have survived the AIDS epidemic so I had to kill him off in the past, which is a bummer, because I still really really REALLY love this original version of the story of them becoming a couple- Chris actually managing to leave Manhattan behind to buy a house in Brooklyn (this was lterally right before the big gentrification started in Brooklyn, the cute little Victorian house I picked out for him in Bed-Stuy was on the market in 2002 for $370k (can you imagine?) to move in with Ben and settle down. But this is a journey. It is interesting going through these very old scenes or whatever you call them. Some better than others. Some reminding me about stuff I completely lost touch with (Like Ben's relationship with Marcy before I transitioned away from he and her being more of a couple than he and Chris) The stuff I wrote about Ben's experience in NYC and his returning home after the trip was fascinating because it is a set of feelings, experiences, mood what have you that have long gone from my reality. It was kinda a journalistic experience honestly. That was fresh on my mind back then. I forgot about all those details of generators running to power the few occupants downtown near the WTC and all the missing posters on the walls of buildings on every corner and that the city was completely closed after the attack with every entrance into and out of the city completely closed- people who were in the city were stuck and couldn't leave nor could anyone come in! Things like that.
It was. It was about a girl who lived a lie through a long dream. The "dream" is an adventure that takes most of the book. She thinks of it as a life-defining moment, but then she learns that it was all fake and worthless. But then she also learns that in the dream, she was still acting with a will of her own, and that the lessons she learned weren't so fake. It's interesting because her development is reversed... and then done again... but in a more realistic way. The whole thing is a tale on video game addiction at large. That's what it's about. I like the story a lot, but the writing is definitely very bad. It needs to be re-written, from the ground up, and some parts of the story need to be redone as well. Bear in mind that it took me 8 drafts of active work to get to this point though. It was a lot of work, and I wrote and wrote until I felt it was "right". Of course, what I feel is right now is completely different because I've improved as a writer. But again, I wouldn't been in this stage either if I didn't wrote those 8 drafts in the first place! They provided me with valuable experience. Someday, I'll find the time to re-do it. I don't have that right now. Any writing time I have is allocated towards the contests. Right now, my goal is to win. If I win, it'll mean that I've gotten better. Hopefully I'll have a medal pinned to my profile by the end of the year.
Yeah, I had meant to add- in response to what you said here- that part of my going through my old wriitng is that there is A LOT more of it. Most of it I wouldn't use now, but when I reached the level of seriousness about putting it all together into a book and decided to start researching rules and format and stuff, that was when I first discovered the concept of "show don't tell" and it squashed my creativity. I have tons of writing where I am basically telling. The more I delved into rules the more inhibited my writing became and I started editing before even typing out what I was going to say and would not write anything. Suffice to say I remember specifically when that creative energy and imagination part of it burned out (to some extent) on part of having that inner voice, that inner critic, that bad guy sitting on my shoulder correcting me. The great thing about going through my old stuff, even as amateurish and without substance most of it appears to me- like I said it is a bit journalistic in that the old stuff contained content that expressed feelings and ideas and thoughts that were very relevant to my inner world at the time, and have since moved on from. That explains some of the areas of my story that feel empty, now. Overall though there has been a loss of creative flow or imagination because I am being so overly critical- the qualify of what I write has matured a lot. It would be nice to get back in touch with that immaturity again, that unabashed sophomoric imagination. Perhaps part of it has to do with just getting older and the natural process of aging and maturing intellectually LOL it would be great to find that happy medium again. Get all that inspiration and energy back that I had in 2002 AND combine with all the improvement since.
That sounds very interesting and also a bit esoteric (maybe not the word I'm looking for, here). It would be interesting to read it and see how you did it.
Don't worry about things like that for a first draft or any early draft. It sounds like you're expecting to get it all right on your first draft, and that isn't how it works. As they say, writing is mostly re-writing. Your early versions of a manuscript are going to be very rough and written mainly just to get the ideas down, to be refined and improved in successive drafts. My early drafts are like patchwork quilts, I throw everything in there, in any form it pops out of my head in. I don't worry about grammar, spelling, punctuation, etc, or niceties of writing like tense or POV. All of that can be fixed later. The early drafts are where you're gathering your ideas and trying everything out. I include instructions to myself scattered in with the text etc. Parts of it are written more like an outline. And I include things that I know won't end up in the finished product, because sometimes I have multiple ideas for how a scene might go, and I don't want to forget any of them, so I'll draft them all out in rough form. You want to divide the writing process up into two basic stages, though you'll be moving back and forth between them randomly for a while—idea generation, and editing. These are two very different kinds of thinking, one being constructive and one destructive, and you keep them separated. If you let yourself slip into destructive editing mode while you're adding creative ideas into the mix, you've let your mind turn destructive on you, and that kills creativity. So most books on developing ideas say to separate the process into the two stages. This is somewhat related, but is a bit different. Yeah, it's partly just the fact that as we get older, and as we develop intellectually, our ideas do improve, and things we wrote when we were younger are now revealed to be sophomoric by comparison. You want to be careful though that you don't let that inner editor get too carried away and shut you down on everything. I've heard it put like this before—there are two parts to your creative mind (I mean besides the editor and the creator)—the hand and the eye. The hand is your ability to create—to write in this case, and the eye is your ability to accurately gauge what you've made. They don't improve at the same time, but they sort of leapfrog each other by stages. And the eye is always first. Meaning first you get better at seeing your mistakes, and some time later you get better at the writing. So you'll always go through these stages in that order. It feels really discouraging when your eye improves and you can suddenly see errors in what you thought you were doing so well, but it is a sign that you're improving. It'll be a while before your hand improves and you'll be able to stop making those errors, but it will happen if you just have faith and keep going. An improvement in the eye always precedes an improvement of the hand, it just takes some time. Your brain has to process the mistakes and how to fix them. It's growth, and that's always messy and erratic. But there's also a problem of becoming too tough on yourself, to the level of perfectionism. That's the enemy of all creativity. Learning about the principles or the fundamentals of writing like Show and Tell is the early stages of growth. Until you learn about them you aren't going to improve much, not in major ways anyway. Sure, you'll improve, in lots of small ways, but you can't reach anything like a professional level of writing until you've learned your basics and got in enough writing to be able to incorporate them into your process and use them fluidly and gracefully. That part takes a long time. It's like learning to ride a bike—in the beginning you're too tightened up and clumsy and you're going to fall on your face again and again, so you need to use training wheels. Then suddenly you find your balance and your gracefulness, and the training wheels can come off. It takes a bit longer to find those things with an art-form like writing, it isn't just a simple matter of figuring out how to balance. But if you keep writing it will happen, as your unconscious figures out how to incorporate all these principles one after the other. But none of this matters for early drafting of a story. You don't worry about mistakes, you just throw ideas together warts and all. You need all of that, because you don't want to go in with the scissors yet, you may well cut out some important things that are just in rough form. You put it all in the pot and let it simmer, and in time you'll start to understand how to refine it and what needs to go. A first draft is a very rough working document, it shouldn't be anything like perfect in any way. It should be messy and extremely rough, in places way too rough. And you don't do destructive editing on it, you make a copy, keep the original intact, and work on the copy. Because there will come times when you realize you cut out something necessary and vital, and you want to make sure it still exists somewhere. I keep drafts in a folder and give them names like [Title] v 1.0.4, so they remain in order and I can see at a glance which is the current one.
LOL I may be doing OK then! I have many files I have saved multiple versions of (1) (2), (3) etc. I just started last night in my downtime at work when it was too distracting to do anything requiring real focus (like study) going through the 370+ files I have consolidated and saved to one master folder for my story. I am going through each file now to clean up or sort a bit. Anything I feel I won't use at all is going into one folder, "original" story stuff as in the stuff I wrote that took place in current day goes in another folder, etc. thereby leaving anything that is fair game to go back to, edit, steal ideas from, re-write, etc all in one place to make it a little easier. From there I plan to start pasting them ALL into one large document, so start consolidating duplicates and such and then start putting into some order. Be it chronologic or otherwise. Given what you said and the stuff I have been unearthing--- I am trying to shut off the "destructive" mind a bit to get back into this first draft stage. I have to say there is an overwhelming portion of what I have written that as I said is just like literally straight telling, outline, describing the scenes, story themes, etc as if I am explaining to myself- to help define what it is I want to say. There are many outlines. All in an attempt to figure out what, again, what I want to say. This conversation is perfect timing to share in real-time the kind of mental block or struggle I get into now in wanting to write. Here I am sitting here and was reading through what you had shared links to about episodic story writing and that to opening a link from within that article about tone and reading writing dialogue. Trying to stay on the trajectory of learning how to write in episodes and turning each scene in my story into a mini story following the usual plot structure (since I can deal with that on such a small scale!) I figured I would try some practice in basic story writing, as recommended, and prompting some random ideas to create an episode from scratch. This was fun... I didn't get very far... but I ended up here: https://writingexercises.co.uk/plotgenerator.php These are two what I generated that I felt could help prompt writing an episode about Chris meeting the guy who leads him down a bad path aka Billy...(whatever the heck Billy's character's new name will be once I figure it out): A man in his late twenties, who can be quite timid. A man in his early thirties, who can be quite manipulative. The story begins on a balcony. Someone has a stalker. It's a story about loneliness. Your character reluctantly becomes involved A man in his late twenties, who can be quite timid. A man in his early thirties, who can be quite manipulative. The story begins by a river. Someone has a stalker. It's a story about envy. Your character reluctantly becomes involved One of the other possible scenarios I generated was that the setting is a bank. That has potential too, even as a motive for Billy to be with Chris since he has money (or access to money). Based on the above, I started reading about how to write manipulative characters- based on the plots I generated from the above website. Meanwhile, I went to Youtube and put on: 8 Hours of Wind Chimes & Soft Winds At Night - Gentle Sounds for Sleep video for just some background white noise (I'm still at work) and it is helping spark some creative inspiration that I don't know what to do with- yet. It's very gentle wind chimes but over rather cold bleak wind sounds in the background. It evokes the vision of Christopher's garden, but dead, and Chris in a similar state emotionally. Instead of sunny and warm and peaceful, it's dark and grey and cloudy- empty. His garden is neglected, his plants have died because it's winter. The mood is very sullen and bleak. I want to just let my imagination run free and start writing like I used to-- something-- anything! From start to finish. This wouldn't the end of the episode I am trying to start, of course, this occurs over time in the story and ultimately where it ends up. Like if you could see the before and after. The prompt helped stimulate some possibility on how to develop how and where Billy enters the story. It has a lot of potential honestly but now I am stuck on working out all the details before I have written anything. Billy just may come about in the story from stalking Chris around the neighborhood (remember I was poking around at the theme of stalking earlier? It's back.) and approaches him finally-- and maybe after a long time-- when he is down at the docks along the East River, sort of unknowingly being preyed upon. I want to run with this basis for an episode. These are the words that came to mind when I opened a blank Word doc to start writing whatever comes to mind: Cold. Grey. Bleak. Quiet. Empty. That's all I got other than the idea I just free wrote above.
There's another factor going on with your story that you should be aware of. Well, you probably are, but just to put it into words clearly— It's a very long-term project that you've been working on since you were much younger. You've grown and learned since you started on it. You haven't finished it or completed a first draft in all these years. The idea itself means a lot to you, more than just a story. Parts of yourself are deeply wrapped up in it. Many of us have had projects like this that stretch out into decades. Usually there's one big one, an early idea that you were involved in when you started to want to improve your skills. Then as you do learn some skills and how to write a story etc, you look at the mass of material you've generated over the years, and more often than not you realize it's too much, the ideas are too tangled together, and there's no way you're going to be able to untangle it all, because you're too emotionally invested and you love many parts of it that are incompatible. There was a thread on a message board I used to frequent long ago about "That one project you spent decades working on that was foundational to your skills" or something. Most of us had one, and most of us never ended up turning it sucessfully into a finished story. Mine was called The Dreaming, and it saw me through 4 or 5 stages of development as an artist and writer. At various times it was going to be a live action movie, animated short, comic book series, mini-series, a novel, a series of novels, and on and on. I worked up dozens of versions of it, and I grew so much as a person and an artist that later versions were totally different from earlier ones. I was never able to make anything from it—the ideas were too tumbled together and there were some very incompatible ideas mixed in. But it did drive me through a couple of decades worth of learning and work and practice. It basically forged me into a writer. I had written many short stories (mostly unfinished) before that but that was the big one, the one I was most deeply attached to. And I eventually had to accept that I would never be able to finish it in any form that would satisfy me, because it was too ambitious, and I didn't know anything about writing when I started it. Later I understood what I was doing much better, and I didn't try to throw everything plus Fort Knox into a single story idea. I'm not saying this is what will happen with yours. I don't know. You might be able to winnow it all down into a story. I was unable to, and many of us are unable to. But it all served as a massive series of learning experiences. The only reason we persevered through it all was because of the deep love we had for that one project.
OK so this is all free writing and a bit straying from the recent conversation because I am sitting here thinking about what I want to write and it led me back into the unending "Billy dilemma". I can't stop trying to understand what happens here with this guy- what his hold on Chris would be, how he gains power enough over him to become abusive and Chris puts up with it. Chris is in love with Ben so its not like he's in love with this guy and puts up with it because he's desperate for his love anything. Plus he's somewhat of a free bird and independent so what would keep him bound to him even after he starts pushing him around? I mean... does he move in with Chris? There's something here and I just can't figure it out yet. Part of me thinks I need to abandon his getting involved with this guy, but I can't. I just have to understand who this third wheel is and how and why. I told my BF I thought I stumbled across the perfect plot element that would make this make sense... but he immediately rejected it on the basis that- in conjunction with other things about Christopher's character-- it is getting too unrealistic or implausible. That Chris' character is beginning to borderline too fantastical. So if you could let me know your opinions I'd appreciate it. Just now I was considering these generated plot ideas as potential ways Billy gets into the story. that being said, I started last week thinking "Billy" could or maybe should have some significance in Chris' life that pre-dates Benny so he feels a sense of duty to him. If we're not talking about weighing things on love or emotional connection or drugs, alone, what then?? My thoughts: Possibly the guy who brought him out of the closet or in some way was his initial guide into gay life. What we DO know: Billy has a motorcycle. He's a little crazy and he's a tough guy but not a real tough guy like Ben is, dig? But... where I got stuck.. is that all that happens in Christopher's life prior to NYC so what would be the link, then? Then I found it, completely by accident, looking up photos and researching gay motorcycle clubs in NYC which led to The Eagle which led via a few different articles and stuff online: ( I won't bother sharing the links because it doesn't matter lol) Europe's oldest gay leather bike club formed in London in 1965. They have a wide ranging network of members and through certain individuals a cross-continental union with bikers in NYC and LA was made and this whole expedition of members of this club in London to NYC and across the US was organized a few years later in the late 60s. The timing aligns well with roundabout when Chris has run away to London, comes out of the closet and comes to NYC. I also never really answered the question on how he ends up in NYC. I don't necessarily need to answer that in the story but... See where I am going with this? They all had a common connection with these few certain people, the members of clubs with those in clubs in other countries, forming one larger circle sort of. Like you had the right connections introductions and ultimately a transition to the US through someone in the circle could EASILY be made, in my mind. It seemed like this could potentially be a great answer finally for how Christopher gets introduced to NYC and arrives with a support net already in place. Brought out of the closet. An afterthought is that this would also allow Chris' relationship with this biker guy who hangs out at The Eagle in NYC to be a direct connection from London, like we're talking a loyalty type thing to this guy.
It was unfortunate to read that after all that time and love and energy nothing came of it. I mean who knows, in years to come I might come back and say, "ya know- you were right about that thing you said." But as you said it was all part of a greater process or goal for you, personally, to be a writer whereas mine is to tell this story. Not sure there is a difference, you may disagree. At this point in time I disagree that that is where I am with this. If anything, the earlier stuff was the story-starter that led me to what I have now. The stage of the story that takes place in modern day is essentially extinct and I have accepted those portions are not usable in any way I can think of at this point. Maybe I will go on to write some more stuff from that well of creativity where there are no limits or plausibility required just for the sake of imagination and talking to those characters again- unrelated to this new story that stemmed from that. The story was al over the place apparently as it evolved from play make pretend imaginary world that brought characters and elements from favourite movies into my real world and transitioned into more of a fiction-based story. As I said before, essentially, a lot of it felt very journalistic through the eyes of these fiction characters. What I was saying is that I would love to harness some of that raw energy I had, then, to be able to delve into imaginary writing world free from inhibition.
I noticed this. I'm pretty sure its because its easier for us to observe and judge something based on our knowledge of what it should be like. But when it comes to correcting it? That's another skill. I made this observation when I was thinking about all those critiques I was reading on sites like Goodreads. Some critiques really impressed me with how thorough and critical they were. It made me think that these reviewers would probably write a really good story if they tried. But then I realized that this is not necessarily the case. You don't need writing skill to judge a book's writing, you just need to be an avid reader to know what a good book reads like. You'll be able to think back to the good books you've read and say, "Yeah this sucks because it lacks x and y." Of course, writing a really good review takes a type of writing skill, but it's not the same as writing fiction at all.
So I mean I hate to push the issue, but some feedback or thoughts on any of the story related ideas I presented would be appreciated. Not that it isn't helpful to discuss the actual process of improving writing, could use some active discussion on the story content, itself, that I am currently working on.
That's a lot to wade through, and it isn't really clear what your question is. You seem to ask two or three questions, and it isn't clear if some of them are rhetorical or aimed at us. And I'm not sure it's really plot-related, it sounds like in part you're trying to figure out who this Billy guy is and what role he plays, and then you want to know if it's a good idea for Chris to have come to America on some kind of tour with a gay biker club? Most of what you gave is detail, and way too much of it, and you seem to also be doing a lot of conjecturing. I think you're going to need to narrow down your questions much more clearly and concisely if you want anyone to be able to help you.
Yeah, I had the same thought. You need to narrow down your questions a bit. Be a bit more constructive and specific. But also, story ideas are just that — ideas. There's not a whole lot to comment on when we don't know how these ideas fit into the bigger picture in the first place. You have to remember that we're writers too, and we struggle keeping up with our own ideas, let alone someone else's. Writing is really hard after all, as you've discovered. It's also very possible that by being concise, you'll help your writing overall. Wordiness and stupidly complex sentences plagued my writing for a long time. Xoic knows what I'm talking about, he's been helping me with it. I can't stress the importance of being concise, and wise, with the words you use. It'll make your writing stronger.
So I am thinking out loud a bit- throwing these ideas I've been having out there and guess I would be interested to hear some thoughts on which ones seem to make the most sense or of if they are good or not. Are they too radical? Are they interesting for the story and/or my character? I have no idea. I mentioned before this character entered into the story in a much different way long ago because the story was written around him. He's an integral part of Christopher's downfall. If I need a villain or protagonist of any sort he's the one. I just need to write him into the story in a new way now and haven't been able to narrow down a good one. He could be from anywhere, it's less important than the role he plays. I liked the concept of Christopher's entre into NY being through that motorcyle club in London- but maybe others agree with my BF that it is a bit much.
Have some faith in your own instincts. You're in charge of what you want to say. You will know when it is right, or it is not. Trust yourself. You know your characters the best.
Might I also suggest you start a progress journal? We have those here. I say that because you seem to be someone who likes to stream their consciousness to the keyboard. Journals are messy things, you can jot down your thoughts/ideas/progress on the novel. That'll also keep you writing. You'll be able to see the last time you wrote a thousand words or more. Every thousand words you write brings you closer to your finishing goal. It works. I used the journal here last summer and I was progressing pretty well. Just a thought...
I don't know if it's been said in this thread, but at some point, prep work becomes procrastination. I've skimmed a lot of posts here, and it seems like you're at the point where you should start your outline. You can revise and change your outline as better ideas arise. I go through draft after draft of an outline just like I will the novel later. Either do that snowflake thing or start with your first scene and do a run through from beginning to end. Maybe you'll end up with gaps in the story; maybe you'll end up with plot holes or pacing problems. It's okay if you do. You can revise and fill in and perfect it in subsequent passes. Even then, you don't have to adhere to your outline verbatim. You'll probably have a few revelations during the writing process that didn't occur to you while outlining. There's an old standard bit of advise that I think applies here. It goes "just write." The idea being that at some point you have to get words on the page. I think you should just write, even if it's only on an outline for now. You're nine pages into this thread. It's time to give it a shot. You might be surprised how easily it comes. If you still need help after that, I bet these fine folks will be glad to offer more advice, but it seems like right now, you're asking them to help you write your story. You don't want that. Making those choices is your privilege and duty as a writer. Don't give it away. That's my take anyway.
So--- if someone is seeking a place to have active discussion about their story ideas like help brainstorm the literary details- not the technical aspects on how to write a story- with other story tellers, where do they go? Maybe I have landed in the wrong place for what I am seeking. Like hey, here's this idea-- what do you think? this is a problem, how could this be fixed? etc. I thought as writers this type of creative exchange is what I'd find here. It doesn't matter if I am outlining, prepping 3 drafts in, honestly. Sometimes it helps to throw ideas at others for some outside perspective and especially as writers would be better at thinking critically about an idea. I have hundreds, if not thousands, of pages of material. It's not finished-- but I need help fine tuning or cleaning up certain details of my story, itself. That's why I came here. I've gotten some very helpful info for sure and appreciate it! I have a lot of resources now to help with the actual process of writing, but I still haven't been able to arrive at answering certain questions in my story that I will need to know. Creative process of formulating or developing a storyline- who helps with that? Not trying to be snarky or ungrateful, I just feel like I am talking in circles trying to defend why I am writing this story and not sure why lol I didn't really come here seeking guidance on whether or not I should be writing this story. I have so many ideas I want to write and have been writing as I have time and creative flow. IDK. I can't emphasize enough how I envisioned being in a circle of people and we just chat back and forh about what we are working on and ask each other for suggestions and opinions about our ideas. Example: The idea came to me that maybe Ben, my MC, could ride a motorcycle. I threw the idea at my BF and he agreed that Ben is totally a motorcycle kind of guy but he helped me think through the logistical portion of the idea. That even though a bike seems like it could be a fairly cheap option for a poor guy in the city because easy enough for someone who wrenches to work on on older bike as needed, uses less gas... that even with an older bike he could fix it would still be something a poor guy wouldn't be able to afford to keep, in addition to a car. These are the kind of things I need help with in writing my story.
I think people could help with brainstorming etc in a place like this (including here), but you'd need to be able to get your ideas across more clearly and without all the clutter. Nobody can read your mind to understand all the complexities of your story, so we have no idea how to help. But also nobody can unravel those massive webs of all different kinds of ideas, information, possibilities, and conjecture the way you're presenting it. It's like a huge stream-of-consciousness dump that needs to be severely pruned down before there's an understandable question there. If you look at other threads where people are asking for help, everyone talks about their story in a very pared-down way. At one point, I don't know if it was on this thread or another of yours, I explained how to present pure plot information, using the first Star Wars movie as an example. I really think if you would learn how to present your ideas this way it would help you immensely. Not just in getting help on message boards, but also, as @ps102 said, in plotting your story and being able to see it more clearly. You can't see it or think about it very well if every part is always loaded down with all kinds of extraneous detail and additional possibilities and questions, some of which are completely misleading or unnecessary. Not only does that make it hard for us to understand what your'e getting at, it also makes it hard for you to clearly understand the plot of your story. It's necessary to learn to see plot clearly in order to create a story that makes sense to readers. Trust me, I sympathize with you (and thank you for making it clear that you're not mad or ungrateful, that was a nice touch really). I can feel your frustration. But honestly I believe if you would go on several other writing boards and spill out your guts like that in such a messy way you're going to get the same kind of reactions. Clear communication is vitally important on the internet (well, everywhere really). And I hate to say it, but I think the biggest problem is that you have a lot of jumbled ideas that you haven't sorted out in any clear way, and don't know how to. Until you can write those ideas out clearly and concisely nobody is going to be able to make any sense of it all. I don't remember if we ever talked about it, but do you know what story beats are? I know there was a discussion about them recently, it might have been with you. The old school way of organizing story beats was to write them on 3 x 5 cards, one beat per card, and pin them on a bulletin board or lay them on the floor and move them around until the story takes shape. Using small cards forces you to get each beat across with a minimum of words. Of course today it can be done in an app, but the principle is still the same. Cut away all the extraneous ideas and expose the bare skeleton of the story, then you can see it clearly and get it organized. Something like that, or using a plotting app of some kind, would probably help you immensely. There are free story plotting apps, and at various monetary levels, but some are good and some are worse than not using an app at all. It's important to find one that works well for you. If you would start inputting your plot ideas into such an app, or writing them on cards, I think you'd start to untangle your ideas much better. Then you should be able to make better sense of them.
Definitely. There are plenty of threads here discussing story ideas and/or related problems. A single idea can develop the plot further, so the plot development board is the right place for this. You're not wrong to be here. The problem is when you throw too many of those ideas that we can't keep up as was said above. There's 9 pages of this thread at this point, and several other threads outside this one, that contains relevant info about your story in the form of long posts. How can we possibly keep up? An idea must somehow fit in the bigger picture of the story before we can provide any valuable input. We have to consider the story at large and what it feels like. But that's hard given what I just explained. When you asked about the idea of Ben riding a motorcycle, my initial thought was, that seems a bit random. I would probably reply with something like... "How is this question important to the overall plot?" But then you said: And that makes a lot more sense. Notice though that your original question doesn't get your intent across very clearly. It's not, "Is it viable for a poor man in NY city to ride a bike?" It is, "I had this idea of Ben riding a motorcycle." Which lead to your boyfriend breaking down its viability further for you. But your BF knows all these details that we don't because you discuss your story together. And I know that you discuss your story here as well, but as I said, we're writers with ideas of our own that need to be developed into the overall plot. On top of this, we're active members of this board, keeping up with all kinds of other threads. BTW your're lucky to have such a partner that cares. That's not a given. Many partners can't keep up with a story the significant other is writing. So, in short, you didn't make the question clear enough (though it was a bit better because it was shorter in form and more concise). If I were you, I'd write: "I have a character named Ben, who lives in New York City. He's a poor blue-collar worker and doesn't have much disposable income. Is it a good idea for him to own a motorcycle. How much would maintenance cost?" If you posted a thread like that, people would very likely answer it. It's direct, clear, and doesn't require prerequisite knowledge of the story. What you're describing is a writing group, a circle of writers discussing and sharing their work. This place is not the same as a writing group, more like a writing community where you can do all sorts of things, including discussing an idea. Just not in the way you think, for the reasons I already discussed above. Sorry @JBean. I know you really love this story, and I really appreciate that. I know what it feels like and I want to help you. But we have to get these things across before we can do that. Be more focused. One thing that really helped me when I was new was to be really mindful of the other members. If I was to ask a question and made a thread, I considered if this would be fair on the others. And I didn't always succeed. I remember I made a thread about whether I did too much foreshadowing, and that went in a dead end because my question just wasn't good enough. People tried to help anyway but it just didn't work out. Notice how I made this giant response at the end and then nobody answered. That wasn't the community's fault, that was my fault for not being clear and focused enough. It was unfair to them because they didn't know my story anywhere near as well as I do. This was a while back. I'm just sharing my experience as a new member so it hopefully helps you.
@ps102 is right. You want a writing group. I believe you can find these online (I don't know where to point you. Maybe Facebook?) but most people look for a local group that meets once a week in person and help each other with all sorts of things. They develop each other's stories and critique what you've written that week. It's a very helpful process for a lot of writers. Unless you live in a very small town, there's probably something like this where you are. Google and check Facebook for local groups. You might find a bunch. Again, these are the type of decisions you should be making as a writer. If you want to run something by someone, fine. I do that too, but the decision is ultimately mine. No one can tell me what to do in a situation like that. Would this character ride a motorcycle? We don't know. He's your character. Is he the type of person who would want to ride a motorcycle? Or is he the type of person who prefers the safety of a car? You can buy and maintain a car as easily as a motorcycle. Motorcycles use less gas usually, but that's only a small factor. Know your character. Look at their backstory, understand their thought process and decide whether or not a motorcycle fits who they are. Most importantly, be bold and trust those decisions while keeping in mind that they don't have to be permanent. You can write him as a motorcycle rider and rewrite him as a car driver later. Nothing is permanent until you send it to an agent. Even then, you can change things up before you send it to another agent. This is the process. Embrace it. Once you start making these decisions on your own, you'll see how easy it is to find answers without asking a committee to handle it for you. You don't want your book written by committee. You want it to be yours and yours alone. Trust yourself.
Fine, thanks. I'm working on my second novel. I'm on the third of three parts, and it's going much more slowly than Parts I and II, but still progressing alright. I already did the whole beta read thing a while back with my first novel, but I recently let my mother, of all people, take an editing run at it. She has an eagle eye for typos. When I finish with all of those edits, I think I'm finally ready to start sending it to agents. I'm a little terrified of the query process, but also excited to finally try to tackle it. Why do you ask?
