I've done that before, sometimes I have left a story for a few months and then came back to it and felt that it couldn't be progressed any further. I've realised that I do this because the story was not clearly defined before I began. I did not have a beginning, middle and end to make the story worthwhile. Now when I start a new story I try and have all the relevant story arcs worked out before I begin writing.
I go back and edit what I have done, often changing it drasticallty and then I am back in the flow. I am currently entirely rewriting my first novel so I can include a specific kind of bird, I am really frustrated as I thought I was done lol and that is hampering my creative flow. But it will be worth it visually. However I have yet to write a story that hasn't been worth continuing with, maybe as my ideas dry up I will have more of a problem. There is one gives me the creeps I didn't tidy up, it was meant to be a satire on archaeological study, however I wrote about an alien spaceship crashing into the twin towers less than a week before 9/11. Maybe now is time to revisit maybe crash it into the Tower of London instead
Hi Zane. It's happened to me quite a bit, but I managed to get back on track. I just re-read everything and work out whether it needs progressing or not.
A writer is a writer. You can't escape it for that is who you are. To be away from it, feels like something is missing in your life - this may sound a little over melodramatic, but for me, when it happened, it is not a nice feeling.
Like Cogito, if it's been a long seperation, it takes re-reading the entire work to get into it again to even make a decision on whether it is even worth pursuing. And, likewise, if it's just been a few days or weeks, it might only require a read-through of the last few pages or the last chapter.
Depending on how long I've been away, it may take several re-readings to "get back into it". I know the feeling of coming back and saying, "Now, just what WAS I thinking?" It can be disorienting, but it can also shake you out of a rut. I find that writinig is an aggregation of life experiences - mine and others'. So, when you're away from a piece of writing for a while, you come back to it a changed person, even if only minutely, and that alters your view of what you write. Good luck.
I may feel one of two things: 1: It's like cleaning up after a very large, messy party. Or 2: Seeing someone you've missed. It all depends on how successful I was before taking the break.
For how long have you been working on said piece? Last year I laboured for about 25k words over a story before deciding that I was thoroughly sick of it, so I locked it away in a dark corner of my hard drive and started something else. That something else went on for about 25k words before I got sick of it and decided to revisit the older piece. Having been away from it for so long, and after working on something totally different, I could look at it a different way. I spent a whole day rethinking, and swapping bits around before discarding half of the work and going off in another direction. Now, aside from posting on forums, you can't keep me away from it. <this has been an extract from my as-yet-unpublished biography...all apologies>
Thank you all for your replies. I have already managed to get back to my story, I just read it all over, and tried to focus for a bit longer, and now I feel inspired for it again
I read the story, but if it's long I often jump parts, and then I sometimes take a small break. All of a sudden, the ideas start simming again and I get loads of inspiration.
I find the difference between a good story and a story well told fascinating, as a do with most thing. (No matter what preferences you have to define either.) I think this is most apparent in real life when you both have people who been through something fascinating and tells about it with more of less skills for storytelling. And you have people who can spin anything no matter how trivial into a fantastic story. I wounder what how you think it applies to writing and if you can come up with any examples of writer you think belong in each end of the spectrum. And if it is a useful distinction to make. I think so, since telling a story really well and coming up with a good story is two different set of skills, and if you want to develop I think its useful to identify where the problem lies.
In writing, how you tell it is really more important. No matter how epic the plot is, if it's told in a boring way or in a way that doesn't immerse the readers, it will be bad.
I agree. In fact, great story ideas are easy to come up with. Almost anyone can do it. But pulling it off - being an excellent writer and story-teller - not everyone can do that.
Some of the best stories are the ones that aren't amazingly well-told. Harry Potter, for example, is really good storytelling, but the writing is average. The Lord of the Rings is a great story again, but swamped in extra information, and lengthy phrasing, requiring actual mining in some parts to get to the gold. There's some stuff I've read that's been told very well, but in the end it leaves you blinking and thinking, "hang on, I don't think there was actually a story in there..." or else uses sparkling, impeccable language to cover up an average, common plot with little innovation apart from word choice or uncompelling characters. In the end, I find it much more worth struggling through writing for a good story, because I know, for example, that Lord of the Rings is worth it, and I have to read a lot of classics and modern books of renown for my course... Sometimes I won't get into them to begin with, and it's only when I reach the end that I realise I liked it for the story and not for how it was told. It's much less satisfying when you think you've found something good, but it only disappoints.
I think anyone who's committed to lots and lots of writing, revising, etc can learn to be a really great writer even if they were a bad one before. I don't agree with statements like "either you're a good writer or you aren't" (like it's something you're born with). There are lots of techniques and literary devices you can learn how to apply in order to improve the way you write, and to improve things like writing with impact or with a certain tone. But, with that said, part of it is just the way you're wired -- either you're interested in writing seriously or you aren't. And Mel, to add on to your point -- I loved Harry Potter, even though he was a bit of a Gary Stu. But even though the plot of the story is about the witch/wizard stuff, it's also about an awkward teenage kid's coming of age. You don't have to be a magical to identify with Harry Potter. A lot of high fantasy books, though, aren't really this way; I find it a difficult genre because most of them aren't written in a way that can connect and make sense to regular people, and I think that's an important aspect to capture to be a successful writer.
‘If nobody speaks of remarkable things’ by Jon McGregor is a great example of a bland story told with hypnotic prose.
Not strictly a book, but I'll always remember the TV series of "The Tribe" as an example of a great story that was told in an awful way. If someone were ever to adapt that concept into something more edgy, it would be a massive hit I'm sure.
I think it has to be a combination of the two. The story has to be compelling and told in a compelling way.
Just to clarify, I did by not mean it as a either or thing. Most memorable books is both a great stories and well told. And a lot of bad books are neither. And some books are stronger on one scale then the other. Its like two independent scales, among many other scales. The movie Avatar, was a story well told, visually and storywise but the plot alone was terribly cliché without any redeeming qualities that could have saved it on its own. Imho.
Ideally, both are present. But I think good storytelling can rescue a mediocre story, whereas bad storytelling dooms a good story.
A really good writer can take a mediocre story and make it sparkle. Richard Fariña's Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me is not a really great story. It's just about a guy blowing his future in college through questionable decisions and a mocicum of bad luck. But it's a great piece of writing that's hard to put down.
Well we all had people who isn't great speakers still have interesting stuff to say so i say that the message and the story to some degree can save the telling of it too.
Yeah, I suppose it is possible that a really good story can survive bad writing. I'm not that likely to find out about it though, because if I start a story and the writing is just awful I don't read far enough into it to see if the story is any good But I agree that both are important aspects. Ideally, a writer has something worthwhile to say and is also good at saying it.
