When you have an idea for a story, how do you develop it into an actual story? I’ve written a few short stories (I mostly write poetry), and I have a bunch of ideas, with no idea how to get actual stories out of them. So, I’d like to see what your processes are like to get an insight into how it works. Thanks!
I've been writing more flash fiction lately, and I've been following a 3-part formula: 1) Hook - something interesting to keep the reader reading 2) Conflict - internal or external 3) Resolution - how did the conflict turn out? A couple of my recent examples: https://www.writingforums.org/threads/unforgiven-562-words.174139/#post-1991905 https://www.writingforums.org/threads/flash-fiction-contest-110-theme-sweets-and-other-delights.173874/#post-1987310
Personally, if i have an idea.... But nothing else.... I dont persue it. Ill write the idea down and save it, but i wont do anything else with it, typically. If my idea becomes a full on scene then ill write out the scene and see where it goes. Im more of a "pantster" or a "gardener", meaning, i dont plan. I see what happens.
I write ideas down too and daydream on them. I get lots of ideas while I walk around the neighborhood, so that's a good time for dreaming. (One day I'm going to drift into traffic. I have ran into trees, haha.) I usually start at the turning point, figure out what kind of person could complete it with style and then work backwards and forwards. A good ending is more important than a good beginning, or at least it should have more impact. That's how I rank them, though the beginning also needs to be nice. (I just feel you have more options with the beginning while the ending has to feel more consequential. It's much tougher.) Then I come up with a bunch of crises points throughout the story. If all of those are there, then I daydream double-time. I'll dedicate my most creative time of the day to it. For me there is a most creative time. Lastly, I start writing the zero draft where I finish the whole story high speed. And you don't want to hear more than that, I'm sure, because by that time the story is basically done. If I have a zero draft then it always works out. The story can change though. I always allow for updates. The only rule is the new version must kick the ass of the old version. It can't be like Windows where your computer announces "I have an exciting new feature!" but it really doesn't. It was a trick. You should have stayed where you were, back when everything worked.
Getting an idea is the hardest part of my writing life. This is because my ideas are always vague and incomplete ones that center around some loose concept that I have in my head. For example, I once really wanted to write a story about a girl that fell from the moon, but what the heck does that mean? How does a girl fall from the moon? Why does she fall from the moon? And how does she survive? Once I get down to writing, these questions arise, and the words stop flowing on the keyboard. Then I stare at the manuscript for hours trying to figure out what to do, because if I don't, the words just don't come. It's impossible to write on top of a loose foundation and figure it out along the way. Yeah, I think this is basically why I get stuck. I think real discovery writers are able to keep exploring and make it at the end of the draft and figure things out along the way too. Hell, maybe this process is even enjoyable to them. But I can't. I need to know the direction I'm treading towards in my writing in order to actually write. Otherwise, I just don't believe in what I'm doing. One way around this for me is the Snow Flake method. There I'm able to develop on the idea and devise it before I write so the actual writing part is a lot more enjoyable. But it's not perfect because I still have to spend long hours staring at sentences I don't believe in, it's just better to do this there instead of the manuscripts. I just do all of my "getting stuck" work done there. Someday, I might solve this completely though, I feel like I keep getting closer and closer to finding a solution.
Well there's your problem right there!! You started with an idea for a fairy tale or fable, and then you started thinking in real-world terms, about physics and human endurance etc. If you have a girl fall from the moon she doesn't get hurt! Maybe she just rubs her rump, says "Ow!", and jumps up to go about her earthbound adventure. Look at The Wizard of Oz or Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. Or look up a bunch of fairy tales or folk tales. It's DREAM logic, not literal logic.
Well, you're not wrong. I tend to be overly logical sometimes and I think that definitely hinders my creativity for sure, but that isn't the entirity of it. It's more like, yeah the girl fell from the moon, then what? What do I actually do with the idea? What does it all mean? How does it all fit into a bigger, cohesive vision? Sorry, I should have worded that better from the beginning Last year I wrote a story about a girl that literally fought herself, or at least a persona that manifested out of her body. The two versions of the MC represent two sides of her internal conflict and each of them have their own goals, ambitions, and views in life. See how this idea has a bit more foundation to it? There's a purpose to the MC fighting herself and it makes sense. Now look at the girl who fell from the moon, and it will seem like an empty idea. Still, that is nothing more than a foundation, I still had to figure out exactly what each side represented, and how to make them polar opposites. It was extremely challenging to do that and it was what prompted me to use the Snowflake Method. So, basically, there seem to be three steps in my process: Get the idea Develop the idea into a solid foundation a story can be built upon Build the story itself (the building blocks being characters, setting, plot points, etc.) Getting the idea? Easy, but solidifying it? Nightmare. Even worse is planning a plot. I need to somehow figure out a way to get from one stage to the next seamlessly. Right now, I'm brute-forcing my way through, and it's not great. Maybe I'm just not that creative.
A lot of people will just write after step 2 and not worry about creating a cohesive structure until a second or third draft.
I've heard of them. Embrace the suck, right? Well, I can't do that. If the story doesn't make sense I just can't go on until I know where I want to go, and that means figuring out the story. But I don't plan on being this way forever, I'm working on a solution slowly over time. It takes observing myself writing though to figure out when I'm performing well and when badly. If I'm performing well, then why? If badly, then why? Figuring this out is largely asking these questions, and lately I've noticed that this issue might have to do something with lose ideas, hence my reply to the thread. The contests I've been participating on are helping a lot with this because it's easier for myself to gather that 'data'. Some of the stories I write feel like a breeze and I genuinely have lots of fun writing them in the course of 1-2 days. Some other entries, on the other hand, take a lot more energy out of me... and far more time. That's how I noticed that maybe my ideas aren't always great. The fact that the stories are short allows me to try lots of ideas! Hence why I have more 'data'. I think I'll get there someday!
Meh, you can go either way. It kind of depends on where you are in your development. Better to write a bad book than no book, you know? And it can be hard to have a cohesive structure until you have enough words to constitute any structure. But so long as you're actually writing things and not noodling endlessly with ideas that never turn into words, fuck it... whatever works!
Your first draft is not a finished story, it's a working document—one stage along the way to a finished story. But a lot of work still needs to be done. I like the ability to largely discovery write on a first draft and then hammer what I've got into shape.
That sounds like a dream sequence. Life on the moon is her escape from troubles. Falling to earth is knowing she has to face them, and figuring out how to do that.
It does work, yes! I've written two trilogies this way and never really abandoned them. I'd say they still need some work though for sure, especially since they were my starting projects. Yeah, I don't expect to produce something perfect. But if, say, my main character is making a decision that I don't believe in, I can't drive myself forward with the story to actually finish the draft. It's still going to be very rough of course and it'll need lots of polishing in aspects, and even some expansion in certain things like explanations for anything like a motive or some kind of mechanic if I'm using something like a magic system. And of course, the text itself will always needs lots of work and re-writing to be crystal clear! Yeah, like that! This is an expansion of my idea. But it takes quite a bit for me to come up with something like this. I've never heard the phrase "Dream Sequence" before though, good to know.
I need the beginning to work. It needs to have what I call the flow, meaning I feel it's working and allows for some good writing to happen. Once I hit a beginning that has that feeling for me, I just write and don't look back. But the characters and situations need to be right. You can't keep second-guessing yourself on every descision, or you'll never get anywhere. At some point you need to just write, as long as it's 'good enough'. Once I feel like I have that solid foundation I build on it rapidly, and at that point you can tear the house down and rebuild it pretty quick. But there comes a point where you need to move ahead rapidly I think. For me anyway. I haven't hit that point with the Beastseekers, in fact I know now that it's an unworkable idea, or set of bizarre dieas, and the characters don't work. It was never supposed to be a major project, just a fun little short story, revisiting those silly things I used to write when I was a kid. And to help me work out some problems in my life. Somehow along the way it expanded to become a novel, then a series of novels. And it's all built on a stupid bunch of premises with an unworkable cast of characters. All chosen for the wrong reasons. I think I did need to work out some things with it, and I definitely pushed my writing skills to new places with it. So that's a good thing. But I need to lay it to rest. I don't think I can just do that and immediately move to a new project. There are definitely ideas in there that I love, and I need to mourn them for a while I guess before I can move on. In fact I was stuck on a set of ideas that were too dogmatic. I wanted to push certain ideas, as if 'This is the right way to live, the right set of beliefs'. That's not a good way to write a story, it's what Heinlein used to do, and as much as I like certain things about his work, that wasn't one of them. His stories were political screeds before they were good stories, but he was just a good enough writer to make them likeable anyway. So right here and now, on this thread, I officially bury the Beastseekers and lay it to rest. I hope soon new ideas will emerge. It's no use futzing around with broken ideas that you know can't work.
It is more from movies, where you see what a character is dreaming about. Then get dumped back into things as the character wakes
Yeah, I know what you mean. It's kinda like food, right? You need to have the right ingredients to mix in order for that potential to be there. There are millions of possibilities and the potential for them is there. But when the idea isn't right, it's kinda like not having the right ingredients, and so no matter what techniques you use, it'll never come out right. I get ya. At that point, it's best to cut your losses. I have to praise you here though. It takes class to know when to give up. I myself a lot of the time will keep hammering a nail that will never go in on and on until I'm exhausted and nothing comes out of it. It would be the same if I gave up from the beginning and just moved on to doing something else with my time. I wouldn't be lazy, I would just be pragmatic. That latter difference is where there is merit in giving up. Case in point, my January entry for last month. I don't know how much lost sleep and hours I poured on it trying to rescue it, only to end up with a draft that was worse than the first one in the end, and submitting it to the contest only to get outdone by everyone. Instead of working with an unworkable idea like you said, I could have been working on future contest prompts, which I'm doing now. Some of these prompts, with the right ideas, came out far better than the January story I put three times the work in. I also discarded a story idea for a novel I got started last summer because I knew that it just wouldn't go anywhere. I wish I could have used that philosophy for my January contest entry, but when I start grinding away, it's pretty hard to stop. I get ya, good luck with your future ideas and projects!
