I think this might turn into a rant, so the tl,dr is: How do you prevent yourself from getting overwhelmed by your novel? I don't think I've got writer's block. I know where my story is going, I just can't see the road I need to get there anymore. Not very clearly, in the best case. Ironically, this started with trying to outline my novel. I believe I'm what one calls a pantser? Quick sidestep: I'm hesitant to speak of novels, because I think it's wrong towards people who write actual novels to suggest mine is one too, but for the purpose of my rant I will stick to it. Anyway, outlining. I took the bits I already had and the bits i knew I wanted and the bits i knew I needed and laid out a path only to realise that I don't know at least 80% of my novel. I need to establish why she's acting like she does, how do I establish why, before leading into it. What am I going to do about the gap between her getting fired and stealing cocaine - which seems a logical step now, but there's a re-hiring in there, so I can get here to where she has the opportunity, also there's a new relationship, losing that relationship... Is she losing that relationship before or after the drugs event? I am getting a forking nosebleed. And now the whole thing has turned into such a celtic knot that I just stare at the screen not knowing what to do anymore. Not to mention an incessant urge to get what's in my head written down before it starts fading away. Can't though, because I could start work on the back end of the novel, but how do I write that without knowing what's happening in the middle? What if something happens in the middle that affects big chunks that cause rewites in the back that don't support the good bit I liked in there. It's happened already. Had some good jokes, made my girlfriend laugh and everything. Had to can 'em. Fuck it, you get the picture. I know I have issues, not in the least the issue where you realise you bit off more than you can chew, but just in case you have them too sometimes, how do you deal with them? Or yourself.
That's dumb. "I won't call myself a chef because there are actual chefs who cook food". A novel, no matter how well written or by whom, is a novel. Because a novel is a collection of pages and words that ultimately follow along to make a consistent story. So... what are you putting in it? Just because you're not the best, or maybe you'll never produce it, but a work is a work no matter it's state or who makes it. A sculpture that is 1/10th finished is still a sculpture; just a shitty one. If you're a pantser, why are you so caught up on the outline? Not really your thing. Just write the first bit, how does the story start? Is the character interesting? Is the action there? Is something going on? Good, now move on to your next "arc"; how do you get LADY from employed to fired? Well, shit happens, she takes drug, gets in a fight with her lover, and then gets fired. Okay, that's a general outline. Start from there. Then go to the next "arc" of getting re-hired and finding new love. Things are going good! And now bad When writing each chapter/scene, keep in mind where you want to go and what are the points you wanna hit. "I need character to break up and during her fight I need the audience to really understand how scared she is despite being the aggressor" That's something you can work on, focus, and edit until it is tight and good. The trick here is to just do a bit a time and slowly see how it all comes together. The fight is done, where does she go right after? You want/need her to try and get re-hired but currently she isn't in a good state for it? Then who can she interact with to change her mind? What can you think that would push her toward that path? That's my advice, as unprecise as it is.
I don't. Not until I write -- The End. ... and even still I'm not sure I believe in writer's block anymore. Anyway not for myself it's more fear of the blank page. Motivation is the key and you can use an assortment of goodies - a past that's haunting her, a catalyst character - that's someone that will put obstacles in your mc's way not always intentionally - it could be like a mother saying you're definitely not dating that boy (now she has to sneak around) -- or they could be a character that lights a fire under her (it's kinda like Hans Solo - he brings out the competitiveness in Luke). Also think about what is to be achieved by the goal. Say the mc wants to be a movie star if her goal is simply fame and money that's kinda boring so you do something like Marilyn Monroe give her an emotional hole in her life that even a million fans can't fill. Think exterior goal - fame, inner goal - acceptance. Or whatever your duo might be. Also the more you narrow the goals the more precise your details can be - if your mc wants to be a fashion designer that's pretty broad and gets overwhelming but if you decide she wants to design fashions for a new rock star making the club circuits in L.A. you narrow it down. Narrow it down further by turning the rock star into a catalyst character - he lives in denim, he's color blind and he's not impressed with the mc. Not she's got to find a way to restyle this guy in order to achieve her goal. I've written scenes out of order. That's what I did before the first draft of my novel. I won't recommend it or diss it because it can work but it can also leave you with a lot of unused scenes so it's up to you to decide if that's something you want to try. Also I wouldn't worry about screwing things up too much in the first draft - that's the exact moment to try all the stuff you won't have time for later on. Also don't stress chopped scenes I have whole chapters that need to be scrapped for word count. It makes you wince but I've gotten over it because the story as a whole is better. Personally I'd head back to your character and figure out what's driving her. That's going to help you focus the scenes a bit more to understand why she's doing what's she's doing. Make sure you have enough characters and life events and self destructive traits that impede her goals. I did a complete overhaul of my novel - the last half had to be rewritten with a twist and a character brought in on an earlier timeframe. Whole chapters were scrapped, the theme changed. It was hard and scary cause at that point I was like my book is in tatters but it worked and the new draft is a definite improvement. Hang in there.
Bundle the damn thing into a fat folder and set it aside for 40 years. Amazingly, when you pick it up again, everything makes sense and it falls neatly into 100,000 or so words. I'm only lying a little bit. The original was a sheaf of chaotic notes, lists and diagrams on used fanfold printouts from work, plus a quarter of a first draft inexpertly typed on yellow newsprint - two different versions, actually. About 4 years later, I revived it during an enforced sojourn in an unfurnished house in Toronto, but that contract ended in two months, so all I'd done was drink a lot of wine, smoke a lot of Cameos, walk a lot of depressing late winter streets and produce another 40 pages of disconnected incidents - on a better typewriter. Another 5 years later, in an unfurnished house in Los Angeles, in possession of a primitive word processor, I resumed work on the mess. Drank a lot of cheap and quite good wine, smoked a lot of Craven Menthols, walked a lot of idyllic sunny hills and produced another 12 keepable but incoherent pages in just under a month. Last winter, my SO said wistfully, "I really regret not letting you finish that science fiction novel. I wish i could read it." It's not like I had anything better to do, so I dug out the pile of yellow paper, looked through it, stared at the ceiling for a few days, then sat down to my excellent second-hand computer, without a whiff of nicotine or slurp of alcohol, and wrote it in four months. Suddenly, it just made sense.
I love this advice. Especially the suggestion about narrowing the goals. It's too easy to start to include too many widespread issues in a novel. The more specific you can get, the better. I love Peach's illustration of the fashion designer. Exactly. See if you can narrow it down to THAT particular character of yours, and exactly what she's facing—like Peach has illustrated. And realise you don't have to show/tell every aspect of all aspects of her backstory either. Take her for what she is now and move her forward. By the way she behaves and reacts, we should be able to piece her past together to some extent. Maybe one important flashback can set this up. As Peach also said, this is your first draft. You will write lots that you will discard. I know I discarded over one third of my novel during the second and subsequent edits. It was easy to do, because I could see why these bits weren't needed IN THE FINAL VERSION. However, I think they were necessary while I wrote the thing. They let me see what could have happened ...and ultimately didn't. And what did happen, but wasn't crucial to the story. It's all a learning experience. Even the stuff that doesn't work.
I understand what you're saying. Yes, we're all writers and writers produce novels, much like I'm also a guitarist that produces notes, but I'm still not going up to Jimmy Page saying, "Hey, that Stairway-thing you were on about? I took out the solos and it's about an elevator now." However, I'm mainly just trying, as another-guy-that-can-spell-who-thinks-he's-a-writer, to not be offensive to actual writers. True. And it's worked for every short story I did finish. Which is the argument I brought when my girlfriend said I should maybe try some sort of outlining, but her counter was, "Yeah, but those weren't what you're doing now." her argument held at least some water, so I figured I'd give it a go. And I think, once I get over myself, that it might actually help. I had that written down. That I don't believe in writer's block. Then I figured people who might actually have writer's block would disagree so I changed it. I do have the blank page thing though. Every single time I start a chapter, I'm thinking, I know what's going to happen, but how do I start the bastard? She's in my head. I know exactly what's driving her. I know her so well, that's she's a physical body away from us having an affair. Except I don't really know how to write her drive without going back and producing four chapters of booooring. I get that. Last time I did that it lasted about ten years. Actually, I've looked back at things I've written while angry or depressed and they're considerable better than the rest of it. Maybe I'll put on some Type O Negative when I sit down tonight, see if that kickstarts anything. You might not have intended it, but that was a good tip. Heathen! I've said it before, I'll say it again: I might need a psychological forum more than a writing forum. You write a first draft. I have a stone tablet, into which I chisel mystical words that I will then carry down from my electrically reclining mountain, and those will be the gospel! Heed my scriptures! HEED THEM! Or, to speak like a normal human being, I need to get it right on the first go and I don't know why either. Anyway people, thanks for indulging me in this... episode.
Oh, I'm still a heathen, but I've kicked the cigarette habit. (Of course, I couldn't write a single sentence worth keeping for almost ten years after I quit.)
I'd say that highlighted bit, if you meant it, is probably what you need to let go of. Because it's just not going to happen. Nobody is ever perfect at anything right out of the starting gate. Writing is no different from learning to walk, learning how to play a musical instrument, learning to cook, learning to drive a car, etc. Nothing wrong with persevering till you do get it right ...in fact that's what marks the difference between wannabes and success stories. But to expect you'll never make a mistake? And if you do make one, that means you're a failure? I'm sure you haven't carried that notion with everything you do, otherwise you'd still be sitting in a playpen, being fed by Mom. So don't nourish this notion when it comes to writing. It's not realistic. You don't have to SHOW anybody your mistakes. But don't be afraid to make them. Writing is about as risk-free an activity as I can think of. There's nothing you do that can't be undone. Develop the ability to analyse your product and figure out how to 'fix' it. Give yourself plenty of raw material to work with. Then build it into something good.
How do you keep from being overwhelmed? You do it a lot until you're good at it. You learn how to make all the working parts function well together. You turn weaknesses into strengths. It takes time and effort and frustration, but eventually, if you do it long enough, you figure it all out. There is no easy way to the goal. I am continually shocked by people today, people who think that unless they can be guaranteed success in everything they do, they're not even going to try. If that first book that they're trying to write isn't going to be the next Harry Potter, they're not even going to try to write it. They simply do not understand the time commitment and hard work that becoming a writer, even an amateur writer, actually entails. Instead, I see tons of people who seem to think that just trying, making any kind of effort, ought to guarantee success. It doesn't work that way, sorry. It never has and it never will. You get out there, you bust your butt, you give it your all and you may still fail. Then you get up, dust yourself off and get back on the horse as many times as it takes.
I make mistakes. You pretty much can't learn without mistakes. We agree in this. Does it mean you're a failure? No, but I am. Without going needlessly in depth, it's a thing I've been dealing with as long as I can remember. It's not completely debilitating, I'll admit, especially now I'm 40-ish years wiser, but it can still cause me to sit or lie and stare trying to find the bit where I can start peeling off the plastic and do the thing. Work just did. This is the new host of the show I'm working for right now and looking at her coming into the studio a whole flood of ideas rushed in. It'll mean having to go almost all the way back to start, but as you good people have stated, that's normal.
Sorry, I'd missed your post just now. You're describing my dayjob. I'm not sure if you are addressing me directly or just expressing your discontent for a group of people, I do feel I should respond. This isn't my first attempt, but it is the first one that would bother me if it turned to shit. As far as not-harry-Potter-ness goes, I'm not even writing this with the intent to publish it. I'll openly admit that in my head I have head discussion with the director about what was going to play my MC, but I'm still fully capable of separating fantasy from reality. And the reality is that I am writing this for me alone, if it turns out that someone else likes it, good. Problem with that is that my current audience is kinda picky.
Your last sentence made me smile. If it's any comfort, there is no writer, alive or dead, whom everybody likes. So what is 'perfection?' What are 'no mistakes?' The trick isn't making no mistakes. The trick is learning how to fix the ones that bother you. But in order to do that, you have to actually write your story, all the way to the end. See if you can change the way you think about it a bit: Not: I must not ever make a mistake. But, instead: I must not show my story to anybody until I think it's perfect. That gives you some wiggle room to work on the thing, without compromising your end goal.
The "panic" has died down a little because I'm writing and trying a new angle to see if that works out better. So far, so... acceptable. I'll make a new panic-thread in a week. ;o)
Don't. I don't want to sound rude - because self-doubt is normal and we all get it from time to time, but it becomes old very quickly if you do it too often. There comes a point where the advice becomes "just write". Save your points for when you really need to use them.
Contrary to writing technique, I'm well aware of forum etiquette. I was just poking fun at my own insecurities.
No, I wasn't talking about you, just the observations that I and a lot of other authors have made of late. Nobody wants to try, they want guaranteed success before they even make an attempt. You will find lots of people showing up on forums and subreddits saying "here's my idea, is it going to sell before I bother to write the book". Finding people who aren't at all interested in the harsh reality of publishing is easy. They'd rather live in a fantasy world where it's all simple, they don't have to try and they're going to get rich. It doesn't work that way. At the end of the day, the reality is that nobody has a vested interest in your success but you. All we can do is point out the realities of writing, often learned through decades of direct experience. Whether anyone takes that advice is entirely up to them. It isn't hard to find people out there who simply stick their fingers in their ears and insist that reality is wrong if it gets in the way of their fantasy. Those people don't tend to get very far.
Going through this myself right now with a current idea (some on here know about this struggle as they've been helping me). It felt like every time I came up with a new idea to answer one plot hole, it just opened the door to another. I am someone who suffers anxiety and sets the bar way too high for myself. I expect too much and so am constantly disappointed by what I create. I keep thinking: “I'm not getting the full potential from this idea. What if someone else could have done better with this concept?”. I'm that person who is constantly trying to improve myself, everyday I want to be a better version of myself than the day before and so my writing gets sucked into that. Sometimes I tell myself to stop it. I also tend to think too much about my ideas and get sick of them quickly because I can't seem to turn my mind off. When getting overwhelmed with an idea I like to take a step back, take a deep breath and have some time off. I often catch myself thinking again and stop. I try to preoccupy my mind with others things. Sometimes just for 24 hours and sometimes for longer. It's ok to take a break and focus on other things in your life for a while. I like to come onto writing forums and read other people's work and help others. I find it calms and inspires me to help others. Or when in a tizzy I reach out and ask others on here what they think. Sometimes it's all in my head and I need to be told I'm just being an idiot and it's not the jumbled mess I think it is. But if it is a mess, when I come back after a break, I just sit and go through everything slowly. Just to refresh my memory, then begin fixing things. Letting my mind calm down helps me see more clearly. Hope this helps x
I'm sure there's a good quote or old saying about learning from your "elders" that eludes me at the moment. Also, I tried to go and edit the post of mine you replied to, but it wasn't possible anymore. The grammar in there is so abysmal that I need to apologize for it. Exactly this. It may not always help you get restarted, but at least you'll know when to shut the funk up. ;o)
TL;DR: What you are going through is good. Only it needs to become more intense, which it will, if you give it time. This is funny and sweet. I was here some two years back. Not that I am much better. But you eventually get the idea that this slump is a part of the process. No fertile ideas would come without this super irritation with oneself. This is what writing is all about. And if you can write just this bit in a way that is confident and lucid, it might be a novel by itself. What I am beginning to understand more and more is that writing is less about ideas and far more about the structure of your narrative. You have to think, or at least I have to think about what happens in the overall narrative. I have still not finished the first narrative I was working on. I have already thrown out two plots that I chalked out for the second. Right now working with a third. Then there is preliminary research that I started for a third story when I got too happy with finalizing an outline for the first. As it has turned out, it was only an outline, to much of my chagrin. I wish there was a venting thread on this forum somewhere, where one can just go and vent all the pent up energy and emotion and find some voice that sounds like one of the characters instead of me just stupidly pleading my characters to start speaking. Something! Anything! Speaking anything you cardboard creatures. How do I bring you to life? HOW? That is the question we all struggle with, I believe. Or at least the two of us are struggling with currently. Watch Midnight in Paris for motivation. Read Story by Robert McKee for story structure.
The Not Happy Thread. Or Things That Annoy Me But Shouldn't, but in this case it should annoy you, so no.
I'm always reminded of an old Will Smith interview I saw long ago. He approaches his career like building a brick wall. You don't focus on building the wall. You focus on laying each brick as perfectly as you can. And eventually, you will have a wall.
