I've been working on my story for nearly a half year, but I've only finished the prologue. Whenever I start the first chapter, it just becomes a giant mess of dialogue and I get stuck with no idea how to advance. I want to start writing more of the story, but I want to complete this chapter first. I've tried many different directions, but none of them seem to fit. My question is, how did you get past these points in your writing where it seems like nothing is working?
What you're trying to do is what NO writer has been able to pull off: create something perfect on the first draft. If it's a mess of dialogue, let it be. What's stopping you isn't the mess of dialogue. It's that you're letting it bother you. Stop. At the first chapter, you don't even know anything about this story. Give it some time. Just write it how it is. Once you have a better feel of what you actually want and how the story will work, then you can go back to that mess of dialogue.
I agree with @Kallisto, remember you can edit. Things I did: First I spit the story out in a half partially written, half outline form so I had a direction. I wrote without worrying at all about the writing, the goal was story. Then I wrote the chapters I was more prepared to write. Next I started filling in the harder chapters to write. All the while I got feedback every two weeks in a critique group, a chapter at a time. Now I'm in the polishing phase and I have feedback from one beta reader (my son but he's a great critic, knows what goes into good writing). Other writers can just write start to finish without hesitation. I'm not that kind of writer, don't have that skill. What I do have is a story I want to write and the motivation to learn to write so I can tell that story.
Just write. Don't worry about it being perfect, or even close to it. Eventually you'll find the stride the story wants and you'll stick with it. THEN, when the first draft is done, you can go back and punch up those rougher earlier sections. Not to mention, the more you write the story and the characters, the more you'll know what your story and character are.
What matters for making progress is my maxim "It doesn't matter that it's good, it matters that it's done". Your book needs to be good when it's finished. And until then it doesn't matter. You will certainly do a second draft, you will certainly edit, you will certainly come back before the book is done. For today all you need is "good enough". And getting into that attitude is very hard, because we never like to leave something feeling undone or like we could have done a better job. But the perfect is the enemy of the good. And especially in writing, this is a marathon not a sprint. The way you move on it just to... Move on. Just stop writing and start on the next chapter.
I agree with everyone who already posted, that just skipping scenes that stops you from telling this story, is a good way to move forward. You'll probably rework the beginning anyway, and feed a lot of stuff into it that you don't even know about yet. Not everybody can move beyond an imperfect chapter, I've heard that, but if you can; keep going and don't worry about the mess and the missing pieces. To make dialogue lead into the next scene you can have the characters discuss planned events, other characters, stuff going on in their lives, mysteries and odd stuff, which can naturally point towards what will happen next. I like to think that part of my dialogue's job is to drive the plot forward. I don't know if you have an outline, but not having one stopped me from writing a whole novel for years and years. And then some years after that. If you do have an outline, maybe you started your story in the wrong place without conflicts and things that will propel the story forward. Or you just have idea-block, which is not exactly rare, and the very reason I'm here on this forum right now instead of writing my book. The best of luck with your story, and I hope you keep at it.
That's definitely something worthy of note. Often times even for those who plan very closely they don't know exactly what the opening needs to be until they've written further into the book. Simply not knowing exactly what opportunities will come for you to story tell in the background of the action or what details you think are concrete don't quite come to life and need to be tweaked. For me I don't get a handle on who I'm writing about properly until halfway through, until I've put them through some stuff and seen how they react and how it feels to me to see them do things. Yeah, I have an idea of what I want from them but not the fine detail of it. And so as I write I get to know them, then have to rework the start of the book to fit who they've become now and what I want them to read like. So don't worry if you have to come back and change things. You may find you can communicate more in writing other parts, or that some things don't need to be set up, and so forth.
The first chapter is the hardest to write for many of us for two reasons. One you are beginning a story which the reader has no information to relate to the scene. And the reader needs something to relate to the characters, setting, story and opening scene. How do you put all that into one sentence and into the first chapter? It's not easy. And the second reason is the first scene is the one that has to generate an interest for the reader. I should note 'hook' is often misinterpreted. Sometimes you'll see advice in writing books that one needs to hook the reader in the first paragraph or first 200 or 500 words. I've seen many books I've enjoyed that took a lot longer than the opening to hook me. I don't recall ever putting down after the first paragraph. I have put many books down after the first chapter. Nevertheless, for a new writer, the potential agent or publisher probably does need to be hooked fairly quickly. I rewrote my opening completely more than six times (I lost count at six). I wanted to give the reader a lot of information in the first paragraph and that is not easy to do. It is easier though, once the story is more developed.
Yup, I'm the same way. The first chapter goes through a lot of rewrites along the way for me and that's often what I work on last in revision and editing. So I never sweat a bad first chapter as long as I know a story exists behind it.
When you say "no idea how to advance" do you mean that you don't know where the plot is going, or you do know but you don't know how to write it, or you don't even know if you could write it because you don't want to try until the first chapter is done? They're different problems. I agree that you almost certainly need to just step away from the giant mess of dialogue and come back to edit it later.
Well, I know what I want to happen, I start writing it and it starts out okay, but it just devolves into a mess of dialogue that I don't want. If I cut it off short, I can't get across what I want. I'll probably just skip it for now like a few of you recommended. Thank you for your input.
Yes. I agree with Ginger. You can write your story in any order you want. If you're having problems getting started (and I think that's a problem a lot of us share) then just skip ahead. As Ginger suggests, write the chapters you are prepared to write. If you have a scene in your head that really works, write it. It doesn't matter where it comes in the story. Just get it down. The more of these you can produce, the more your story takes shape. And then it becomes stunningly obvious what you can do to link these scenes or chapters. It also becomes obvious what needs to go, what should be kept and what needs heavy editing—either cutting, or filling-in, or both. Don't get bogged down and stalled at the start. If you're having problems, jump over them and keep going. Unless you are an experienced writer and planner, I suspect the start of any story is what gets changed the most before publication. Life starts at birth—unless you take ancestors into account—but stories generally start at the point of change, or just before that point. You need to identify that point. Furthermore, you need to introduce characters and setting and story dilemmas to orient your readers to the world you're making. It's hard to know for sure, when you start writing, what needs to be included in these early scenes and what can be left out or introduced later. Leave these decisions for editing after you have finished writing the entire story. You can go back to the beginning at any stage of writing and make changes, of course. Just don't get stalled trying to get it perfect at the first go. I assume, after you wrote all those wads of dialogue, that you now know your characters better. So this was not wasted effort. You can now move on with a clearer vision of what you're working with. Just a wee note of caution. Beware of trying to tell your whole story using only dialogue. Dialogue runs too fast for folks to get a grip on it, for one thing. And for another thing, by writing only dialogue you're ignoring a huge benefit of writing a novel, as opposed to making a movie. You can get into people's heads in a novel. If you give us their thoughts and feelings (clearly—not just hinting at them by what is being said) as well as what they 'say' in any scene, we'll identify much more strongly with the characters. Think about it. Whenever YOU speak to somebody, you are also thinking, feeling, getting impressions of the people around you by what their body language is like, etc. In fact, what you are thinking about might be different from what you're actually saying. You might be lying, or just making small talk while waiting for the other person to get to the point, or preoccupied by something else while you pay lip service to a conversation. Or you might be sounding polite when you're really raging. Try to reproduce your whole experience—not just the words you say—for your POV characters. If you need practice with this, try writing a scene where no dialogue takes place at all. Maybe a scene where your main POV character is alone, but something important happens? Your reason for writing this scene is to show the reader how what happens affects your character and moves the story along. What is your character thinking about while this scene unfolds? Remember, you don't have dialogue—unless you 'cheat' on the exercise and have them literally talking to themselves. Instead, you have to choose another method to get the significance of this scene across to the reader. It's a good exercise, and might help to break you of the 'only dialogue' habit.
Some great advice. Pick a scene, any scene, possibly one that’s not linked to where you are stuck and just write. Get some words down
