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  1. OurJud

    OurJud Contributor Contributor

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    Has a single sentence ever killed your story?

    Discussion in 'The Lounge' started by OurJud, Oct 21, 2017.

    This might seem like a ridiculous question because the answer is simple: if it happens, get rid of the sentence and take a different approach.

    No, there's no real excuse for letting a sentence kill your story, but it happened to me nonetheless (at least, should I say, I allowed it to). It was a very weird experience.

    Maybe I'd just reached my usual threshold for novel writing, but I wrote this one sentence (the start of a new scene) and could literally feel every drop of desire, enthusiasm and interest in my story drain away like someone has sliced open my creative jugular.

    That was about nine days ago now and I haven't even so much as opened the draft since.
     
  2. Trish

    Trish Damned if I do and damned if I don't Contributor

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    Nope, can't say it is. But as you said - the cure is simple - 'delete'. Obviously, your story needs to go a different direction than the one you're taking it.
     
  3. Lifeline

    Lifeline South. Supporter Contributor

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    Not a single sentence, no. Usually I need more about 300-500 words until I figure out that this scene is just wrong. You're just more apt at recognising the stop sign!

    And it doesn't kill the story, it just blocks my writing until I figure out that I need to take a different approach. Sometimes I'm dense and don't want to kill this specific darling of an idea, but until and unless I let go of it, I'll not get around the block. I understand there are people around who work a different way, but for me it's always been that the story transcends my egoistic idea of it, so if the story isn't happy with the way I write it, then... :brb:

    The story is always right :D
     
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  4. Iain Aschendale

    Iain Aschendale Lying, dog-faced pony Marine Supporter Contributor

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    I've been struggling for.... far too long with a story because I can't think of how to refer to an alien character. It's an ambassador, so I can say:

    without any problems, but since it's the only intelligence onboard, alternating "the ambassador" and "it" over and over is driving me nuts, but any name I try to give it sounds ludicrous. The whole story (which is all mapped out) is halted over this issue.
     
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  5. OurJud

    OurJud Contributor Contributor

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    I'm not sure I've taken a wrong turn, so much, as with just a single sentence I hadn't really taken any turn. It wasn't just that I hit the proverbial brick wall, more that I stepped into a box and someone locked the door.

    I think in truth I've just grown bored of the story. There's nothing wrong with it, the plot is sound and engaging enough, but I'm bored of it and I don't know what the answer is.
     
  6. Lifeline

    Lifeline South. Supporter Contributor

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    Is it? Engaging you I mean? Because it doesn't sound so.

    Where did you leave your passion? Has it been there at the start? Where have you dropped it? Has it been for a character, for a theme, for... whatever? Find the gem and feed the fire, and maybe rethink your plot.
     
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  7. OurJud

    OurJud Contributor Contributor

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    I'm really quite fickle and honestly believe I would grow bored of a story, no matter how exciting and engaging. However, it's possibly truer to say I've grown bored of the creative process of writing more so than the story itself.

    My creative appetite just isn't big enough to see off the draft of a full-length novel.
     
  8. Cave Troll

    Cave Troll It's Coffee O'clock everywhere. Contributor

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    No...wait...I bet I could.

    The final sentence of my WIP being:

    We all linked arms, and skipped off into the sunset.

    That would be a nail to my stories coffin. :D
     
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  9. Poetical Gore

    Poetical Gore Member

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    Are there any other characters at all in your book? Or is this just a chapter thing? If there are no other characters switch to 1st person.
    If there are other characters then name it....Alf is a good alien name....
     
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  10. Cave Troll

    Cave Troll It's Coffee O'clock everywhere. Contributor

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    Have you considered giving them a gender? That might make it less over the line, than using 'it'.
    While I do have a character that technically can be identified as 'male' (but for all intents and
    purposes has no genitalia, seeing as it is a brain in a robotic body), I use 'it' and 'his' name (minus
    his extended serial number) interchangeably.

    Though I understand the problem of coming up with an 'Alien' name that does not sound overly doofy. :p
    Perhaps if you shared a brief bio of the character, the forum collective could help you come up with a
    name. (Or there is always the online name generators.) Good Luck. :)
     
  11. ChickenFreak

    ChickenFreak Contributor Contributor

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    Gender-neutral singular they/their?
    A title instead of a name? (The Primary Interstellar Ambassador, or PIA?)
    Some rephrasing? (...checked the ship's sensors...)
     
  12. Poetical Gore

    Poetical Gore Member

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    Or he could name him something classy and descriptive like Fishface. Shit, if you can call a character Leatherface then why not?? ?
    [​IMG]

    Fishface watered his lawn. Fishface went warpspeed. Fishface sent his alimony check via next day mail.

    On a serious note in my book if the narrator does not know a person's name he will make up one based on the person's description, like Old Hag.
     
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  13. Cave Troll

    Cave Troll It's Coffee O'clock everywhere. Contributor

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    I have done this with one of my MCs. Calls this one guy Mr.Twig, but in an insulting way. :p
     
  14. izzybot

    izzybot (unspecified) Contributor

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    I recently went through the pit that is my unfinished short stories folder and found plenty of evidence that I've done this. Get maybe a couple paragraphs in, maybe just a couple sentences, and just completely lose interest. I definitely remember times that I've been hyped to write something, put down that first sentence, and immediately stopped caring, too. With short stories I usually just junk'em, maybe saving the concept of them in my 'bullshit ideas' file (I'm not sure why I called it that, but that's its name now), but with a novel I'm more prone to just writing through it making continuous "uuuggghhh" noises until I hit the sentence I actually should've started with.

    Maybe you could just call it Ambassador as a proper noun? At least temporarily.
     
  15. Poetical Gore

    Poetical Gore Member

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    as opposed to complimenting someone by naming them Mr Twig
     
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  16. Cave Troll

    Cave Troll It's Coffee O'clock everywhere. Contributor

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    That would only be a compliment if he were a walking-stick like creature.
     
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  17. OurJud

    OurJud Contributor Contributor

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    I think we all do this, but I was 20,000 words into my novel when it happened.
     
  18. izzybot

    izzybot (unspecified) Contributor

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    Hence my further comment about writing through it in a novel.
     
  19. Iain Aschendale

    Iain Aschendale Lying, dog-faced pony Marine Supporter Contributor

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    Yeah, I probably just need to suck it up and give it a name. The Ambassador is the last of its species, an uploaded consciousness in a ship traveling towards Earth. Its homeworld was destroyed by a (gamma ray burster, subject to change once I do some more research, must be a radiation-based interstellar natural event), so we've got to do some memory flashbacks to establish all of that, interspersed with growing knowledge of the culture it's traveling towards as it moves through the radio signals, leading up to a grand conclusion (short story, maybe 4k-ish target?). Point is, it almost all takes place in the Ambassador's "head," aboard ship, which gets a bit repetitive. Maybe I'll take a try at first, although I feel that close third is best.

    Diary maybe? Dunno, thanks for the suggestions anyway.
     
  20. stormjinx

    stormjinx New Member

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    Yes, unfortunately...
    A novel I was working on for 2 years. Deleted the whole thing. It was about halfway done.

    There is more to what happened, but I wrote a line about a cat who was comforting my war-torn protagonist. One of the other characters mentioned the cat was in heat. For some reason I broke down. Whole thing out the window.

    It was a depressing novel-to-be.... Perhaps I just didn't want to be a negative influence on the world. But the story was planned to have a happy ending.
    Oh well. It's gone.

    edit: Wow, I was about 20k words into my novel when this happened, as well.
     
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  21. OurJud

    OurJud Contributor Contributor

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    Interesting.

    The line that killed mine was inconspicuous enough:
    Even reading it now after all this time fills me with a feeling of hopelessness and despair... almost nausea. It's like that moment you suddenly realise you're sharing your life with someone for whom you don't really care.
     
  22. ChickenFreak

    ChickenFreak Contributor Contributor

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    I'm not understanding this concept. I don't need to understand it, I realize, but...I'm totally at a loss. I mean, I can understand losing interest, but I can't understand a single line triggering that process.
     
  23. OurJud

    OurJud Contributor Contributor

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    No, you and me both.

    I'm no doubt reading far more into this than I should, and dare say that writing this sentence simply coincided with my loss of interest. But, I know from experience that my loss of interest, although inevitable, comes on gradually. This time it was a sudden shut-off, and it came with that sentence. When I wrote that sentence my novel dropped off the edge of a cliff into an abyss of nothingness.
     

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