Hi, my name is Alexander Vespers, and I have a problem. I am an alcoholic. Ok not really, but let's get serious. I have never written anything longer than about two pages. I write all kinds of poetry and very short stories; songs and raps, thesis papers, and even dialogue for friends' games they're programming, yet I cannot (as it stands) write a story of any significant length. With an imagination more powerful than a fission reaction at the sun's core, and with laudable writing (about to graduate college-- have won many writing contests with extreme competition), I still just can't push myself into it. I don't have issues coming up with the ideas or with the writing itself. The issue I foresee myself having (I haven't had it yet 'cause I've never made it far enough for it to have arisen) is keeping a story interesting and coherent at... let's say... the length of 50 pages, or even 100 pages. I would retire my hands from writing forever if I wrote something 100 pages long only to re-read it and think, "This is just a collection of tangents and characters jumbled in between two covers and bound together." Is this a common fear or dread that every writer faces, or is this a sign that I should stick to the shorter side of writing?
What you need to ask yourself is whether you really want to write novel length pieces. I have a similar problem. I know that my writing is fine, and that I could keep it going well on a longer piece, but I have a different problem. I lose motivation very easily. I lose the will to write. It becomes a chore, because I don't feel connected to it. I left one of my recent pieces behind because when I wrote the first scene, it was goal-oriented, somewhat. It had its own heartbeat and rhythm. And then I screwed that over and did a bunch of weird things. I do that frequently. The stories I have completed have all been shorter pieces, but that doesn't stop me persevering toward something longer. All my pieces have been stories that have been intertwined with myself. I just have to find something similar that can last longer. Also, all the most successful (adult) novelists have been alcoholics or addicts. Stephen King couldn't even remember writing Cujo because he was so drug-f- addled at the time. It was a pretty good book, too.
I've considered the NaNoWriMo approach, where one just machine-guns 50,000 words onto some paper and calls it a novel, but I've always loathed the quantity over quality approach. Maybe it would provide the ground-work, though. We shall see.
Well then, if I had the idea of episodic plots with a main arc spread out over the series, any suggestions on how to work that out? My problem I think is I'm trying to work on the smaller arcs and associating them with the characters.
^ That approach is fine if you either 1) can write good quality in a hurry, and/or 2) don't mind rewriting. For me, the hardest part of novels is running into plot holes, so if I can successfully crank out a novel from beginning to end, rewriting certain scenes for better quality is the easy part. Plus I'm a journalist and used to deadlines and stuff, so I find Nano gives me kind of a burst, but it's definitely not for everyone. One possibility is that you could write your good, key scenes separately, treating them like short stories, then use transitions to tie them together. But this only works if they're natural parts of the novel - don't try and force unrelated short stories together into a hodgepodge if they don't fit, just for the hell of it.
What do you mean? Is it the transitions you're struggling with? Or is it an issue of trying to make plots fit characters, when the case might call for the opposite?
Build bridges in the shape of fractals and concentric circles. ... Seriously, though? Just build bridges between them. Hell, if it's for screen, it doesn't even have to transition properly if the "episodes" are linked by similar themes and events and such. I know first hand how blessed screen is in its ability to be experimental.
Well, an average of 1,667 words a day isn't that much, really. I can write that in an hour and a half or less if I feel up to it. I just don't like the idea of forcing myself to write every day just because I've set some stupid goal for myself. I want my writing to be more natural. I also recommend staying away from NaNoWriMo. Personal experience tells me that the people who partake of it are terrible, terrible people. Or, rather, they are terrible at being people. I support Mallory here. What a lovely lady she is.
Change your approach completely. For example, just write non-connected scenes and, once you have enough pieces, rearrange them and fill the missing scenes inbetween.
You could try to focus more on the scenes and how the characters act throughout them. If you develop your characters first and then try to fit the scenes around them, you may run into trouble. What you could try is to allow the scenes to shape the characters, how the characters respond to different scenarios and conflicts and so on.
This. The plot defines what the character must be able to do. A prime example being that if part of your plot involves Character A murdering someone, Character A must have the ability to murder someone. The plot can be manipulated to the right effect, but it makes more sense to manipulate the character since humans (as the prime subject material for most characters) adapt to situations better than plots do.
I'm actually pro the forcing yourself approach, but maybe that's because I'm a lazy bum that needs to force myself to do everything. Even stuff I enjoy, like video games, playing with my dog, shopping, hanging with friends, and writing of course. I think all that stuff is fun and I love doing it, but getting my ass off the couch and start doing it is really difficult for some reason. I don't even need to get my ass off the couch for some of those things, and it's still hard.
Not met the best of people on that forum I assume? Me neither. I figured I'd try NaNoWriMo this year for the first time, but I don't see myself spending too much time on their site.
That's right. Basically, I'm saying that there's no point developing awesome characters if you get to a point in the plot where you want something to happen that can't happen because none of your characters are the kinds of people that would do it.
haha nice use of the word machine gun, and yeah man I have the same problem. I'll probably try NaNoWriMo this year for the first time too
I'd like some opinion on the basic plot. The story revolves around a private investigator/information broker and his partner who is ironically a police officer. He's the byronic hero with ill-defined morality. He stumbles on a conspiracy involving the military and weapons testing. I was always a fan of shows like 24 or at least, the earlier seasons. I always found myself asking how I would handle the situation and tried to relate. Being that the main protagonist in those shows is usually working as an official, I want to try making the main character in a position us normal people could relate to. It also gives him his own set of rules. I've gotten four pages of script done but that's about it since I started Saturday.
So here's why I haven't written. Aside from the good old fear that what I write won't as good as what I would write in a week once I've thought about the story some more, I also have this fear that I will be shunned for what I write. My ideas come from my life. So, if I write a main character who cheats on his wife with his sister in law, I'm afraid my wife and family might take it the wrong way. Look, I don't want to cheat on my wife. But in my sick, twisted imagination, I imagine some guy much like me who did and what the consequences would be. That's how most of my story ideas develop. It's like the old sitcom premise of a character writes a book and all of his family/friends are represented (under a thin veil). They read it and say, "Oh my god! You think that of me?
I agree with seascaping, for me it's nor writer's block so much as just laziness. Some days, I LOVE writing, all I want to do is write, I think about ideas for my stories when I'm trying to sleep, have to get out of bed to jot down notes, sneak in writing time at work, write as soon as I get home... this can last for a few weeks, even a couple months, but then I'll just hit a wall. I'll get creatively drained. It's those times when I come home from a long day of work and the LAST thing I want to think about doing is writing, I'm too drained to think up new ideas and too lazy to put any ideas to paper (but I still HAVE the IDEAS, hence why it's not writer's block, but laziness with me - I'll have pages full of notes/ideas but no motivation to actually write them). Those days, I may try to force myself to sit in front of my laptop and hammer words out, but that doesn't usually work. I'll just stare at a blinking cursor until I give up and go do something else. I find the best way for me to get over those bouts of laziness, is to get myself inspired again. I'll read a book or two in the genre of my novel (this is the best way to get me motivated), listen to some music that makes me think of my story, etc. I have to wait for the inspiration to take hold again before I can really delve back into it.
You ever write something, leave it alone for awhile, and then when you come back, it looks horrible? I have this story called, "To Learn to Empathize," and it's like that. I wrote way back when I had only been seriously writing for a couple months at that point. My writing has improved immensely stylistically since then, however the plot itself is great. It alternates between dark humor and dark drama. But... it would be so hard to salvage in its current stage. Thoughts on all of this? Your own experiences? Very curious.
Yes, I have something of the likes. A certain manuscript of mines is up to its tenth revision. This manuscript is the first one I ever wrote and is constantly being changed as I improve. It is sort of like a record of how far I have come. When I compare my current works to the old ones, I can clearly see how bad I was at writing. Naturally, my penmanship and style drastically improved over the years. Going back to see how things were after a long time always bring a smile to me.
Actually, I'm quite the opposite. I feel kind of guilty most of the time because I don't feel that I write enough prose; at least not enough that I complete. I look back at the pieces that I've finished with pride, because I realise how much I accomplished with them. The prose in them is far more stunning than I feel I can currently write, the emotions are conveyed in a simpler, more beautiful way. In truth, I feel as though I'm devolving, even though I know I'm not. I do have a plotline that I wrote (back in February, I think?) that I really want to begin writing, but I don't seem to be able to find the write way to write it. I don't know whether I'd rather do it all from one character's point of view, or switch, or do it in any particular order of scenes. The problem is that I've got more knowledge of it than I need for the story, and I don't usually have this problem. It doesn't look horrible to me, though. It's just bewildering, a little bit.
I really don't have any old stories on file, until I found one in the Writing Workshop from November. The writing looks terrible. And it has no plot line to it either. I even forgot what the novel is about. Unfortunately, I don't write it anymore, neither do I even write novels anymore. I still enjoy writing though.
Okay this may have already been mentioned but I've found that when it is hard to create something totally of your own, you could take someone else's work as a basis and modify that, play with the choice of words, see what kind of things could be changed to bring something like Shakespeare from the 1500's to 2011. Of course it is not the same as writing stuff of your own but nevertheless at least in my case it is the beginning of the path out of the "i don't want to write" -mindset. In addition, it makes you more familiar with how the author whose work you choose to modify writes and consequently might give you new perspectives and ideas for your own writing.
