So I mostly write short stories. They're usually pretty tight. Only a couple characters involved, never more than 3 communicating at one time, but I'm currently writing one with 6 characters. I'm barely anywhere in the story and I'm 11 pages in just trying to fit all the dialogue between 6 characters. I feel like I hate every word I'm putting on the page, but I keep going. I keep thinking I'll edit it later, but I feel like 80% of it will have to be scrapped. Maybe I'm just ranting about how hard it is to write 6 characters, maybe I need advice, maybe I'm just tired. I just need to know I'm not alone in struggling with this issue.
Two things spring to mind: 1. If you've got 11 pages of dialogue or mostly dialogue, it's probably worth seeing if you really need all of it. Consider whether you can condense, trim or summarise less important sections. 2. Maybe this just isn't a short story? It could be a novella, or even the beginnings of a novel. My advice would be to finish writing it using as many words as that takes (even if you don't like any of them!) and then see what you've got. Edit: As far as not being alone with this, my current project ballooned to 170k words at one point. I knew it was more than the story could bear, but I also couldn't figure out how to cut in the middle of writing it, so I just kept going. Only then was I able to go back and edit it down to a more suitable length (115k).
Oh yeah, I'm definitely going to have to trim the dialogue. There's 6 pages of them arguing about music on their drive to these abandoned tunnels that they plan to explore, and it's almost all unnecessary. Once they're in the tunnels they just keep talking to each other while (at least in my head canon) moving forward through the tunnels. It's just a lot of word vomit. I'm trying to write realistically, but within character tropes because on some level it's a love letter to 80s horror, and I think that's another problem. It originally started as a novel, but I realized there just wasn't enough substance to the story to justify stretching it that far. I might go the novella route. I don't know. I have a website that lets me post my stories, but I try to keep them under 30 pages and at this rate I'm going to end up with 50, at least. My wife keeps telling me to just finish the story and edit it down later, and I suppose that's good advice, but I keep obsessing over the whole "does this matter?" conundrum. Thanks for the insight!
You're overthinking the problem. If I were you, I'd follow your wife's advice and just finish the story.
Update. I forgot to save, my computer updated, and all 11 pages are now gone. I'm almost grateful, honestly. It wasn't very good, and the aspects that were good are still fresh in my memory so I'm just going to start over. Whoops. Pro-Tip: SAVE OFTEN!
I've been writing on Google Docs and downloading a copy every so often just in case. This computer seems like it's on the verge of dying, and when it goes I want to have everything saved somehow, somewhere.
The question is, did all six of those characters serve a purpose in the story? I've written stories with many characters. Some play a part in the story, some serve to add flavour and some are there just because the scenario calls for multiple characters, not all of whom do anything. For example, I wrote a story about a military unit. It was unrealistic to expect that all the significant dialogue would take place between two or three characters without others contributing, but some of them simply contributed one or two lines. What you don't want is a bunch of characters chatting inanely to one another about trivia (not saying that is what your characters were doing). If they need to do that, just gloss over it and move on to when the interesting stuff happens. The conversation needs to have a purpose, either establishing mood, character, background, or foreshadowing. Or have something happen. "Hi Joe!" said Hayley. "Hey Hayley. You look nice," replied Joe. "Did you see Two Guys and a Cow on TV last night?" "Yeah, I liked that Steve gu-" Joe's sentence was interrupted by the shot that caused the top of his head to disappear.
Now THAT'S some serious editing right there! Edit a character right out in-story, sort of Monty Python style.
Yeah, they all serve a purpose. All six of them are directly tied to the ending. What I need to do in my rewrite is split them up into smaller groups as soon as I can. I also need to write them in my own vision instead of trying to write them as an homage to bad characters from bad slasher movies.
You're trying to write with your inner editor in the driver's seat. Toss him into the trunk while you finish the story,. Once it is done, let him out and hand him a red pencil.
That's fine if you have to scrap it. I scrap quite a lot of my work once completed. I'm a discovery writer mostly and I just start in a place in the story that works for me, that I have the clearest vision of. Even if I then jump forward 20 years. I often scrap the first few chapters when I have completed the story because it's just not the best starting place. There's no need to get it spot on the first time. That's the beauty of editing. I've dumped characters or combined them because, while they had an important role in the first 25% of the story, they just had nothing to do for the rest of. For me, the hardest part is getting it written. If I prolong starting I just talk my self out of it or wait too long and the motivation to write that tale just disappears - the results - I never got anything written. Now I just write. I leave blanks where I can't think of a solution and move on, filling those in later. I think of my first draft as a very in-depth plan. I would focus on getting the words onto paper. Once completed, then look at fixing the problems of too much dialogue or pointless characters. For me, it only becomes too many characters when characters have nothing to do and serve no purpose. Can they be used as anything? Can they be impact characters for the main? If not they get let go and I combined them with a more prominent character.
+1000!!! Research has proven that critical thinking is destructive to the act of creation, and editing is critical thinking. Your brain has 2 opposite modes, and you want to shift entirely into creative mode for writing. When that's done, shift into destructive mode and carve away.
