Muses, where the heck do they live again

[tengraceapples]

Hey guys!

Okay so I have been writing for a few years (mostly plays and teleplays)
Then these characters came to me. I "told" them I have never done a novel but still they insisted I tell their YA fantasy story.

Fasts forward to a year and a half and I've just finished the 2nd novel in the trilogy. Now as the first one goes on sub to pub, I am taking a break from that story and want to write something else.

But I don't know how to write a fantasy novel.
The trilogy just fell in my lap almost fully formed.
It's like someone drives you to the best little diner and
now you want to go there again but you have no idea how to find it again.

So...I guess I'm asking if you guys have had similar experience and how did you move on to the next story? How did you find the diner again?

[lonestarlibrarian]

The biggest one is read, read, read in your chosen genre. See what elements you like. See what elements you hate. What's trite and overused? What sparks your imagination? Find a book you like, and think of what they could have changed to make it even better.

Read the news, especially for a foreign country with a different cultural background than ours, or stories about a religion that's obscure to us. Can you transplant any of their difficulties or important goings-on into a fantasy setting and use them as a premise or subplot?

Look at your own story. What happens if you used a different archetype as your main character? Use a different social status, a different type of geography, a different aspect of the problem in your first book. Share the world, but shift the spotlight considerably.

Good luck!

[eyeblink]

I can't "just decide" to write in a given genre and I don't know many writers who can. The ideas I get, come to me and I work on them and write them. As it happens I have quite a few ideas for YA novels, so that is what I'm concentrating on.

As lonestarlibrarian says, the least you can do is read in the genre, or else all you're likely to do is reinvent the wheel.

[True]

Well, for one, I wouldn't try and force myself to get an idea. Like another poster said already, reading will help tremendously. It lets the ideas flow.

When I want to work on something new and I don't have an idea yet, I usually pay attention to everything around me. A person, a sentence, a lyric, a scene, a picture, walking into a wall, whatever, can spark an idea. Sometimes stories fall fully formed into a person's lap, sometimes it starts with a title or a character or a scene.

Maybe sit in front of your computer screen (or in front of your notebook) and write whatever comes to you. Don't think about it, just write. Ramble. Rave. Vent. Relax. Clear your head. Then reread what you've written and see if you can extract anything from it. Usually, that works for me.

Or you can think about how you'd like the world to be or how you wouldn't want the world to be. Think about someone you love or someone you hate. Turn everything you see around you into a story of its own, becoming the author of this world, manipulating everything so that it all works the way you want it to.

Google the lyrics to a song you've never listened to before (just typing in a few words brings up a song) and read the lyrics. It's important to let creativity flow or if you're someone who depends on inspiration, to go looking for it rather than letting it find you.

If you're someone who can take a character and build a story around them, then look at different people around you. Their appearances, their personalities, the way they talk, the way they act, their postures and body language, the people they're surrounded by.

If you're someone who needs a setting before they can come up with a story, then close your eyes and let your mind wander, creating anything it wants to. Or think of your favorite place and picture what it'd be like inhabited by...werewolves or fairies or cannibals. For example, I once went to the park and the light that day was so strange, the whole place was so quiet, and the woods was nearby. All of a sudden (no, really, suddenly), I thought, "This is so creepy. What if there were wild animals--no, werewolves--on the other side there, watching us now? And what if they came out, wanting to attack my little sister because she was the closest and easiest one to get to? What would I do? What would happen after that?" And it went on from there. I had a new idea.

Ideas are all around us. Sometimes they find us, sometimes we have to hunt them down.

Sorry this is so freakishly long, by the way. I have the opposite problem as you, so it wasn't too difficult for me to move onto another story. In fact, I wish I'd just stick with one until the end.

Congratulations on completing your second novel, though, and good luck with everything.

[tengraceapples]

Hey!

Thank you guys so much. I think I will stop trying so hard and just see what comes. I'm gonna go buy a journal for book 3 and should another story come then good but I'm gonna try not to stress it. And just read,read,read.

Thanks again: )