Need advice writing...

I agree with Chris P, but it might help to know what you mean by "properly." Is it that you can't express the images in your mind adequately with words, or--as Chris said--you're struggling with where in the story to start?

A little more info might help us help you.

I'm the same way. What works for me is to try to systematise my ideas. They tend to come in themes and groups. After that it is relatively easy to put the ideas that seem to go together into the same story and then build from there.

If its a short story, say it out loud. Tell the story to your pet or friend and practice how it would start and end. Then, write it down!

Practice, practice, practice. It's said we all have a million words of crap we have to write out of our system before we get to the good stuff. I think this is often an understatement.

Write them down.

And here I mean two things. Thing one, try writing a story the best you can, but don't fret over a damned* thing beyond finishing the damned* thing. Write for fun. Write for experimentation. Write to tell a story that's going on inside your head. When it's done, you'll have a finished story. Good or bad, it'll be something from which you can learn. Heck, if all goes well, you'll have a story you can sell.

Thing two, write all those ideas down somewhere. Maybe keep them all in an idea notebook. After a while, individual ideas that you had no clear story notion attached to will start stitching themselves together. Next thing you know, you've got not just one or two or three loose, scattered ideas floating around, with which you know not what to do, but rather several ideas that fit neatly together to make a story far better than any of its individual parts.

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* NOTE: Words used advisedly, per “crazy, dark, or otherwise socially unacceptable ideas.”

What Chris said. You don't have to write a story in order. Pick whatever scene is in there right now and start writing it. The rest will come, and you can put it together rather like a puzzle.

Also, don't hesitate to become characters. Talk your way through the situation, through the dialogue, through the story itself. If someone were to look in my window and watch me work, they'd think I was a madman, talking to myself, sometimes even going over fight scenes so I can actually see how to describe them. For me, that helps things flow too.

PS: Keep a notebook or something with you so when you come up with an idea, you can write it down for later. Keep an 'idea box'. I have a show box in my office filled with little scraps of paper and napkin corners, etc. It comes in useful when I'm blocked for ideas too.

... maybe start a diary and just jot down your thoughts, w/o any intention of sharing them. Then you'll have them on paper instead of just in your head, in case you want to do something with them down the road. G'luck.

Pretty much what everyone else has said. Just write even if it is absolute crap, write it down. If there is a story to write, eventually it will come out. If you can't formulate it in your head just start writing and worry about fixing it up and polishing it later.

I've personally been thinking about getting a digital voice recorder to get my thoughts down, and then transcribe them later when I have the chance...

I've not tried this yet, but you could try using Write or Die. Essentially, there's a text box wherein you write. If you stop writing for a few seconds, there's consequences, depending on the settings you choose. This seems like it'd be a good way of forcing yourself to write without worrying about quality.

When you start a story, don't worry about quality. That comes after you've got words on the page.

All good ideas, but here's something to consider about short stories. It's a slice of an overall bigger pie. The reader wants to know that before the story opened, the people had lives. When the story closes, their life goes on.

The story is about the crisis of the moment. Now, what does that mean? A short story should allow the reader to drop down like a parachuter into a party (or war, or riot, or family squabble, or whatever) moments before the action/crisis/event erupts. Yes, you need to have a little bit of backstory to introduce the characters but the best shorts swoop in right before the main event occurs.

Take a mystery short. The reader parachutes down and sees the dead body and observes either the police arriving or leaving. That's where the action picks up. The mystery is inherent in the body. Don't worry about the life of the person BEFORE they died---although you, as the author, need to know. The reader enjoys solving the mystery along with the characters. They like the guessing and wondering.

Or, if your story is about a husband and wife on the verge of divorce, drop the reader in during the middle of their final fight. The damage is done over a longer time, but to describe 20 years of battles would be too much. Better to have a single, weary complaint from one of the spouses, like "It's been twenty years and we're still arguing about our wedding night. Will you never let it go?"

In answer to your question of "Where do I start?" the simple answer is: As the writer, you start to think and imagine where the original crisis did, but you don't start the WRITING until moments before, or during, the real action. Drop the reader in where the people are running for their lives, or about to battle the ultimate evil, or about to step in front of a bus.

Then you've hooked your reader. Then your story arc can fit the word count.

Good luck!

p0eticjustice said:

I have a million crazy, dark, or otherwise socially unacceptable ideas flowing through my head everyday but I can't seem to get them on paper properly. Any advice? Thanks.

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Write all your thoughts on paper, perhaps write them in a form of essay or journal. If you think that they won't contribute to this world, you are dead wrong. Write as if you have no audience and forget about the grammar and style. You may edit your word anytime. All your thoughts might be confusing and seen to be going nowhere but they will make sense after you see them on paper

The difference between an idea and a story is consequence and character development. Making a story out of your idea is like pulling taffy... ask: 'why did this happen?', 'who cares?', 'so what?', and 'what must happen next?'

You can also grab more than one idea. What I did with one story is that I combined couple of ideas and came up with a neat premise.

As to how to begin, pick a topic/idea that interest you the most. Then start writing.

Even if the concept is neat, if you aren't interested, you won't be able to finish it. And those other ideas might interest you later anyway, so just save them somewhere. (I keep mine in a folder called Concepts, which I look back now-and-then.)

p0eticjustice said:

I have a million crazy, dark, or otherwise socially unacceptable ideas flowing through my head everyday but I can't seem to get them on paper properly. Any advice? Thanks.

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Stop thinking about how or whether to make them socially acceptable, and just write. Write whatever you feel like writing. Let it come. You can worry later about whether it needs revision.

Ruv Draba said:

The difference between an idea and a story is consequence and character development. Making a story out of your idea is like pulling taffy... ask: 'why did this happen?', 'who cares?', 'so what?', and 'what must happen next?'

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Wow - I really like this. I have little paper scraps of ideas laying around - now I can do something with them, maybe. Having an idea is easy - making something out of it takes some skill.