Thinking and Dreaming

Interesting question....I had this one rolling around for several months in my head.

I ran and re-ran thru it...got my lead guy all squared around in my mind of what he would be like. Got all the little minor things kind of lined up....but then...i may have way over done it on the thinking part of it......

Since I'm not S. King yet, I have to take a little more time.
By the time i started putting it on paper ...i was consumed with it...and yes...i dreamed about it...

One night i 'typed 'a bunch of it out in my dream...and in my dream when i went to print it...is when i realized it was a dream.....too bad i don't have a printer hooked up to my mind......would save a lot of time.....


I LOVE YOU GUYS.....

It's an ongoing process for me. I'm still brainstorming my current WIP as I'm writing it. I'm also dreaming up three other novels. I know that when my current WIP is finished, I'll have all the laws of my fictional universe in place, and like Stephen King, I'll have my favorite city where every story happens.

Puddle Jumper said:

I wish my dreams would write themselves, that would be so much simpler. I find when I go to write, I need to be more mindful of style and structure.
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I want a cable that I plug into my head and a USB port that will just allow me to download the story from my brain into the computer. Wouldn't that be great?



Susan G.
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www.susangable.com

Hmmm, all the time, I think. Even when I wasn't working on it I was still thinking about it. It plays like a movie in my head.

Puddle Jumper said:

How long do you generally spend just thinking and dreaming about your story before you actually sit down and begin writing it?

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I usually think and dream about my stories quite a bit both before and during the writing stage. I have very vivid dreams and several of my story ideas started out as dreams. There's no set time limit on how long I'll spend thinking about the ideas before I actually start writing them in the waking world. If the story is particularly compelling I will start on it immediately. If it needs to germinate awhile before I can really get a feel for it, then it might take a lot longer before I put pen to paper--or start typing, I should say.

Susan Gable said:

I want a cable that I plug into my head and a USB port that will just allow me to download the story from my brain into the computer. Wouldn't that be great?

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Cable into the brain....***scribble scribble***...download thoughts and dreams to computer....***scratch scribble scratch***....what happens if the computer crashes during transfer...hmmmmm

I'll be back, I have some writing to do....

Thanks



PS. We could make this a race

Puddle Jumper said:

How long do you generally spend just thinking and dreaming about your story before you actually sit down and begin writing it?

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I spent years contemplating the elements of the story in my first published novel before it all came together well enough to finally sit down and write it. I spent a few hours contemplating the elements in the second one before I began to write it. Sometimes inspiration requires perspiration. Other times it just happens.

Beth

Depends. I've got to WIPs (WsIP?) at the moment; one of them I've been toying with for years but never had the chance to sit down and write, and with the other one I'm totally winging it. Predictably it's the latter that's proving easier to write. And before you say it, yes, I know I'm not supposed to write two novels at once but it's under control. Really.

If I think out an idea, it goes away, so either I write it or I put it on hold until I can.

Shawn

A few seconds. This doesn't mean that i don't mulll over stories, but as soon as when comes to me, i write the first scene, the last scene, or whatever comes to mind first. then i either follow up on it or return to my current project. Generally speaking, I chang ethe idea a lot and so i re-write the beginning many times, but after a number of false starts i ge teh story going. i don't think i could work it out right without actually writing it.

Puddle Jumper said:

How long do you generally spend just thinking and dreaming about your story before you actually sit down and begin writing it?

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When I first started, I used to spend the majority of my time on a piece, thinking out the plot points before I wrote anything down.

I discovered through trial and error that much of what I had planned out ahead of time would get changed as I wrote; it would become unworkable due to the natural movement of the story.

Now I try to get the basic motivations of the characters and a sense of what the main theme might be, before I begin writing. Any problems that occur in the piece as I write, I try to work out by freewriting until something comes to me. I find most problems will be solved in the actual writing, and anything occuring to me during my free time is a bonus.

- Anatole

I will think, and think, and think, but when the story emerges on paper, I may as well not have- the story changes so drastically in the writing of it. Not only that, but if I try to force my characters along the paths I have imagined for them, the whole thing becomes very soap opera-ish indeed. All these years of Eastenders and Coro have addled my brain.

If you try and force your characters down a path, and they let you, you've got a problem. It's very easy to shoehorn characters into contrived situations, but you'll always end up with a plot like a sieve.
That's just my opinion, obviously.

Toss and turn, toss and turn. I really takes total command of my life--it's my everthing, since I don't have anything else. My book project wakes me up in the middle of the night--sometimes sending me straight to the keys. It's unavoidable.


Triceratops

If I have a good idea, I'm afraid I'll forget it if I don't write it down. Most things I'll write straight through. I had somewhat of a private audience of readers, and I'd sometimes construct the story in front of them. Having their input helped me stay motivated.

The current WIP is different. I began the story around 1995. And in fact, this WIP actually has drawn from several stories I wrote including a YA story intended for my Children. The first story was an allegory, and I never intended it for a broad audience. In a sense, it had a very serious side to it, and had a pretty deep moral to the story, which was "How do you hold onto hope when the world around you is going mad." But I mythicalized it.

I had about 150 pages of the core story written, and then just lost momentum, because in my mind it was just too deep. It was more like "The Song of Solomon" than a fantasy story, something deeply metaphoric that would require the reader to think too much.

Fast forward several years, and I got turned onto J.R.R Tolkien's LOTR. I found the FOTR movie rather inspirational: Loyalty, Faithfulness, Dedication, and sticking with your goal. I now have a Tolkien Library.

I had always loved fantasy, but mostly older fantasies. I went to the book stores and delved in, and was saddened because I couldn't find many fantasies that satisfied my craving. So, I began to toy with taking some of the concepts from my dormant writings, and combine them into an Epic fantasy. At first I wasn't quite sure of what I'd come up with. But I wrote the story for a private audience of about fifty people. And even in a very rough format that wasn't fleshed out, I was getting tremendous feedback, and encouragement to publish it. However, I realized that I'd have to invest so much energy in fleshing it out (giving color to the eyes and hair) and set out to do that. What I didn't realize was that in the first serious re-write, the story balooned to the size of a trilogy.

Then I learned, your first book is much more likely to be published if it is 100,000 words or less, and I decided to take the advice to give them what they want. That meant paring down part one from 170,000 words! In order to do that, I had to take bits of book one and create a new beginning and a new ending. And that's where I got stuck. In re-writing a new beginning, I set myself on a course I hadn't planned, to simply write an entirely new book, because I had made some significant improvements and had to make them consistant all the way through the story. So instead of submitting in December, which I had planned, I'm now looking at the end of March as the earliest. And my "Trilogy" is more likely to be a "Series" down the road, if it is bought. I'm constantly saying, "What am I getting myself into?"

I think it was Jamesaritchie in the old board who said he always shelved a new idea for a month or so. If he still remembered it or still thought about it a month later, then it's probably a compelling enough story to write.

Made sense to me.

I like this topic because I debate with myself on which way I actually write better. On one hand, I think that some of the best writing I have ever done has been seat of the pants, just sit down and start writing and see what comes of it. All the beginnings of my stories are always when I just sit down with a character in mind and let him/her be a quirky or serious as they want, and eventually said character will begin writing their own story, as I just go along as the moderator for the ride.
On the other hand, I am always thinking about what kind of stories I want to tell, and often do outlines or take notes of my "Thinking and Dreaming" during the day. The problem I get here is that sometimes during this "Thinking and Dreaming" process I exhaust the original creativity and excitement which came with the idea, then when it comes to the fleshing out the story part, I just kind of tale off. . . set the piece aside for future consideration and get back to my main project.
Either way works in the long run for me, but the more momentary inspirational types works out better. Though, as somebody said earlier, that works great for beginnings and what not, but eventually, if you are into your story, if think about it all the time and can't wait to get home to work on the ideas you've been mulling in your head all day. . .

Weren

My ideas do seem to need a gestation period before I start writing. But that varies enormously, and is shown by how many notebooks are used before I write the first chapter. With short stories I'm more likely to start straight away. I have no idea if any of this helps me write better, or is simply the way I'm comfortable working.

Hrm. Hard to say on this one, since I'm still working out my Process. (Yes, that was a capital "p". *grin*) Here's what I appear to be leaning toward so far, thanks to some trial and error:

Plot the whole damn thing out, beginning to end, with a yummy outline, before bothering to write ANY of the main story. Little practice excursions to discover the characters are fine, but chances are they won't end up in the finished product.

Where does that outline come from? Well, it comes from chasing down the details. I can't wait for it to just come to me; the story starts with a few things coming to me and then I have to aggressively go hunt down the details. And all of these end up in the outline and character sketches before I start writing the story.

There are bits of gestation and research thrown into all of this, as well.

Because of this, it helps to have one project in the writing stage and one in the planning stage, to make sure that I'm always writing something. Planning isn't the same as writing.

I'm an extensive outliner. The way I "think" of a story is just brainstorming by typing out questions and answers for myself. Sometimes I also do these little self interviews if trying to elaborate on an idea, to flesh it out further.

Shiny_Penguin said:

I do alot of composting before I write.

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As long as you clean up before you start writing.