Struggling With Story Start Over Itis

I applaud writers who can take a scene and turn it into a seamless story, for I cannot. I have to plan out the story from beginning to end. I have a short story that I want to publish, but it has been criticized for choppiness and too much telling over showing. So, I have to do 2 things - (1) show, don't tell, and (2) make the story smoother. Then, I may create 2 revised versions of the story - the original version and the white-washed version - making the protagonist's experiences more mainstream/white.

I either plan or follow through to the end with what I've started.

I find that writing every day, when "winging it', is ABSOLUTELY ESSENTIAL to finishing the story.

Just my two cents!

Having too many ideas is not really a problem, so embrace them. Turning the ideas into fully fledged and structured plots can be difficult.

If you're having trouble seeing your ideas through, try taking two or three of your ideas and mashing them together into the same story -- even if they seem totally unrelated at first glance. The character/backstory from idea A, the theme from idea B, the genre/plot from idea C, etc. I've found this creates all kinds of interesting possibilities.

The way I see it — it's great to have lots of ideas but I've come to realise that not all ideas are necessarily a story. Only a few are worthy of developing into a full fledged flash/story/novel. I'm a panster so I pretty much start with just an idea, or a scene and see where it takes me. I've have no idea on how to plan a story. Most of the time, I have no idea how it will finish until halfway through. One thing I've learned is that I can't force it. I have dried up on a story before, parked it only to pick it up again 6 months later and finished it. But that's just me.

I've found that quitting prematurely is often due to running into a problem, rather than running out of ideas, per se. My brain just "nopes" out of it and moves onto something shinier without me being aware that that's what's happening. I've gotten better at follow-through as I've become more self-aware and able to catch myself in the act of noping out of something, because then I can stop myself and say, "actually, hang on. Let's work through this."

I've also found it helpful when running out of steam at the beginning, to then go to the end and work backwards. Working out where I want to wind up helps me figure out some ways to get there.

The only time I actually run into this problem is when I plan too much. If I have no idea where my story is going until it happens, then I want to finish it, because I want to know what happens. It makes editing way more of a pain afterwards, but it means I actually finish the story and that's the most important part. At least I think it is.

romancewriter said:

I know it's a common problem among writers. I've struggled a long time with it myself. The inability to see a story through to the end so you liter your hard drive with ideas and none of them seem good enough. I wrote a blog post about it. Hope I can offer some insight. It's a horrible, dark place to be so with any luck it will help someone.

http://sandrapanting.blogspot.com/2018/04/some-insight-on-how-to-overcome-story.html

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I've been itis free for about a year, but since I decided to start writing short fiction again, I've had trouble sticking to one idea (particularly within the next week) hopefully this will help stave off the temptation to hop around and delete stories I'm not happy with before it gets out of hand.

romancewriter said:

I know it's a common problem among writers. I've struggled a long time with it myself. The inability to see a story through to the end so you liter your hard drive with ideas and none of them seem good enough. I wrote a blog post about it. Hope I can offer some insight. It's a horrible, dark place to be so with any luck it will help someone.

http://sandrapanting.blogspot.com/2018/04/some-insight-on-how-to-overcome-story.html

Click to expand...

My eyebrows shot up at this. I did not know it was a common problem, and have been giving myself a bad time. Latest include: I set aside my second play. Nine days later I was poking at it again. Last night, I was horrified at myself for not doing enough research (this was warranted). For a week, I've been trying to get my creativity together enough to write my novel from the lawyer's point of view--she's gone through more things, has actual growth, and needs to be the focus. Also I think my Peter Pan retelling idea is hideous and I'll never pull off writing a legal thriller; that I can only do romances (false-false-false), and uhhh, there was something else.
Oh.
(whining) "My fanfiction roots are showing. I'm not a professional. Oh my G-d, this is awful and I'm never writing again. I'm never going to be a playwright. Why am I trying to write a novel or novella anyway?" That's been plaguing me for -awhile.-

I'm so glad you wrote and shared the blog post!

Elle. said:

The way I see it — it's great to have lots of ideas but I've come to realise that not all ideas are necessarily a story. ... One thing I've learned is that I can't force it. (Ditto - I mean, same for me)

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Yah - sad but true. I, too, have found that not all ideas are stories, no matter how enticing they are. I've taken to letting those ideas slip back in to my subconscious rather than writing them down so I can 'work on them later'. This lets my 'unknown mind' or whatever you want to call it allow the idea to 'compost' more thoroughly, perhaps you could say (or perhaps the analogy of a pearl is better?). If it's really a good idea, it will come back, and either better/more complete or you will see how to work on it.

Silva said:

I've found that quitting prematurely is often due to running into a problem, rather than running out of ideas, per se. ... I've become more self-aware and able to catch myself in the act of noping out of something, because then I can stop myself and say, "actually, hang on. Let's work through this."

I've also found it helpful when running out of steam at the beginning, to then go to the end and work backwards. Working out where I want to wind up helps me figure out some ways to get there.

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^Hmm. Noted.

iszevthere said:

(whining) "My fanfiction roots are showing. I'm not a professional. Oh my G-d, this is awful and I'm never writing again. I'm never going to be a playwright. Why am I trying to write a novel or novella anyway?" That's been plaguing me for -awhile.-

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Have you considered talking to your Critic? (Sounds silly AF but, hear me out?) So, the Critic actually wants us to do well - it just goes about it in a really messed up way. It wants, for example to protect us from various things it has learned to consider threatening - like exposure - which could lead to ridicule, need to commit etc. I found that *thanking the Critic* for it's concern for my well being (yes) and then -- acknowledging it's point of view - "you might be right" - and then going on to say 'but - how will it hurt if I just write one paragraph?' And then proceed to write that paragraph.

Just putting that out there. It really helped me deal with the nasty inner voice.

Layla Nahar said:

So, the Critic actually wants us to do well - it just goes about it in a really messed up way. It wants, for example to protect us from various things it has learned to consider threatening - like exposure - which could lead to ridicule, need to commit etc. I found that *thanking the Critic* for it's concern for my well being (yes) and then -- acknowledging it's point of view - "you might be right" - and then going on to say 'but - how will it hurt if I just write one paragraph?' And then proceed to write that paragraph.

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Agree with everything above. You really put it nicely - that's exactly what all the scientific research on self-criticism suggests.

I've been struggling with this all week. I've changed things a couple of times (switching around my first and second chapter, deciding I liked a secondary character better and remade the story so that he is the main one telling it. Completely confused myself over third person omniscient and third person multiple (which is better? which one am I actually writing??), and wrote a few amazing, gripping (imo) end of book this-is-it scenes but now I am stuck somewhere around chapter 12 and have no idea how to bridge the gap in-between. This voice inside keeps telling me to give it up and go do one of the other hundreds of things I should be doing (Or you know, get a 'real' job). Or simply ditch it all and start over.

I would like to tell that voice to go jump off a bridge every now and then. And then get back to writing.

Not sure how helpful this will be but this is my experience.

I have finally made it to chapter seven of the story I started years ago. Many times I went back and rewrote from the start, changing point of view, changing tense and changing the starting point. I could not move forward until I was happy with it. Now I am confident enough to trust the foundation I have built and keep building on it. So to get past the constant rewrite, I had to do the rewrites and explore. If nothing else it was good writing practice. Plus, throughout that time I wrote other stories as well such as fanfiction and short stories and got feedback; as well as reading other people's work and giving feedback. People told me to not go back over it and to just keep writing but I could not but persevering paid off and I know I don't need to rewrite anymore.

Another problem that can come up is, for whatever reason, you come to a point in the story that just doesn't speak to you. It isn't necessarily boring, it might be about something you don't have much knowledge of or a emotionally difficult scene. In this situation, what worked for me was working on something completely different to help get the creative juices flowing and while you are on a role, jumping straight in to the difficult scene and keep writing. When you feel your momentum falter, push on and you will reach that point where it gets easier again and you can go back over it to clean it up yourself and/or get a beta or friend to look over it.

The other writer's block problem I have experienced is having too many ideas bouncing around my head and not being able to concentrate on one thing. What worked for me is to either write down the premise if it was story ideas or write out the scenes to points I could come back to later. I have word docs with pages of scenes and synopsis for stories I have yet to get back to but getting them out of my head meant I knew I wouldn't forget them so I could forget them until the time comes to use them and I could focus on what I had committed to.