I work on stories, but sometimes I hit the wall. Then I try to start with something different, but I don't always know where it's going, after I start it. Like I'm writing, to keep my spirits up for writing. Anyone else do this?
Doing that with a story right now. While, the basic scenario is a tried and true one that I have thought about playing around with before, I am just making the actual story and details up as I write. Can be quite liberating. I should do it this way more often, really, because I sometimes find it to be more fruitful and productive. If I start planning and outlining too much, I sometimes lose the thread and never get to the writing.
I always have a basic idea in my head when I start writing even if it's just a sentence or 2. I let specifics come as I write the story
No two stories are the same. Sometimes I know the whole thing before I write a word. Other times I've got some scribbled notes which form the spine of the story. But whatever the story, at some point I'm there with a cursor flashing not knowing what comes next. If I'm really stuck for a word, phrase description or simply want to move on to something else, I just put [][][] as a placeholder - that way I know where the blanks are when I come back to that story.
I now the characters, their personalities and the situation. But, I never know the conclusion. They just seem to take a life of their own
Not really.
I rarely write cold turkey. I always seem to build the characters, then the story from the inside out.
Of course - is there another way to write?
I've got a whole bunch of fragments from just scribbling away without true aim when I can't seem to find the words to continue on the "big" pieces or when an isolated idea just begs to be brought to paper. I started doing that as a preparation for NaNoWriMo, to see if I had a chance at all to meet a certain word count in a given time even if my muse left me hanging. A number of those fragments have taken on a life of their own already. Most of my stories here on lush are built on them, small detours from those two 70k novels which are resting on my harddrive and pleading to be revised and edited.
Usually, I only have a rough plot idea and a more polished character sketch or two in mind when I start a story. I try to get the characters talking either to themselves through internal dialogue or to each other and the action flows from there. If I hit a wall, I back off, go read for a while, and somewhere in my subconscious, the path forward gets sorted out. That said, I don't necessarily writing the story sequentially. I typically jump around in the plot and usually have the ending before the middle is complete.
I am new to writing, but I am like most on here. I have a rough idea (usually pops in my head at 2 or 3 in the morning) when I start. The story develops from there.
I was inspired to write "Internet Cuckold" by talking to my wife about Lush. She got an account and the first part of the story flooded into consciousness. However, it has taken twists and turns that I didn't expect. It's been fun to see where it goes.
I love and hate the process. I am amazed at the talent of some of the writers on Lush.
I can't write with nothing in mind. Usually I have to have a character or a plot I'm writing toward, and everything else develops from there. Most of the time I know the ending, but some of the details do end up surprising me.
I never even have a clue what I am going to write about. With my poems I just look at the list of categories and then go from there. I usually just need one word to get me started with my erotic poetry.
My stories I tend to just get lost in what I am writing. Who knows what it will end up to be. LOL
Writing is hard work. I usually sit in front of the PC's blank screen until blood pours from my forehead.
I usually get a character and a setting, then I look for a genre that can fit the story. I try to be true to the genre and still push the limits of that genre. My romances are seldom just between two people, my scifi stories are not about technical or scientific futures but about what humans will be or can be in the future, my fantasy is more about the expression of the divine within, my private eye is a stripper and my porn actress has an understanding husband while my porn director has a MA degree in Film. One must know the rules of the genre before you can mend or break it. The beginning must connect with the end and the middle must complicate the goal of the main character. I try to open the story in media res - in the middle of the action and then take the action and plot to the conclusion. Sometimes the characters want a different ending that makes more sense than what I originally wanted.
I am to dumb to write a story as a stream of consciousness. I need a structure, even if it just in my head. Writing becomes a journey of discovery for me.
Not exactly, sometimes I just have a simple sentence pop into my head and I work around it to see where it will take me. I do, however, find it hard sometimes to keep a tight leash on the characters, they do have a habit of wandering off on their own adventures and leave me chasing after them.
The Forgotten Graveyard. Book I of the Four and the Seven, now available on Amazon Kindle
I've wanted to write for years but never just did it. I've read many comments from authors and a very common theme is that it all starts with an image in their minds. Something they've seen or thought about, maybe a character they've known, and then the story builds on itself. It's an evolutionary process and seems to have a life of it's own. That seems to be what I'm reading here now.
I am in the process of discovering that this is what I do. I'm just starting and if you read my stories you can see it happen. I have problems with tense because these stories are either my past or fantasies I build in my mind. In either case I am living them there as it happens. It's very real to me and very current so it's difficult to separate out the past.
I'm learning though, or at least I hope I am. I'll get into other themes later because Ive always wanted to write SF too.
Also, I never shoot messengers, well, not many anyway, so please tell me what you really think.
I think of an English teacher I had many years ago, Mrs. Long. She was very tall so we had a lot of fun with her name. She tried desperately to teach me punctuation and failed miserably. All my fault too.
How many of you ever had to diagram a sentence? I'm hoping to eventually make her proud of me, but I never want to do that again.
I cannot imagine sitting down in front of my keyboard and banging out a story cold without having some idea in mind beforehand. If I did attempt that, the result would more than likely be pure stream of consciousness and make absolutely no sense to anyone.
Generally – never when I am looking for it – a fragment of a potential scenario will hit me. I will take that fragment and mentally develop it into a story, working out most of the details in my head before writing anything down. Once I begin to type my characters will sometime take on a life of their own and often the storyline gets tweaked a bit. But usually the story does not change much.
I've always got an idea in mind, usually thought through and fantasised about ad nauseam before I start. Once I get going though, I'll often find that I'll need to adjust the characters or the direction of the plot to make it flow better.
I'll often cut little bits here and there that, while I initially think are entertaining and add depth, really aren't necessary. And I usually have to dump a sex scene or two due to space restrictions, or just plain old realism.
My latest story is a racy little piece about what happens when someone cute from work invites you over to watch Netflix and Chill. I always have an idea in mind. Sometimes I may just have the broad outline of where I want to go but mostly I have the whole story ready just to pour out.
“When one door closes, another opens; but we often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door that we do not see the one which has opened for us.”
Thinking too much about characters and plot beforehand used to be what kept me from writing. I learned that last October, when I decided to do a kind of warm-up for NaNoWriMo. I didn't have a real idea, only the aim to get at least 20000 words written down over the month, and I sat there for an hour in front of an empty document. I was almost ready to close the lid of my laptop, when I decided to use my own current emotions and let my main character feel equally annoyed. I can't say exactly how my thought process worked after that, but an hour later I had 3000 words which described how my main character was hauled off to her aunt's place because her parents went abroad for work. And from there on, the story started to tell itself. I just needed to ask myself "what's the conflict?" and the characters hastened to create one. That was actually an incredibly liberating experience. The story is now 25k words long and growing (for the curious, I'm talking about "Staying With Cousin Erin", which you can find here on lush), and I've started to spit out an average 75k words a month compared to meager 30k/year before that.
I'm not saying that writing without at least a rough outline is the way to go. I'm constantly carrying around ideas that I want to flesh out, snippets and characters and sometimes also more convoluted plots. But I tend to overthink, and when November and NaNo arrived, I simply picked one of those better shaped ideas and started writing, not caring that there were still holes as big as the Greek government deficit in my plot. And the nice thing was, once a chapter was written, I could simply refuse to go back and work ahead instead of going around in circles. Plot holes filled themselves and characters jumped into the fray out of nowhere.
More often than not I find myself not knowing exactly where I'm going, just having a few loose points that I want to brush by on my way. But how to get my characters there, how to find the right conflicts to keep up the suspense, mostly comes from quick decisions. It is, of course, nice to have a few clear scenes laid out beforehand, and it's an absolute neccessity for me to have a clear aim for novel-length stories.
The hard part is right in the middle of a long (for me long means above 20k words) story, that's the point where I have to stop and take a bit of time to plan ahead. The characters are established by then, as is the overall feel of the story, and that's where I sit down and think up fitting scenes to act as signposts towards the story's conclusion.
Yeah :P I'd think of writing something, and sometimes it'd turn up into another and I'd have a go for it :P
I write down everything that comes to mind, story-wise. Lots of it totally unrelated to the story I'm working on, but if I think of something then it may find a way into another story. Writing things down leads to more of a 'free-flow', ideas wise. Does that make sense?
I have characters formed, scenarios worked out, scenes in mind. It's just getting them all together that's tough.
Oh man, sometimes I'll actually do this then come back to it and find I've written a story. Lol; then at other times inspiration will strike me and I'll spend the next few hours churning out an entire tale.
I do, sometimes, but I find that my best stories are the ones that are usually planned
I never know where my characters are going or what they will be doing. In a way I write for myself - I tell myself a story. I have never planned a story.
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