Writing Discussion 3

[kriadydragon]

Another two-fer.

How to survive a plateau ie where you cannot seem to move ahead
and think maybe it was a mistake.

and

What to do when you have a beginning and an end, and nothing really interesting as a middle.

Comments

[black-raven135.livejournal.com]

OK been there, done that with the plateau...............
and see if all the time in others who groan about it too, but
I also can see the issue of a vacuum problem too, ie beginning and
end but in between????

[kriadydragon.livejournal.com]

See, I'm the opposite. I can do middles easy but beginnings and endings leave me a cowering sack of indecision.

[black-raven135.livejournal.com]

It all drives me crazy.....I think that is part of why I have not
been able to finish my ff regarding Sheppard in Afghanistan etc.
I have one I started, as you know, where Brendan is in peril and
one also with Vin featured in lock up at Denver PD having been picked up on what looks like murder........

[kriadydragon.livejournal.com]

For the first question, I've found that when I hit a point where I'm unable to go forward, it's usually for a reason, and the reason is usually because something about the story needs to be reassessed, possibly even rewritten. Sometimes it's the story itself that needs to be rewritten, or the plot scrubbed for a whole new plot.

I've heard people say to just push forward and keep writing, that you can go back and fix things once the story is finished. For myself, if I hit a brick wall in a story and try to keep going, it's like slogging through quicksand. Sometimes I can't push forward at all. Either way, this tells me that the part giving me trouble is something I have to fix now, because until it's fixed the story can't go forward.

That's not to say pushing forward isn't possible. I think it comes down to how dependent on that part that's giving you concern. If you push forward and hit a point where the flow of the story is good, then that part is something you can fix later. But if the more you write the harder it gets, it's probably something you need to fix right now.

For the second question, to be honest, I've never really had this problem. The middle of a story usually comes easy for me, it's the beginning and ending I tend to have trouble with. Especially endings. But that's why I liked outlines as they help to organize the mess of ideas in my head and toy with possibilities without becoming overwhelmed or stuck.

[sholio]

I have both of these problems quite a bit, and the solution, I guess, depends on the story (and the problem).

If I'm stalled on a plot issue, talking it over with someone is often very helpful. I'm actually at that point on my long White Collar story - it's about 80% done, but I ran into a major problem (namely, I can't figure out the details of the main con in the story, so most of the ending is still a big black hole that says "Insert Con Here" *g*), so I sent the story to a friend of mine and hopefully she'll have suggestions when she has a chance to read it. Getting a second opinion has been really useful for me in getting over plot hurdles in the past, because often other people can see solutions or pick up minor details that you completely overlooked.

Re-reading what I've already written is also sometimes useful, especially if I've stalled out on a minor detail ("How can I have this character find out X?") because it may remind me of a minor character or plot point that I can pick back up and use here.

More generally, I am attempting to teach myself to outline, because I think it can help me solve a lot of these problems before they happen. I'm just not very good at it. This probably doesn't make a whole lot of sense to writers who naturally default to outlining, but I've always had trouble figuring out what was going to happen next if the story wasn't actively unfolding in front of me. I need to write a scene to know what's going on in the next scene. I do often come up with future scenes/ideas while I'm working on earlier scenes, and what I'll generally do is drop the scene I'm working on and jump ahead to write the one I just thought of. Then I fill in the intervening stuff later.

But the problem is that I've ended up with a whole lot of stories, fanfic and original, that I dropped because I hit a wall. I couldn't figure out what was going to happen next, or I realized that there were unworkable failings in my plot that would need a lot of rewriting to fix, or I simply couldn't figure out an ending.

What I realized about outlining, though, is that all it really takes is forcing myself to make a series of decisions -- the same decisions that I would normally make in the course of writing a scene. And that way, I get to find out if the end result of a series of those decisions is a workable story, or a dead end that I need to retrace my steps and fix.

(Which, again, I'm sure is total common sense to outliners, but it's new to me!)

Normally the decision-making process is so organic I'm not really aware of it. Let's say Jane, Lily and John are all trapped in a room that's filling up with water. They have to get out somehow. Normally I'd write the scene in which they're trapped and flailing and trying to swim as the water gets deeper, and in the process of developing their characters and describing the room, my solution for getting them out would start coming together. Having to do it as a series of conscious decisions is different for me, and a little less intuitive, but it isn't really that much harder.

So rather than writing the scene, I'd brainstorm ways to get them out, or just make an executive decision ("Lily gets them out somehow with her magic rope"). This is often done while walking the dogs or doing dishes or whatnot -- I do a lot of my creative thinking at times like that anyway, it's just usually less structured and more freeform. Or I'll zoom in on the most important aspect of the solution -- it doesn't really matter how they get out, just that they do get out somehow, so I can always figure that out later when I write that scene. So my outline might go:

CHAPTER 5: Trapped in water-filled room.
CHAPTER 6: Having escaped, they rush to the bad guy's chamber ...

Rather than getting hung up on the solution to the escaping problem -- which might have stalled me for weeks, or even permanently, if I were writing the story in order -- I'll just move on to the next set of decisions: namely, what do they do next, and what happens as a result of that?

[swanpride.livejournal.com]

Talking things over is something I like to do when I'm still at the basic outline (which looks very similiar to yours), and realize that there is a glitch in my plan. (I don't need to know how they escape the water filled room when I'm starting to write my outline, but I need to know before I start writing).

It has happend before that I dropped an idea early on because I realized that I couldn't make it work. Sometimes I realize that there isn't enough substance in it for a story - in that case I put the idea itself on a backburner, perhaps it can be included in another story later on.

It safes one a lot of time to thing the story through early on, to have one workable plan to fall back on. You don't have to stick to it, but it helps to avoid running into a wall.

[sholio]

I've found that leaving myself a little wiggle room for improvisation is useful in keeping me motivated to write. This might change if I manage to switch over completely to an outline-oriented mode of story production (which, if I'm going to write for publication, I think I'll need to) but since I'm in a transitional phase right now, leaving myself enough space in the gaps to play with seems to be an important thing for me.

Of course, once again, that's an individual thing...

But, yes, I do find that I'm benefiting a lot from being able to do "test runs" of my ideas before spending all that time writing them, only to find that they aren't actually as workable as initial inspiration had been them seem.

[swanpride.livejournal.com]

Making a plan doesn't mean that I necessarily stick to it...sometimes the characters take over an stir me in a different direction (Neal highjacket one of my chapters more than once, as did Snape...those willful characters are really difficult to keep on track), sometimes I have a spur of the moment idea. It's okay as long as I keep on track. ConCurrent became nearly double as long as originally planed, because I got so many ideas while I was writing on it. But I have to know where I'll end up.

[sholio]

"had been them seem"? Nice, self. I'm not even sure what I meant to write there. XD Apparently you understood me, though.

And yeah, I don't want the outline to be a straitjacket; it's important to be able to flex, as well.

[swanpride.livejournal.com]

That your ideas often seem to look more workable at the initial inspiration and less when you think them through?

I also adjust the outline from time to time if I'm working on a longer story - it's actually not much different from what you do in project management. I more or less treat writing as a project.

[sgafan.livejournal.com]

OH MAN. Sitting smack dab in the middle of a plateau/OMGWritingThisStoryWasAMistake moment right now. I'll be very interested in seeing the answers here...

As for having nothing interesting in the middle, that's usually when I turn to brainstorming, a lot of times with friend/writers. I'll also take a step back and ask myself what I'm trying to do with the story, what do I want to accomplish? Often times that helps spark ideas and additional arcs.

I've also been known to put place holders in various parts of a story and come back to them at a later time. Writing what I know I want to write, sometimes sparks ideas for how to back fill what was stumping me. :)

[swanpride.livejournal.com]

plateau? Never heard that experession before.

To me, when I have a beginning and an end, the middle more or less grows on it's on accord, because, after all, I somehow have to develop everything so that I end up with exactly this end. The direct way rarely works, after all, you have to pay attention to the characters - plus, I often get ideas while writing. ConCurrent was such a case - I had the basic idea, and I knew I wanted to end it all with the "checkmate", everything else came later. Even the secret messages Neal send were a spur of the moment idea, because I didn't want him totally helpless, and that was the only way he still could fight.
What I can't do is writing without an end - I need to know where I'll end up, or I'm floudering.

If I'm stuck, there are some solutions.
1. Just trying to write. Sometimes the right solution comes while writing.
2. Skipping ahead and writing what already is in my head - I can look if I manage to connect the scenes later on.
3. Trying a different angle - a different kind of narration (for one shots), a different PoV, perhaps I just summarize the part I have difficulties to write.
4. Editing - that's very difficult to do, but sometimes it's better to leave out something I've already written.
5. Research - research gives me the best ideas. But it's also a very dangerous thing to do, because sometimes I'm researching something to dead. My research and backstories are sometimes longer than the actual story.

[tari-roo.livejournal.com]

I think part of my problem (and solution) is that I don't always right in a linear fashion. I write the scenes that immediately jump into my head - and sometimes with no clue how I am going to connect them all.

This has lead to some interesting rewrites but it has also helped the story progress as I know where I want to go - i.e. connect the scenes.

The issue I have with outlining an entire story is - I tend to lose interest once I have a clear ending. I tend to tell myself the story, particularly the main scenes, and if I outline, or finish the story in my head... I lose impetus to actually write it.

[tridget.livejournal.com]

"What to do when you have a beginning and an end, and nothing really interesting as a middle?"

Good question - because I have several of those on my hard drive. I never write in sequence so usually the beginning and ending are done. The story derails somewhere in the middle. It is not a plot issue because the plot connects well. It is just that some middle section turns out to be much less interesting on paper than I had envisioned and not in keeping with the rest of the story.

I have this story that I wrote recently and then scrapped due to part 3 of 4 being kind of rough. I still like the story though. Its kind of sweet and whimsical. Parts 1, 2 and 4 worked out just the way I had hoped. Each section is about 2000 words, so the missing section is really not that much to be tackled. Hmmm. Only 2000. Maybe I should get back to that one.