What I did for @JohnnyTuturro when he reached a "do not want to do this* was gave him an idea to kill off half the cast via demon ingestion. (Utter insanity: derailment of story.)
Not that this would work for everyone–but the gyst of it is throwing your characters into something that lets you feel the rage, allowing a touch of anger/angst/cruelty to fuel the less fun parts about writing.
How this could play out for you is finding something you’re very emotionally tied to in your other work–even if it’s out of order–and letting yourself dwell on it. It should help jump-start the fantasizing side of things.
But it took multiple attempts to make that stick. This isn’t a 1-and-done thing.
I am sorry for asking, but can you try and somewhat dumb down what you are saying.
I am just not in the right headspace to comprehend what you are getting at and I greatly apologize for it.
Sorry, I am still exhausted mentally from yesterday.
I shouldn’t even be writing or thinking that much right now, but I want to focus on something other than myself at the moment.
I CLEARLY TOLD MYSELF I WAS TO TAKE IT EASY AND NOT GET SO WORKED UP!!!
Yeah, I am getting sidetrack. Please explain better what you mean and I do apologize.
Focus on something that gets you excited from the story that you aren’t writing right now. Daydream about that. Do it for a period of time each day even if you’re not writing it.
Pantsers are impulse writers, emotional writers (even when writing less emotional subjects).
I should do that! Really, I should!
When I get bored, I just don’t want to get bored in a way where I am tired of the story because I honestly do want to see it to the bitter end.
It’s just the times things get boring, I just want to take days, weeks, or months to half think about it and half think of other things.
OR work on something smaller in the meantime till I go back to the novel The Breakers.
I am a difficult person and so is my mind.
It is tough sometimes or rather most times.
Quick Question:How does one write a 10K or close to 10k story without going overboard?
I’ve written and finished one short story that I wanted to make a novel, but didn’t have the patience or motivation to do it.
If am going to focus on something real small when I am not working on The Breakers constantly…I need to make my novels into really short stories that aren’t going over 10K, because that is the max I want to do.
Anyway, I’ve learn that some stories work better in short fiction as oppose to full length novels, in my opinion.
I just want to be able to write shorter fiction again even when I am working hard on The Breakers.
It can be one short story or two nothing OUTRAGEOUS IN NUMBERS.
I haven’t really had much time to write as of lately. I don’t know why I thought it was a good idea to take so many units for college (and a research position on top of that) because I feel like I spend basically all of my time just doing homework or making flashcards for biology because apparently they want us to memorize every single word on their slides (in the first midterm a couple of days ago, a random trivia fact completely unrelated to lecture concepts ended up on the test, which was very frustrating). I’ve only got three days in the week that I have free time to write: Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, but lately, I’ve been hanging out with my first and only friend in college more on Thursdays, meaning that I’ve only got Fridays and Saturdays to make progress on my story.
But I guess I have made very incremental progress, and depending on how much dialogue I want to add, I am anywhere between 50-70% of the way through the chapter, which I’ve been working on for around 2 or so months (about 17k words in length). I’m planning on finishing up the ending and then going in to fill in the random holes present throughout the chapter either with dialogue or summary, I’m still not sure yet.
The Rat Girl, I decided to have Bethany be really hesitant in killing the core of the monster because the core is a kind soul of her ancestor. Instead of having her be like, “okay you die” I decided that she has a heart.
She thought she would and be able to but when it came down to it, seeing this person in front of her, she finds it hard to bear. I really tried to imagine being in her shoes. What if someone who was once evil but not any more and finally realized they were wrong and wants to make it up had to die so the rest of the world could be saved?
And they know and understand this and have accepted their fate.
I tried to make it like this isn’t an easy thing for Bethany despite that she had been saying she could kill someone to save the world. She does have a heart. It hurts her to do it, but she has to do it.
This kind of helped me think about what blue feline Pinti might be going through. She’s kind of on the other spectrum in that she’s seen lots of death in her time and she’s had to kill others for survival. What does she think about murder vs what does Bethany think about murder and how does that affect them when they have to do it?
Let’s say you have a story that starts with an ignorant child (just doesn’t know everything) and the end is battling the epic battle.
Ignorance to learning something.
Learning something to being hurt by evil.
Hurt to gaining companion 1.
1-2.
2-3.
Snowballs into an army.
Plan for fight.
Fight.
Trying to go back home.
Story arcs are just what it takes to tell each part of the story.
Someone who is a more complex writer will be doing multiple story arcs at the same time, having various durations for them (such are called subplots), but for someone who is trying g to just get themselves started should be focused on the main story and figuring out the length each part will need to tell the whole story, and then write it almost like each part is a seperate story.
