writeworld:

writeworld:

Anonymous asked: I feel very frustrated because I feel that I have forgotten how to write a story. My mind is full of ideas but I don’t know how to put them on paper and this makes me feel very angry with myself. Sometimes, I think that I have read so much advice that I am confused. Right now, I’m just writing character profiles. But I want to write stories, but I can’t. What do you guys recommend that I should do?

I don’t think we’ve addressed your particular predicament yet, so I’m going to do that now.

Listen, this is normal. What you are feeling, this confusion and sense of being overwhelmed, it’s completely normal.

Try this:

• Walk around with a notebook or a few scraps of paper tomorrow and jot down ideas in your free time. Try to keep your ideas small, like a sentence or even just a phrase. “Johnny finds a secret door.” “Sanga won’t do her chores.“ 
• Mind map. Write down those little fragments of ideas and, if one strikes your fancy, circle it and mind map it while the idea is still fresh in your head. Again, try to keep your ideas in phrase-to-single-sentence format.
• Take your ideas and your mind maps and write little scenes. Maybe they are just clips of dialogue back and forth. Whatever you like. Write out fragments of the story now instead of fragments of the idea. Keep it short (or not).
• Expand. What happens between those little fragmented scenes? Maybe more little fragmented scenes, maybe chapters of story. Don’t think about it too much, just let the words flow. You don’t have to edit at this point. Don’t overthink your style or plot or character development. Just write.
• Fill in. Everything that you haven’t written to complete the story? Yeah, write that in. You probably think it’s boring or else it might be really hard for you to write since you saved it for last. Write it anyway. No one said writing was easy.
• Edit. Go through and streamline your story. Throw out stuff that didn’t work. Break up your action with exposition and vice versa (unless you don’t want to). Insert scenes or characters or plot points for clarity.
• Proceed to next story. I don’t know what you want to do with the one you’ve just finished, but you do whatever you’re going to do with that one then move on to planning the next idea.

That’s a basic writing process. If that doesn’t work, let me know where you got stuck and we’ll go from there.

Some other tricks that I think might help:

• Instead of trying to come up with some awesome beginning, just write "Once upon a time” and start somewhere. Literally anywhere will do.
  • “Once upon a time there was a coffee cup named China who was lactose intolerant.”
  • “Once upon a time they were fighting and he punched her in the face.”
  • “Once upon a time no one liked Garson Homily because his parents were weird.”

  The cool part about “Once upon a time” is that you can put it in front of any idea just to start writing that idea. It removes the pressure, the necessity to begin a sentence, because by the time you finish typing it you’re already four words in. And you can delete it later! I use it all the time when my fingers are stuck just hovering over my keyboard.

• In our article This Is a Towel: Beginning and Developing Plot, we talk about three ideas (the first three under the link list) to expand plot. You mentioned that you write character profiles, so you’ve probably got characters in mind. Use these quick and dirty tips to come up with plot for those characters.
• Writing well means writing often. In Lift Yourself from a Writing Depression, we list some methods for just developing the habit of writing every day. For you, it may be to try to write something in a narrative format every day. Writing is not like riding a bike. Once you learn what works for you, you can still fall out of practice, so it’s important to write often. Very few writers can get away with long periods of time away from pen and paper. Write a story or a piece of a story every single day whether you feel like it or not. Make yourself contribute or complete a narrative. Write drabbles. Work on your saga of Fred the Unicorn. Whatever. Just write.

Thank you for your question! Please don’t hesitate to shoot us another message. I hope some of this helped!

-C

Do you have a writing process? What is your method for writing stories?