Well...

On picking up the pen by Fasoula on 2015-02-27 04:30:00 UTC Reply

(...Or whatever virtual equivalent I can't seem/am too lazy to come up with.)

So, I have been here in the PPC community for a bit over two years now in various states of activity (mostly lurking), and I have a question for all of you productive members of the community.

How do you motivate yourselves to write stories? I don't just mean getting started with an idea and writing out the first few paragraphs, which is something I've recently just barely found the courage to do. I mean maintaining it long enough to complete stories that can go on for pages and then chapters. Where do you find the energy beyond that initial rush of excitement as an idea pops into your mind? For me that only lasts through the first two or three paragraphs of a story until I hit my first major roadblock. I get them down, set the stage then just stare at the white space for minutes without a clue of how to get beyond that. Then I simply lose all drive to write anymore and the story's left to collect dust in my notebook or some file deep in my hard drive. Sometimes I outright erase it.

This problem has been plaguing me since after I wrote my first (horrible) fanfic, then lost touch. I've not been able to finish anything since. It's especially problematic now that I need to write two eight page stories for my creative writing class and I've failed to go beyond the conceptual stage on either.

Can anyone help me understand and/or get past this?

Thanks for the response by Fasoula on 2015-03-02 14:44:00 UTC Reply

Seriously. I appreciate it. I'll try not writing so linearly and see how it helps.

So, at risk of sounding greedy, I have another question. As I said in my first post, I usually get stuck early on in writing and don't continue because I can't figure out where to go or how to get there. I understand that transitioning is a challenge a lot of writers face. How do you all handle this?

Depends on what you mean by "Transitioning". by AdmiralSakai on 2015-03-02 19:27:00 UTC Reply

I usually plan things out in excruciating detail well in advance, making multiple passes that slowly increase the level of detail (again, not in chronological order). Palaven's Dogs had gone from "Council screws over turians" to a list of missions to a detailed play-by-play of what each action sequence contains before there was ever anything resembling actual finished material.

I have found that writing sections in nonchronological order does make it more difficult to write the transitional sections of new material after a skip, so maybe that's what you're asking about. If so, I usually write down some indication of what happened in the section I skipped (especially what critical exposition and worldbuilding I got out of the way in it) and go with a relatively cold open on the new material, remembering that I can always go back and change the segues later in order to make them connect better.

If you're asking about actual scene transitions, I'm afraid I can't help you much other than to say that they aren't 100% necessary in the first place. Nobody seems bothered when the scenes I write just end only to pick up somewhere else on the other side of a horizontal bar, and if the writing is fluid enough people won't notice small in-text skips either. There's one scene in particular in PD where Garrus and Shepard go from the inside of their ship to a loading dock with nothing but a paragraph break between the two sections, but it's not hard to fill in that they had a brief, boring walk to get there. I've even included actual time-date-location stamps in the transitions before, but that's usually a sign the scene shifts have gone from "minimalist" to "too cheap to describe the new environment properly".
Depends on the story. by Huinesoron on 2015-03-02 16:32:00 UTC Reply

Sometimes I have a vague plan written (or at least mentally written) in advance. The most thorough example of this was OFUDisc, for which I had a list of classes, deaths, and resurrections for every single chapter. Mostly I don't go even that in-depth, but particularly for fanfic, knowing what each chapter will be is helpful.

Other times - and this is how I wrote all four of my NaNos - my strategy when I get stuck is 'throw something else at them'. My first NaNo gained a major character purely because writing 'they got on the train; then they changed trains; then they got off' was really tedious. She's been written right back out on the rewrites, but she made the original version work.

It's probably the most fun way to resolve that form of writer's block. Drop a natural disaster on your characters, or make something go disastrously wrong, or simply have one of them trip and break her leg. It might turn out to lead you into a dead end, or it might take you onto a path you like but by a route you later get rid of, but at least you'll be writing words.

hS

Re: On picking up the pen by Darkotas on 2015-02-27 18:30:00 UTC Reply

This is something I've been trying to get past as well. I have ideas, I write it out a bit... But it never seems to be completely done or to my liking. For me, those bursts of writing energy seem to come very rarely - one day, I might have two paragraphs, while the next brings five pages, and finally nothing for a month or two. I'm not a bad writer, I just lack motivation.

Here's my advice. As others have said, break it down into smaller chunks. I've also found that it helps to start with small prompts, and then work your way up to larger things like missions. Write how your characters will react to a pre-prepared situation, then move up to your own ideas once you have more confidence and stamina for the larger projects. For your creative writing class, perhaps go through TVTropes for some ideas, then adapt the tropes to the situation. (I don't do a lot of creative writing though, so take anything I say with a grain of salt.)
Well... by AdmiralSakai on 2015-02-27 14:35:00 UTC Reply

In addition to what Iximaz says about breaking it down into chunks and taking frequent breaks, I've found that forcing yourself to write something contiguously start-to-finish is a terrible idea: when I don't feel like writing a certain segment, I skip it and move on to another. Usually I keep up a sort of rolling process where I write some new material, then go back and edit stuff I wrote a few chapters before, then repeat.

It also helps that with Palaven's Dogs I'm actually somewhat emotionally invested in the characters and plot, and sort of want the closure the ending gives a few characters to "happen".
Well, as for myself... by Iximaz on 2015-02-27 05:39:00 UTC Reply

It really depends on the story; obviously, it's easier to write something that interests you. I'm fairly lucky in that writing is my passion. I don't often hit that brick wall, but when I do, I hit it hard. Like right now, for instance. Rose Potter has come to a bit of a halt while I try to figure out what to do next.

Me, I take a break. Watch a movie, read a book, play some video games, write something else like silly nonsense, or just fall back on the time-honored tradition of taking a nap. You'd be surprised how much good a break can do.

And if that fails and you're working on a deadline, look at what you have planned and try to divide it into chunks. "I'll try to get X much done today" is my mantra.

Hope this helps a bit!