Both these people mirror me this morning. I mentioned here the other day that Chicken Soup has some new book titles. I thought of a good possibility for a story for one of the books. I mulled it over for a couple of days and last night decided to start writing the first draft.
I wrote the first paragraph, erased it all and started over. I did this three more times before I finally put the computer and myself both to bed. The main idea of the story is perfectly clear to me, even the conclusion but how to get there is proving a major problem.
I thought maybe that a good night's sleep would help. The answer would come to me in a dream perhaps. Didn't happen. This morning, I'm still puzzling over how to begin. Three incidents will be tied together for the one story. How will I begin and then bring in those three separate happenings? That's the question I still can't answer this morning.
Maybe I should write the middle and end and then go back and start on the beginning section. I normally have the bones of an entire story swirling in my head. Then I sit down and write the first draft. Granted, I often change things a lot in the revision. But I can usually get the whole story down in one fell swoop. Not this time!
I am the one who gives advice to other writers. Today, I'd like to have some tips from others as to how to solve my problem. I think that I need to let it mull in my mind a few more days and hope something pops up. Or maybe I should go ahead and write the middle and end and hope that a beginning presents itself to me. The beginning and ending somehow need to bring these three separate incidents together.
So let's turn the tables today. I'm asking for help from my readers. Send it in the comments section. I'm hoping one of you will have the magic pill I seem to need right now.
I'm a day (or two?) late, but something I do when I find myself stuck is tell myself that I'm going to forget about writing the story, I'm just going to write about what the story is going to be about. It's just a slight shift of perspective. This is not the story, but the story is going to be about... I would write about each of the incidents, and then ponder, in writing, how best to bring them together.
ReplyDeleteI am a day (or two?) late, but here's something I sometimes do when I'm stuck like this. Forget about writing the story, but write what the story is going to be about. (kind of the reverse of show, don't tell?) It's just a slight change of perspective that somehow frees me up to get the words on paper. These are the three incidents that are going to be part of the story, and then ponder, in writing, how you are going to pull them together.
ReplyDeleteThanks Tracy. I've been working on this mentally and it's slowly coming around.
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