#while me the fanfic & original fantasy writer rambles like my world building & magic descriptions

[autumnslance]

I have a question about carrying out an idea. I think this writing issue I've been having has been plaguing me longer than my time on Mateus; I’ve always struggled to get past chapter one or even stick to an idea, even when I started writing years ago. Are there any pointers on carrying an idea or story through?

That's a hard one, as I know I have plenty of plans and WIPs I haven't gotten past those stages myself.

So I ask myself what's the core of the idea, the heart of it? What is it I really want to say? I don't tend to write chronologically myself; I write lines, descriptions, bits of dialogue, scenes, and chapters entirely out of order. I know where they "go" in the overall arc. And sometimes, like with the Avengret storyline, I can then string them together, shuffling the order, writing new bridging scenes, removing or combining others as needed.

If I am trying to write in order, even then if a section is hard, or boring, or not working--skip it. Put in some brackets with [AND THEN X AND Y HAPPENS AND IT'S NOW THE NEXT DAY]. Move on to the next part that excites you, or that you at least know what happens. You can always double back later and add in that connecting scene...or even decide it isn't needed now, you've covered everything it would have elsewhere, and can just be summarized and moved on from.

I've recently been reading a "How To Write" series of books by James Scott Bell; there are several, but they're all pretty short. One of the pieces of advice he gives is to start in the middle (go to the midpoint of just about any novel or film, and it's somewhere very near that 50% mark in one direction or another). Find the "mirror moment" a point--sometimes a page or paragraph, sometimes just a single line--that is a frank look at the situation, self, etc on the part of the main character. What do they see? It's a moment of reflective truth. Who is the character in this midpoint? How did they get here? Who do they need to be/what must they do to get to the end? How do they realize they may fail? What forces are against them? Do they realize/acknowledge any of this?

These are recommendations more for novels than short stories, but heavens know how long some of our fics go, and short stories do still have similar, if truncated, structures and beats.

Anyway, you're not beholden to write from beginning to end. You may not know everything about your story yet--because you haven't written it yet, and these things change form, even for plotters with outlines. Write scenes. Write chapters. Write microfics that are just a couple lines of dialogue. Use prompt lists and challenges, if you gotta. Start small and build, as one of the old philosophers said.

(and eventually one day you look and realize you've written a few hundred thousand words, many of them about your OC and a Damn Rogue wending through their world...)

Writing works like exercise; you have to practice it, figure out what works for you, at what times of day, and it can be a struggle to keep up momentum. In the meanwhile, you also have to take other care of yourself.

Like actual exercise (whatever you're able to do; at least stretches, which is where I'm at some days). Remembering to eat and stay hydrated, get plenty of sleep (don't @ me, I sleep, just on a later schedule), and also do remember to intake other creative works; I got a rush of inspiration last year and spent months feverishly writing scenes and plotting and writing dialogues and making timeline outlines and writing more pages I'll never use after reading a popular novel, cuz the visceral language and a vaguely similar character dynamic in certain specific ways clicked something on in my brain. We gotta feed that persnickety little muse.

And on the days the muse is being recalcitrant...we write anyway. It's hard, it feels like it sucks, but if we want to get something done? Write something. Anything. Stream of consciousness if you gotta; complain, talk out your ideas, maybe write a little from that. And the next day look at it and realize it's not so bad as you thought and a little polish will fix it.

So don't try to be perfect first round; writing is messy. Revision and editing is where we make it look pretty (you usually don't have to rewrite entirely front to back, either; some folks like to, but for many others that's only if there's serious structure issues; mileage varies per project, too, as they're all different).

So write the scenes out of order, as they come. See what ideas stick and what are just idle thoughts. Maybe they're all true and there's multiverses and AUs there. See what starts t string together into coherence. Don't be afraid to revise, rewrite, even retcon if something better comes along months later after you already posted something.

The only way to know the story is to write it, figuring out how it wants to be written, and sometimes that means writing it from other angles and around the back way until it tells us how it got to that point (and whether what we thought was the start actually was or not).

Anyway. This got long, hopefully there's some tiny tidbit that helps!