ZombieGenesis said:
GudangGaram said:
Some very good advice, and I can sadly relate to a lot of the problems it addresses. Right now I wish I was as bubbling over with different ideas as some of my other stories have been, but I find myself oddly dry with this one, but very hungry to work on it.
Essentially the story began with a 'problem' to be solved, as you said, but I'm determined to make it focus more on the characters than the meta-situation, simply because too much of something, even something cool, will dull the edge. So best not to revolve every element around it. Starting from a situation instead of a character or plot point can make creativity difficult, as there are so many blanks.
A personal development plan is... actually quite a good idea.
I personally hate describing my main patonganist in detail right off the bat, I tend to do it in a subtle manner like this "Rebecca closed her pearl blue eyes and focused hard on the memoirs..." as opposed to "Rebecca has pearl blue eyes and blonde hair..." It takes away audience from the plot.
I do a lot of writing and I must tell you it's never really easy to get started, I suppose it just depends on how you want to start things off, many of my stories start off slow then pick up, but I have a few that start off slap bang in the middle of a battle against a demonic force, or at least this happens a few moments into the book, even if it starts off fairly slow. Its not WHAT you do, it's HOW you do it.
As for creating the plot as a whole, take notes of different things you see around you and put that into the story, then just sit down and write, if you're anything like myself, as you write, you'll find that things 'just happen', your story is supposed to take you as the writer on an adventure, if you know everything that is going to happen before hand, it isn't as entertaining and enjoyable to write, which I have discovered myself from countless ideas and stories I've abandoned because I plotted everything out before hand and lost motivation to finish them.
My biggest adventure novel has a very basic checklist of things I WANTED to happen throughout the story, but most of it jusy spontaneously came to mind as I wrote, I could have on my checklist that I want the characters to encounter a woman with a sorrowful past, but then as I write, my imagination goes into overdrive, suddenly, the woman with a sorrowful past is now a ghost woman with a sorrowful past, manifested in physical form and kept exisiting long after she died by her heavy heart, a woman that now wants nothing more than to find a lover and entrap them forever, with her initial beauty only to reveal her terrifying real physical form later.
See? And that's right on the spot. Don't worry, just write, don't think about negatives, just go with the flow and let your imagination do the rest of the work.
