Plot Advice

[farmerxofxmoors]

Has anyone ever had a compulsion to write something . . . but it doesn't seem to have any direction? I've been getting this a lot lately. My muse will provide me with characters and even some seemingly unrelated plot points, but nothing to connect it and not final direction that we're supposedly heading toward. This often leads to writing one

Comments

[marrymejuana]

what i do is basically save it, then as I end up doing other pieces I pick it up again and connect it to other unfinished pieces. and then it makes a new piece. It prooves very effective for poetry. I write random scenes or unfinished diaolouges ?sp...=) or even one sentence pieces. Then boom after time I create a new piece out of it. A good excercise with this is. Sometimes in writing you don't have a deadline, so you can write one word or two words at a time. then the next time write another couple of words. after a month of doing this, connect it all together, even if it doesnt have the same voice. And before you know it, your experimentation turns itself into something youll complete using on these words. You may have to edit it, but thats fine.
hope I helped
-Rachel

[farmerxofxmoors]

Hm. And to think that I've never tried poetry when that sort of disjointed thinking works well for it. My problem is that I always want to get it completed and that's why I get discouraged. Maybe if I wrote everything that comes to mind I wouldn't get bored. Thank you for the suggestion. I will definately try it and probably post the results of my exercise here.

[miyukiryuu]

Oh I get that all the time! I usually deal with that by simply writing really short stories or poems, or monologues. Im simply rubbish at actual plot hahaha.
I'd say, just wait until you think of an idea that is connective some sort of direction. It'll come and some point =]

[farmerxofxmoors]

That's probably really great advice, but time just piles up more confusing ideas it seems . . . maybe if I get those out but keep focusing on them I could work something out like that. Thanks.

[talithakalago]

I suggest you just write it and get it out of your system, but keep bringing yourself back to a primary project.

Also, Holly Lisle has a lot of plot building workshops to help you connect plot points and even come up with whole plots from scratch. I suggest you check out her site and look for something that works for you.

[matrixleap]

yeah, this happened to me when i started writing my book. I had a singular idea that simmered in my head for about a month. it wasn't a plot, but rather, the opening scene to the story. When i had that "scene" mapped out, I started to write. I've never been good at outlining stories so I let the main character tell me this story. I was just a passing observer really to the story she was telling me. I had no idea where the story was going or how it was going to turn out until the last sentence was written

[sunrain86]

ack!!!!! this happens to me ALL THE TIME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! and i hate it. i write a lot of fanfic and since i end up at a dead end with like an original piece that i want to do, i usually end up turning it into that and i'm so tired of it!!!! and it's so frustrating to boot. blech