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What do you do when you start losing a story?

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davion2308

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Joined
Dec 24, 2005
Posts
791
I'm writing a story and I'm halfway through and I suddenly realize my story is a pile of steaming dogshit. The idea is good. Characters are coming around to be almost real people. Things are going nicely and then 5,000 words in the thing suddenly nosedives.

I'm wondering what I'm trying to say with my story. What's the point? I want things to be more than just "totally non-believable slutty woman fucks a guy and we don't like anyone in the story."

I'm losing my story. It's not that far in but ... well ... crap.

What do you do when this happens?
 
With me, I would have lost the story only somewhere between my muse informing me it had a story to be written and when I took the time to start jotting notes down in doing whatever background research was required. I can't remember not finishing a story I started writing.
 
davion2308 said:
I'm writing a story and I'm halfway through and I suddenly realize my story is a pile of steaming dogshit. The idea is good. Characters are coming around to be almost real people. Things are going nicely and then 5,000 words in the thing suddenly nosedives.

I'm wondering what I'm trying to say with my story. What's the point? I want things to be more than just "totally non-believable slutty woman fucks a guy and we don't like anyone in the story."

I'm losing my story. It's not that far in but ... well ... crap.

What do you do when this happens?
Click to expand...

I switch-hit with another, completely unrelated story, let myself get immersed in it, and wait for the original story to wake up and start knocking on my door again; for me, distance equals perspective, so distancing myself from a story that won't work, and working on something else that is going places opens me up to possible new or different ways to view and tell my original story.
 
davion2308 said:
I'm writing a story and I'm halfway through and I suddenly realize my story is a pile of steaming dogshit. The idea is good. Characters are coming around to be almost real people. Things are going nicely and then 5,000 words in the thing suddenly nosedives.

I'm wondering what I'm trying to say with my story. What's the point? I want things to be more than just "totally non-believable slutty woman fucks a guy and we don't like anyone in the story."

I'm losing my story. It's not that far in but ... well ... crap.

What do you do when this happens?
Click to expand...

What I would do in this situation is ask myself, Where do I want this story to end up? What's the point? Evaluate your story as a dramatic conflict and ask, how do I want that conflict to resolve itself?

For me, the ending is everything. It creates a purpose for the story and it gives me a goal to keep in focus. The middle part of a story can be hard, and you can get bogged down in it, but if you keep focusing on where you want to go I think you can avoid this problem.

In almost every story I write, I write the introduction, and before I've gotten far into the middle part I write the ending. In most of my stories the entire last page has been written before I'm even 10% into the story. The ending gives me a goal for my story. Many don't write this way, but I do. I find that knowing the ending provides a kind of compass for my story. It guides the creative choices I make.

Even if you are skeptical of doing things this way, give it a try. Force yourself to write an ending to the story. Try to make it clever, with a final sentence that you like, or a twist at the end. If you like it enough it will motivate you to get through the tough middle passages.
 
davion2308 said:
What do you do when this happens?
Click to expand...

I usually set it aside for a time and rethink what I want. When I get that figured out, I back up in the story, identify where I got derailed, and start again from there.

That doesn't always work. About this time last year I found that I'd gone entirely down the wrong track on a story. The problem was actually in the story concept, so I ditched the whole 12,000 words or so. There was nothing to be salvaged.
 
Raymond Chandler's maxim: If you don't know where to go, shoot somebody.

I've more than a few stubs, tales that hit the wall and go ker-plop. Some are great setups with nowhere to go but a series of fucks. So I'll have to shoot somebody and proceed.
 
beachbum1958 said:
I switch-hit with another, completely unrelated story, let myself get immersed in it, and wait for the original story to wake up and start knocking on my door again; for me, distance equals perspective, so distancing myself from a story that won't work, and working on something else that is going places opens me up to possible new or different ways to view and tell my original story.
Click to expand...

Precisely. Set it aside for a while. Faults and solutions will become much clearer when revisited.
 
I'm ruthless. If something has stalled so badly that I've lost interest, I take the view that it's not recoverable, and I'll delete it. Fortunately, that's only happened once or twice, and I've known after a thousand words or so - I don't try to eat stale bread.
 
I put it in the pending file and subfolders, currently containing over 300 part-written stories.

From time to time I look in a subfolder and see whether I can move the story on now.
 
How to deal with wordstipation (you're full of shit that can't all be squeezed out):

* Add tentacle monsters and/or talking bonobo chimps.
* Think of the least likely option and go for it.
* Swap 1st and 3rd person POVs.
* Blow up the planet.
* Wait a year.
 
i don't actually lose the story because i don't start writing until i have the whole thing in my head. i do get stuck, though. actually, in everything i've posted i've come to a point where i think it's all crap. when this happens i do a variety of things.

i re-read what i have so far. usually it isn't as bad as i thought and it gets me back in harness.

i let it stew while i think about my future direction. sometimes i get a whole new slant on the story and that spurs me forward.

i go back and re-read some of my popular stories. it gives me incentive to think that other people don't find my stories to be the dismal failures that i think they are.

if i'm really, really stuck, i start on something else. lots of times, i will whip out a new story pretty quickly in these circumstances and then i'm re-focused on the one that almost got away.
 
I plot and outline meticulously, so as to avoid the trap of "what am I trying to say with this story." I generally have an idea of how it's going to go before I ever start writing. Then it's just a matter of connecting the dots. It's an approach that isn't for everyone, and it has resulted in extremely limited output, but it works for me.
 
I always have a goal in mind...what's the story meant to say? The beginning(introduction to the characters and setting, etc) merges into the middle with some tension or crisis in play...but it all leads to what I wanted to say in the end. Call it a "moral" or "theme", but a story without that is usually pretty pointless. So figure out what you're trying to say...then it should come together.
 
Move on to another one that I used to think was a pile of steaming dog shit.

If none of them get me even a little excited I go play poker for a while.
 
Abandon it for now. I wrote about three chapters of a novel and didn't quite know where to go from there. But now it's eating at me and I want to finish it. Not something I could post here though.
 
Hypoxia said:
How to deal with wordstipation (you're full of shit that can't all be squeezed out):

* Add tentacle monsters and/or talking bonobo chimps.
* Think of the least likely option and go for it.
* Swap 1st and 3rd person POVs.
* Blow up the planet.
* Wait a year.
Click to expand...

Totally. You're my hero, Hypoxia. :)
 
I back up to where the story went off the rails and start re-writing from that point. Since I write to discover my characters, it happens more often than I like to admit.

I don't delete what I wrote. I just toss that first draft into a different file. It's sort of like taking the wrong path in a maze. Head back to your misstep and start again in a slightly new direction.
 
BuckyDuckman said:
I back up to where the story went off the rails and start re-writing from that point. Since I write to discover my characters, it happens more often than I like to admit.

I don't delete what I wrote. I just toss that first draft into a different file. It's sort of like taking the wrong path in a maze. Head back to your misstep and start again in a slightly new direction.
Click to expand...

I've done this on more than one occasion, except I cut the offending text and pasted it in a new doc saving it for use later... maybe.

Maybe on day I'll paste them all together in one and submit them as glimpses into things that have gone wrong.
 
BuckyDuckman said:
I back up to where the story went off the rails and start re-writing from that point. Since I write to discover my characters, it happens more often than I like to admit.

I don't delete what I wrote. I just toss that first draft into a different file. It's sort of like taking the wrong path in a maze. Head back to your misstep and start again in a slightly new direction.
Click to expand...

That's happened to me. It's sometimes that a premise or action near the start or in the middle comes out wrong. It's usually possible to salvage some or even a lot of the existing text.
 
Hypoxia said:
How to deal with wordstipation (you're full of shit that can't all be squeezed out):

* Add tentacle monsters and/or talking bonobo chimps.
* Think of the least likely option and go for it.
* Swap 1st and 3rd person POVs.
* Blow up the planet.
* Wait a year.
Click to expand...

Good advice. I've actually tried some of this. No joke.
 
Seems to me that you may be paying for the fact that the story wasn't planned in advance.

I write detailed plots and outlines before I write the first word. YES, the story often goes off plot at some point - but that's when I RE-plan it. before I continue writing.

Or failing that...

Hypoxia said:
Raymond Chandler's maxim: If you don't know where to go, shoot somebody.
Click to expand...

At least - figuratively. In the context of erotica, you could have one of the key characters be unexpectedly thrown out of the story (dumped, shamed, whatever) - then PLAN the rest of the story from that point.

I hope you manage to pull it off, and manage to rescue your work to date.
 
davion2308 said:
I'm writing a story and I'm halfway through and I suddenly realize my story is a pile of steaming dogshit. The idea is good. Characters are coming around to be almost real people. Things are going nicely and then 5,000 words in the thing suddenly nosedives.

I'm wondering what I'm trying to say with my story. What's the point? I want things to be more than just "totally non-believable slutty woman fucks a guy and we don't like anyone in the story."

I'm losing my story. It's not that far in but ... well ... crap.

What do you do when this happens?
Click to expand...

I would start working backward from your stopping point to see where and why it went wrong. If the idea is solid and original, it should be fixable. You like the way your characters are turning out. In fleshing them out and giving them life, has that changed the nature of the story or led the plot in even a slightly different direction?

This examination should unearth the problem - finding when the plot or character development stop serving the story you originally wanted to tell. If the problem is a flaw in logic at the fundamental level, you've assembled a house of cards that you might just as well topple.

It also depends on whether you're writing erotica or commercial fiction. If commercial, it had better be bulletproof in every way. If erotica, I would just smooth it over to keep people fucking...lol
 
I write for fun -- mine, and readers' -- not for money, so I need adopt no careful commercially-viable program. But I take several approaches.

I sometimes know exactly how a story will evolve. If adapting a journal, or an existing narrative, or a mental movie, my main task is to flesh it out sexily. Or I may visualize an ending, and write the story that reaches it.

Sometimes it's a surprise. I create a setting and players, set them loose, and transcribe their unplanned words and deeds. I probably have a few plot points in mind, and maybe an ending. This is hit and miss but usually works for me.

And sometimes I create a great setup -- with nowhere to go that appeals to me. I just hit one of those. Maybe I should have the MC abducted by a yeti. Or maybe this great setup is a darling I should kill.

My point: Not all stories come to me pre-packaged although I do sometimes write or dictate extensive treatments. Some just pop-up for me. And some deflate. I put those aside until the voices in my head make me try again.
 
I've been there

I start another story. I'm working on one now that I abandoned months ago, and now feel I can look at with fresh eyes. The writing is going well and it's likely to be my next published one. Sometimes you just need to step away.
 
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