Should have made that left turn at Albuquerque

[BuckyDuckman]

Been working on a fun little idea centered around a high school reunion. I mentally mapped out the story and began writing. Reaching around 5000 words, I figured I'm two-thirds of the way through. The climax is well established. All that's left is the big reveal and the repercussions that will change my character's lives forever and now I'm stuck.

I know my mistake. While the climatic ending takes place at the reunion and its hotel, I shouldn't have had the main characters travel out of town to that hotel. It's a better story if they remained local. Now I'm faced with re-writing vast swatches or abandoning the idea. I feel like Bug Bunny when he pokes his head of his burrow and realizes he should have turned. FML.

 

[lovecraft68]

Things like this prove my theory that muses are mischievous and this is their idea of a joke.

"He's rolling and feeling good. Hey, I know! I'll tell him it would be a great idea to take his characters out of town!"

 

[NotWise]

Been working on a fun little idea centered around a high school reunion. I mentally mapped out the story and began writing. Reaching around 5000 words, I figured I'm two-thirds of the way through. The climax is well established. All that's left is the big reveal and the repercussions that will change my character's lives forever and now I'm stuck.

I know my mistake. While the climatic ending takes place at the reunion and its hotel, I shouldn't have had the main characters travel out of town to that hotel. It's a better story if they remained local. Now I'm faced with re-writing vast swatches or abandoning the idea. I feel like Bug Bunny when he pokes his head of his burrow and realizes he should have turned. FML.

Is 5,000 words enough to contain a vast swatch?

I make wrong turns every now and then, but I'll re-write. Why throw the baby out with the bathwater? In one story I posted last fall I took a couple wrong turns and removed about 3,500 words to keep the story moving apace.

 

[CoffeeWithMonkeys]

I hate when that happens. I usually have to shelf the story, but usually only for a little while.

And sometimes I just write two versions.

 

[LeandraNyx]

Deleted

 

[lovecraft68]

When I take unexpected turns I just take them and leave them. But then again I never worry about word count. If five goes to ten them fifteen...its no big deal. But if I were locked into a count then I see where its an issue.

 

[49greg]

I hate when that happens, I've got several that I've quit on, awaiting repair. One day, I keep telling myself, "one day".

 

[NotWise]

I hate when that happens, I've got several that I've quit on, awaiting repair. One day, I keep telling myself, "one day".

That's something I can't do. I know that postponing repairs means that it won't get fixed. It's inefficient writing, but I tend to rush to the end, or to some intermediate goal. Then I look at the story at some point and realize that it doesn't work, or it's not the way the character would act, or the pace is off, or the story has just gone south.

I keep notes for future stories, but once I start writing the real thing I'll hump it until it's done. Mostly that's the only way it will get done.

 

[ElectricBlue]

...but once I start writing the real thing I'll hump it until it's done. Mostly that's the only way it will get done.

That's me. Once something stalls, I'll rarely if ever return to it. It stalled for a reason, and the reason won't change. A character or an idea might knock on, but rarely the words - they were that time and that place, and if the moment is gone, that's generally the end. Might never get read again.

 

[LeandraNyx]

Deleted

 

[NotWise]

That's me. Once something stalls, I'll rarely if ever return to it.

Our ships may have passed in the night. Once I start writing story, I'm committed to finishing it. It might stall for any number of reasons, but once I'm into it I won't set it aside until I'm done--including big deletions, changes of locations, whatever. I will never have a library of started and unfinished stories.

What a waste of time that would be!

But then, I'm still learning, and a big part of what I'm learning is how to build and finish a story. That's not a simple process, but I will never learn it by walking away from stories that I've already started.

 

[NotWise]

I'm the same way. If I only ever wrote when I "felt like it" or when the words "naturally flowed," I'd have a whole lot of false starts and very few, if any, finished stories. I'll write myself synopsis for future stories, but once I start one, I am finishing it, even if that means brute forcing my way through writer's block or an afternoon of apathy.

Writing through an afternoon of apathy usually means that it isn't much fun, and it will be rewritten later. Not surprising, but at least it's written. I suspect my time could be divided into 20% writing and 80% rewriting.

It's great to write when a story naturally flows--but only in the sense that it feels good. I think I once wrote 20,000 words in a day that way. The writing sucked. I got through that rush, then it took me weeks to rewrite all that mush to the point that I would want to read it.

 

[ElectricBlue]

Our ships may have passed in the night. Once I start writing story, I'm committed to finishing it. It might stall for any number of reasons, but once I'm into it I won't set it aside until I'm done--including big deletions, changes of locations, whatever. I will never have a library of started and unfinished stories.

Ah yes, slight course correction needed...

Once I start, and it doesn't stall early on (if I'm a thousand words in and it's not working, it ain't ever going to work) I work one story at a time through to the end.

A lot of folk here seem to write lots in parallel, or can come back to something after time away. I can't do that. If it's dead in the water, that's it.

Luckily, it's rare. I've only got two longer pieces which ground to a halt. One gave me a character who went on to other stories, the other went slightly strange and off whatever rails it was on. They are both curiosities now.

 

[LeandraNyx]

Deleted

 

[ElectricBlue]

Writing through an afternoon of apathy usually means that it isn't much fun, and it will be rewritten later. Not surprising, but at least it's written. I suspect my time could be divided into 20% writing and 80% rewriting.

We are opposites then - I'm 80% writing, 18% edit, 2% rewrite. If it's running it's usually running strong, gets the editorial once or twice over as I go along, but I rarely rewrite. Maybe a paragraph here and there, but I don't work my text much at all, now that I think about it. Words maybe, but rarely sentences. Possibly because I don't plot much - I'll get to the end of a paragraph and think, ok, so that's what's happening now, better keep up!

 

[BuckyDuckman]

Time to write is too limited. In the past, I would toss aside thousands of words if I hit a dead-end. I may wind up doing that with this story if I can get the time to revisit it.

Unfortunately, I really liked how the pieces were fitting together with the business of moving the characters around. The road trip scene worked really well, in part because it was a road trip.

Taking the metaphorical left turn at Albuquerque may result in a better story, but I'm not sure when I'll have time to write it. Oh well.