DO you craft your stories or do they tell themselves?

[Just_John1]

I have stories that float through my head and when I sit down to write them I don't always control where they go, what's in them. Ok, maybe I never control where they go. Sometimes I really hate the path the story's taken but when I try to change it the flow changes or something and it just doesn't work. I write mostly by mood, I'm more motivated when I'm down or lonely, and I have to capture the mood to get back into the story.

I was just wondering if y'all craft stories, do you write outlines? Do you plan the story out or does it just tell itself. Ok ok... Maybe I'm asking if I should seek pharmaceutical help?

JJ1

 

[KarenAM]

I don't know, actually. Part of it is just going with the flow, setting up situations and letting them take on a life of their own. But I also have general plots and ideas and themes I try to stick with, especially in my longer fiction.

The truth is I have an incomplete understanding of my own creativity.

 

[Just_John1]

The truth is I have an incomplete understanding of my own creativity.

That's what sparked the question... I've been trying to figure out my creativity. I'm kind of afraid that if I do figure it out I'll have lost it altogether.

JJ1

 

[sailorm72003]

Mostly I'm just along for the ride. I've tried following an outline a couple of times, with limited success.

When I am really into the story and the characters, they take me wherever they want the story to go.

The only notable exception is also the longest work I've attempted, a story that is still in progress. For this one, I've put a bare-bones outline together, but more as a crutch to my own memory than as a fixed place that I feel the story must go.

Sailor

 

[CharleyH]

I have stories that float through my head and when I sit down to write them I don't always control where they go, what's in them. Ok, maybe I never control where they go. Sometimes I really hate the path the story's taken but when I try to change it the flow changes or something and it just doesn't work. I write mostly by mood, I'm more motivated when I'm down or lonely, and I have to capture the mood to get back into the story.

I was just wondering if y'all craft stories, do you write outlines? Do you plan the story out or does it just tell itself. Ok ok... Maybe I'm asking if I should seek pharmaceutical help?

JJ1

Nope - wrote an expeeince out . .. then thin - WHAT is the purpose of this since it's not porn . . .think - think oh! Symbol . . .write, write again. . . . more symbols - cool - write agian - very metaphotical - nothing means everything, and everyhthing means more than whats there . . .til I am done and can't do anymore. Then guinea pigs, hard ons, wet pussy's . . . more than two, does it do the job? ok - despite my intellect. Cool. Ok - post to get feedback, then send to sell . . . lol - really - my process

 

[minsue]

Re: Re: DO you craft your stories or do they tell themselves?

Nope - wrote an expeeince out . .. then thin - WHAT is the purpose of this since it's not porn . . .think - think oh! Symbol . . .write, write again. . . . more symbols - cool - write agian - very metaphotical - nothing means everything, and everyhthing means more than whats there . . .til I am done and can't do anymore. Then guinea pigs, hard ons, wet pussy's . . . more than two, does it do the job? ok - despite my intellect. Cool. Ok - post to get feedback, then send to sell . . . lol - really - my process

You've got a very interesting stream of consciousness thing going tonight. Even more so than usual.

 

[Guest]

Re: Re: Re: DO you craft your stories or do they tell themselves?

You've got a very interesting stream of consciousness thing going tonight. Even more so than usual.

Works for me. I like her style. P.

 

[sweetnpetite]

This happens to me all the time. Sometimes I really hate it. Sometimes I love it. Mostly I hate it. Even when the stories good, it's frustrating when you can't tell the one you thought you wanted to tell

I have stories that float through my head and when I sit down to write them I don't always control where they go, what's in them. Ok, maybe I never control where they go. Sometimes I really hate the path the story's taken but when I try to change it the flow changes or something and it just doesn't work. I write mostly by mood, I'm more motivated when I'm down or lonely, and I have to capture the mood to get back into the story.

I was just wondering if y'all craft stories, do you write outlines? Do you plan the story out or does it just tell itself. Ok ok... Maybe I'm asking if I should seek pharmaceutical help?

JJ1

 

[Sabledrake]

A little of both. Generally, I hate writing outlines and avoid it as much as possible, but sometimes the plot demands it, so I grit my teeth and do it. I much prefer just letting the story go where it will.

Sabledrake

 

[lucky-E-leven]

I don't see how you can do one and not the other. In my experience, a story writes itself in my head. But when I sit down to the computer it is me doing the crafting. I attempt to maintain the story as it is in my head, but often find myself slanting or bending parts of it to make it work and flow on paper/screen.

I don't do outlines, I do timelines. And even then, only when I'm writing a novel. I don't think short stories require that much organization. The time between the beginning of the tale and its resolve isn't long enough for me to lose the verve of what's going on throughout. Timelines for all main characters gives me a good core of each person's life and happenings and it is up to me to braid them all together neatly and convey it to the reader.

If I'm ever in the middle of a story and the flow changes then I know I've gone off of my original idea. I only take this to mean that I'm molding it in the wrong direction. Sometimes I am able to find the right directions, other times I'm not. But in the event that I'm not, I normally write a brief synopsis of the idea, save it and scrap the rest. I've come back to said synopsis before and had a totally different take on the basic idea and often at that point it all falls together and runs fluidly together from start to finish it. Funny how one can be so attached to a particular paragraph or scene and not want to delete it even though it's obvious that it's ruining or hindering the continuation of the tale.

The bear of all writing, to me, is the middle. If I get stopped for some reason I often find it difficult to recapture my initial direction, but if I have bothered to sit down and begin a piece it is because the idea had already taken root. And once that happens...BEWARE.

~lucky

 

[Guest]

The story writes itself, good or bad thats how it is for me.

Jmt

 

[Boota]

When I write songs they sometimes seem to write themselves, but with ficiton, I craft the hell out of it. Especially when I write comedy. It takes a lot of effort to deliver good comic timing with the written word. It's not the joke, it's the way you tell it.

 

[damppanties]

Funny how one can be so attached to a particular paragraph or scene and not want to delete it even though it's obvious that it's ruining or hindering the continuation of the tale.

Damn it Lucky! I was in denial about that and then you go and write it where I cannot ignore it.

I've had stories which wrote themselves and stories which were crafted (in my mind). I don't see any difference between them. I don't do outlines though. When it comes to the actual typing, I do the bare minimum. Can't type one outline and then the story. Too lazy.

 

[Colleen Thomas]

I tend to take a single idea, or perhaps at most a few ideas and just start writing. I try to get into the details of what I am seeing in my head and relate that to the reader. As I go the characters end up telling the story. While the world is mine, the story is essentially theirs.

Characters, like children, do and say the darndest things. In one story a minor, throw away character I added simply to establish the history of an every sunday habit of two other characters refused to be cast aside and became almost as strong a character as the protag by stories end. In another my protag hollared check plese, stormed out of my brain and hasn't been see or heard from since. That story was still sitting onm y hard drive when it crashed and is one of the few WIP I didn't mind loosing, cause it was going no where.

My characters make my stories, I am in a real sense just the chronicler of their adventures. If they ever stop speaking to me it's the end of the tale.

-Colly

 

[dr_mabeuse]

I tend to take a single idea, or perhaps at most a few ideas and just start writing.

That's usually what I do. I have no more than a scene or a situation in mind when I start writing, but the words stimulate me, and writing forces me to concentrate on what's happening and who these people are, and the story unfolds as I write it.

I find that I do my clearest thinking on almost any subject when I'm forced to put my thoughts into words. Writing is the tool I use to make myself concentrate, and writing for me is just sustained, focused, imagination.

---dr.M.

 

[Carl East]

I very rarely plot out my stories. I normally just get an idea and start typing, an hour or two later I have a tale to share. I've only ever writen two stories that never saw the light of day because I deleted them both. I just didn't like how they turned out.

I seem to have this ability to write anything that comes to mind but there is a catch, if I don't get it writen down straight away it won't get writen at all.

Carl

 

[rgraham666]

For me, it's both.

The original idea usually just comes of itself. Almost born whole, like Aphrodite from the forehead of Zeus.

Occasionally, the idea is a situation regarding the characters, usually what is near the end of the story.

More often, it is merely a concept, like "Ah. So that's what really killed the dinosaurs."

In either case, that's when the crafting starts. I'll have to come up with a plot, which I always keep in my head. And then I have to write. And edit. And polish. And flesh out. And then polish some more.

Christ, I'm giving myself a brain cramp just thinking about it.

 

[Guest]

Usually, I have a basic idea for a story, and then I just go with the flow. Sometimes the story goes the way I envision it and sometimes it changes. Case in point was my NaNo novel (A Queen's Enslavement, now posted in the Novels and Novellas section). The story went in a completely different direction than I had intended. Once I started writing, it went a different way. There was nothing I could do about it.