tossing a story in the trash

[sophia jane]

I woke up this morning, feeling great. I decided to get started playing around with a story I had started- needed a major change.
Reading through it, I discovered the change is impossible. So the story is off to the trash. This is my first scrapped story. So, I am wondering:
How many stories do you start and not finish? What do you do after- do you get to writing right away or does it take you a while to get another one going?

Pretty pissed about this actually. Shitty way to start the day.

SJ

 

[cantdog]

The one which I posted here (in part) for the "Guess the Writer's Voice" thread was originally called "Ideal Woman." I scrapped it. It deserves to be scrapped. No regrets. It was, in fact, a bonus to be able to use any part of it for something useful (the "Guess" thread, I mean).

 

[English Lady]

I could never ever trash a story. I have a couple I've not liked and left stewing but i do intend to go back and do something with 'em sometime in the future. Well I intend to anyway *L*

 

[dr_mabeuse]

I don't toss them out anymore. That seems overly dramatic and self-centered, as if the simple act of keeping it on my hard disk poses a threat the world stability or something. I just stop working on them.

I used to throw stuff out because I thought it was poor quality. I used to do that all the time, and so I never got anything written. Now I take the view that writing even something bad is much better than the alternative, which is not writing anything at all. And from my experience on Lit, I know that even stuff I think is crap might appeal to other readers. It seems to happen quite a bit. It's like, who am I to judge?

I've been working on a story that's just totally gotten away from me, and revising it has been something like trying to put a necktie on a fish. I'm still going to submit it though. There'll be plenty of opportunity to trash it later, once I see how it's received.

---dr.M.

 

[BlackShanglan]

... revising it has been something like trying to put a necktie on a fish.

Nice gift of metaphor there, Dr. M. Sometimes when I'm chasing an especially elusive thought or process, I actually get that almost physical sensation of trying to catch a live fish with my bare hands.

I agree that there's no need to delete things. I've deleted one or two in the past, and on the whole I've regretted it. Even if they were garbage, I would have enjoyed the challenge of looking back on them now, some years later, and seeing if anything could be salvaged. There's always hope. Hence I've left on the hard drive a couple of stories that I'm fairly sure I won't complete. At some point I thought them worth writing; perhaps I will think so again.

There is an odd distinction in my mind between works waiting for more writing and those I have sloughed off. Even when I haven't worked on a story for months, I know whether I plan to come back to it and I can feel it, now and then, niggling at the back of my mind. Others I know can just sit there forever; I feel no urge to them.

Odd.

"Will" currently has the longest "gestation" period; I think it was about a year from the first partial drafts to the final product. If the screenplay ever gets where I want it, it will lay over "Will" considerably; it's been permutating itself for nearly two years now. Oddly, that doesn't bother me. I set it aside mostly untouched for the last year, and I see now why. I knew at heart that I needed to learn more about writing before I could fix it. Neatly, "Will" has shown me what I need to do in order to fix it; now I'm just waiting patiently for vacation to have the time to work it up.

Shanglan

 

[sophia jane]

Thanks for your comments- they actually helped quite a bit.
I like this particular story, but I don't see how I can fix it. Setting it aside for now may help me, quite a bit.
I have always been the kind of person who sits down to write, finishes pretty soon after and is mostly done with it. Finding something I cannot finish is a new experience, one I will obviously need to get used to if I continue to write fiction.

SJ

 

[Sabledrake]

I treat my dead stories like I'm Victor Frankenstein. Save all the pieces, because you never know when you might be able to mix and match, and zap it with a bolt of lightning, and bring it back to life.

The trouble of course with that analogy would be taking it to the next step, in which your creation destroys everyone and everything you care for before hounding you to a lonely death in the frigid polar wastes ...

Sabledrake

 

[BlackShanglan]

I treat my dead stories like I'm Victor Frankenstein. Save all the pieces, because you never know when you might be able to mix and match, and zap it with a bolt of lightning, and bring it back to life.

The trouble of course with that analogy would be taking it to the next step, in which your creation destroys everyone and everything you care for before hounding you to a lonely death in the frigid polar wastes ...

Sabledrake

It's OK. I've stockpiled torches and I have a pitchfork concession on Main St.

 

[DrFreud]

I treat my dead stories like I'm Victor Frankenstein. Save all the pieces, because you never know when you might be able to mix and match, and zap it with a bolt of lightning, and bring it back to life.

The trouble of course with that analogy would be taking it to the next step, in which your creation destroys everyone and everything you care for before hounding you to a lonely death in the frigid polar wastes ...

Sabledrake

I like the way you think Sabledrake. I must read some your horror stories

 

[carsonshepherd]

Thanks for your comments- they actually helped quite a bit.
I like this particular story, but I don't see how I can fix it. Setting it aside for now may help me, quite a bit.
I have always been the kind of person who sits down to write, finishes pretty soon after and is mostly done with it. Finding something I cannot finish is a new experience, one I will obviously need to get used to if I continue to write fiction.

SJ

I worked on one of those for a straight month. Finally I just had to admit to myself the story was not working out and I couldn't fix what was wrong with it. It was very difficult giving up that much time and effort and having no finished product at the end, but now I've started writing something I really enjoy and it's going along great. The right time will come to use the ideas again.

 

[cantdog]

Well, clearly I didn't delete it, since I had 500 words of it lying around for the "Voice" thread. But I do not plan to revisit it. The superglue idea might turn up. Having a pair of women with their hands glued to their asses, trying to be treated for their condition... it is a situation I might like to use sometime, I suppose. But the story itself goes nowhere and needs no more help from me to get there. Trash, in short.

 

[carsonshepherd]

But the story itself goes nowhere and needs no more help from me to get there. Trash, in short.

I've got ones that I had too stop writing because they were too personal, I figure I might go back and write the story in ten years or so, when I have more distance. So I keep them around.

 

[cloudy]

Like everyone else, it seems, I never toss a half-finished story. I figure I might be re-inspired one day, and regret it if I trashed them. Or, as Shanglan mentioned, as my skill grows, I can fix whatever was wrong with it.

I have a folder called "do something with this" that sits right on my desktop, annoying me every time I see it - but that was the reasoning behind putting it there.

 

[R. Richard]

I would be very cautious about trashing a story. As many have said, maybe you can come back to it later and find something worthwhile.

Even if a story is a total disaster, there may be pieces of it that can start something.

Hell, if nothing else, a failed story started this thread and I got to read the image of peasants with torches and pitchforks! Frankstory must die!

 

[MissLusty]

I have a folder called the Trash Heap on one computer and the Dump file on another. This is where I put bits that I've removed during the editing process, whole stories I hated, beginnings, endings, etc. I even have sentences I like in there.

I think it's good to look back on things, it might be useless to you now but one day you wake up, take a tour of the folder and you get re-inspired with something.
You may write the same thing you were (only better) or it could be completely different.

Waste not, want not.

 

[dr_mabeuse]

Thanks for your comments- they actually helped quite a bit.
I like this particular story, but I don't see how I can fix it. Setting it aside for now may help me, quite a bit.
I have always been the kind of person who sits down to write, finishes pretty soon after and is mostly done with it. Finding something I cannot finish is a new experience, one I will obviously need to get used to if I continue to write fiction.

SJ

Oh, it's fascinating to watch a story go wrong even as you're working on it. Here are some of the ways stories have recently made the "permanent hold" folder on my PC:

(1) Stillborn: you've got a great scene you've got to write down, but you never did have a real plot, and now that your heroine's had a threesome in a hot air balloon or whatever, you're stuck. The story never had a chance

(2) Writing yourself into a corner: Having your heroine shock everyone by announcing her intention to join a nunnery was a scene just too delicious to resist, and now you're stuck with a nun story. (This is also knows as,"Maybe that alien-abduction scene wasn't such a good idea.")

(3) Overambition: It seemed like such a great idea to add a party scene. Now I've got all these characters sitting around with their thumbs up their asses, I can't tell one from another, and no one knows what's going on. And I rewrote the beginning of the story to introduce all these party-goers too. I thought I was so clever. (Besides, I never could write a party scene to save my soul. What was I thinking?)

(4) Characters Run Amuck: It seemed like a great idea to have Lord Ravenscroft make a few cutting wisecracks, but now instead of being a cold, aristocratic Dom, he's turned into a giggling fop, and I just can't get him back.

(5) Just Beyond Me: No joke, this. My reach exceeds my grasp and I find I just don't have the skill I need to say what I want to say. This is a real crusher, because it rubs your face in your limitations. This is where you want to throw yourself down over your keyboard and weep.

(6) You Can't Get There From Here: I've got one story right now withering on the vine since I realized that the seduction I thought would happen quickly just won't happen that way. I have all this lush and gorgeously erotic set-up, and now it's going to take pages and pages to bring these two people together. I'll have to write all this getting-to-know-you stuff, which has never been my strong point. (If this were a movie, this would be the collage scene of them walking through the lilacs and punting on the river to the strains of a Burt Bacharach tune or Pachelbel's Canon. Can't do that in fiction though.)

(7) Loss of interest: She seemed like such a fascinating character: deep, sensitive, cruelly hurt in love. But you know what? She's not. She's just a self-absorbed whiner, and I really couldn't care less about what happens to her. Fuck her and her suicide attempt. Manipulative bitch!

Anyhow, that's the rundown on what I have in my morgue at the moment.


---Zoot

 

[ABSTRUSE]

I just put them aside and then go back later with a fresh approach.

 

[rgraham666]

I haven't tossed any yet.

Someday, when the idea behind them is more fully formed and my skill level is higher I'll go back to them.

 

[cantdog]

Ah, the Trunk. The writer's Trunk into which so much goes. It is a perennial and universal feature of a writer, I think.

 

[BlackShanglan]

(If this were a movie, this would be the collage scene of them walking through the lilacs and punting on the river to the strains of a Burt Bacharach tune or Pachelbel's Canon. Can't do that in fiction though.)

Montage!

Damnit, the written word needs an equivalent to the montage.

(Although actually I knew I was going wrong on the screenplay when I put in a montage. Ack! No! Wrong!)

 

[Goldie Munro]

I don't trash them as such but just never really go back to them! By the way I have loads of 'to the side' stories!!

 

[yui]

I don't trash them as such but just never really go back to them! By the way I have loads of 'to the side' stories!!

Like others, I don't just toss them. I walk away from stories all the time, but I also go back and re-read and occasionally find exactly what I need. Like Goldie, I have tons of half-dones.

Luck,

Yui

 

[Goldie Munro]

Like others, I don't just toss them. I walk away from stories all the time, but I also go back and re-read and occasionally find exactly what I need. Like Goldie, I have tons of half-dones.

Luck,

Yui

Maybe we should marry them!!

 

[yui]

Maybe we should marry them!!

But we must keep the frightened people with the pitchforks away from the offspring...

 

[sweetnpetite]

I would be very cautious about trashing a story. As many have said, maybe you can come back to it later and find something worthwhile.

Even if a story is a total disaster, there may be pieces of it that can start something.

Hell, if nothing else, a failed story started this thread and I got to read the image of peasants with torches and pitchforks! Frankstory must die!

Stephen King tossed out Carrie.

What's in you're trash bin? Maybe it's better to keep it around/ask for a second oppinion. Some of the best stuff you can write will seem to you to suck.