What do you do when it goes flat?

[playful Kitten26]

I have been toying with a new story but it doesn't seem to matter what I do with it, it still reads flat. I am lost as to how to breath life into it.

Any Advise?

 

[Weird Harold]

...it doesn't seem to matter what I do with it, it still reads flat. ...

To quote Purdue Iniversity's Online Writing Lab: "...overuse of passive voice throughout an essay can make your prose seem flat and uninteresting."

Sounds like a description of your problem, doesn't it?

Passive voice is the sentence for of "the boy was bitten by a dog."

Where you have that type of sentence, change it to, "the dog bit the boy."

If, like me, you have trouble recognising passive voice, use the readability statistics on MS Word to find and eliminate the passive voice in your story -- most of the flatness will go away.

Another way to add "punch" to a story is to use more dialogue -- both internal (thoughts) and external (conversation or monologue.)

WhisperSecret has a very good tutorial on dialogue in the Writers Resoures section of the site. I believe it's also accessible through the "How To" story category.

 

[Rumple Foreskin]

Playful Kitten,

At least part of your problem may relate to the areas of plot line and story line. In 25 words or less, the story line is what your piece is "about", the plot line is the concrete elements you use to tell that story. Here's one example. IMHO, the movie "Titanic" was a story about star-crossed lovers and taking chances while the plot was about a ship that hits an iceberg.

Many writers find it tough to get a handle on these concepts. But once you've gotten them nailed down, then you can begin tinkering with the vital details that turn a plot into a story.

One of the classic plot lines is the familiar, "boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl back." Depending on the details, this plot can become anything from "Romeo and Juliet" to the lastest, "bodice ripper," romance novel."

Many writers on this board, especially new ones, submit pieces that may do a great job of describing an incident or experience (a vignette) but these "Penthouse Forum" type pieces don't tell a story. There is no challege met and overcome, the characters are, at best, poorly developed, and they seldom change.

It's hard to give specific advice w/o more information, although the Wierd One's input is, as usual, sound. But if despite all this wonderful advice and your best efforts the story remains flat, then throw in another sex scene.

I hope some of this blather helps. Good luck.

Rumple Foreskin

 

[Rumple Foreskin]

Here are two things I don't understand.

1. Why did I get a double post? Was it something I did as a child? If so, was it fun? Granted, the computer went off line for a moment, but what's the deeper meaning to this event?

2. Why won't the fool board let me delete one of them? There's an error message, of course. But those heartless, infuriating, unhelpful fiends exemplify our inabiltiy to communicate, one with another and man's basic inhumanity to man. (we won't get into woman's inhumanity to man.)

So in closing, I'd like to apologize for the double post, from which I've deleted the original message and filled with the BS.

RF

 

[Weird Harold]

Here are two things I don't understand.

1. Why did I get a double post?

Double posts usually occur because of impatience. Sometimes the BB just takes a while to process your post and tell you it took.

In your case, I suspect that it went offline before you got a confirmation that it took. When that happens, cut and paste your post into your Mail editor as a new message (or into your word processer) to save your work and hit the back button to check if it took befor resubmitting. returning to the page by using the forward button to resubmit will usually save your text, but you can always cut and paste back from where you save it if it didn't.

2. Why won't the fool board let me delete one of them?

There was at one time a problem with people deleting the first post of a thread they started and consequently also deleting all of the replies to that post. Consequntly, Manu turned off the delete function for everyone except moderators.

QUOTE]Originally posted by Rumple Foreskin
these "Penthouse Forum" type pieces don't tell a story. There is no challege met and overcome, the characters are, at best, poorly developed, and they seldom change. [/QUOTE]

On the original point of this thread, you make a very good point about the difference between stories and vignettes.

It is more common to find very short vignettes rather than full fledged stories here, but vignettes can be well written and interesting even without the full trappings of plot and character development. Sometimes, well chosen descriptive phrases and imaginative scenarios can overcome the lack of plot for a vignette.

Any good story is better for having character development and good plotting, but vignettes can be beautiful literature as well. The choice of words and the way the words are put together are what makes the difference between trash and treasure.

Despite my defense of vignettes, I do much prefer stories that have characters I can care about and some internally consistent reason for all of the sex -- character, plot, and storyline all melded together into a masterpiece (well, good journeyman quality, anyway. )

 

[Uther_Pendragon]

What do you do when it goes flat?
:
There are several options, some of which have already been
mentioned.
Another option is to put it in the can and start another.
:
After a bit of experience, Isaac Asimov took as a rule that
he would rewrite a story *once* if the editor gave him
*precise* descriptions of what was wrong.
Otherwise he could write an entirely different story with
much less effort.
:
If the story seems flat to you, then what story
seems more interesting?
Tell that one.
Now, what you have left of the old story might never be of
any use to you at all.
On the other hand, someday you might get a sudden
insight: "That's why John and Mary were in that situation!"
And then you have all that you have already written.

 

[Weird Harold]

Another option is to put it in the can and start another.
:
After a bit of experience, Isaac Asimov took as a rule that
he would rewrite a story *once* if the editor gave him
*precise* descriptions of what was wrong.
Otherwise he could write an entirely different story with
much less effort.
:
If the story seems flat to you, then what story
seems more interesting?

A good point. Sometimes, a story is just flat because the concept just doesn't work as well as you thought it was.

A clarification on your mention of Isaac Asimov: IA wasn't averse to editing his own work until it was exactly what he wanted to say. It was only rewriting to get a story accepted by an editor that he would only do once with precise instructions on how to fulfill an editor's requirements.

Isaac Asimov was one of those rare people who can't NOT write and seldom needed to reconsider their first choice of words. His aversion to editing was more an aversion to making changes that he didn't feel were right for the story.

We puny mortals who are still learning to craft stories need to self-edit the garbage we first write into something at least intelligible, if not brilliant.

 

[Axeltheswede]

Brilliant analysis Weird Harold. All this sunshine and stale air out here in the high desert is keeping your mind sharp.

I suggest you put your story away for a time. Write something totally different. When you come back to the first you will have some original ideas.

Here's my two cents on the stories vs vignettes question. I write vignettes. It is nice when you can wedge erotica into "The Gift of the Magi" but it will look like it. I would rather take a situation and play with the characters. Write a ripping good sex scene and you will get thanked for it. I enjoy feedback emails that say someone got a good "tug" out of my story.

We can all take the craft side of writing we do here and use it in other venues for more fun and maybe profit. See, I already have perfected the run-on sentence.

 

[MaxSebastian]

What to do when it goes flat...

Sure, you can always just put it on pause and start up some other story, but sometimes you do really want to complete what you've been working at for so long.

Here's something I occasionally do if I'm unhappy with how it's progressing: change the structure of the piece.

Sometimes a story of mine will gradually build up and up and the flames might fizzle out and I'll get tired writing something. I then might decide not to start the story where I have done, to start the action from somewhere else in the timeline, perhaps closer to the apex of the whole piece, in which case the earlier stuff you've already written can be used as the thought process of the narrator or (but not unless you *really* have to) as flashbacks.

Think about what part of the story concept made you want to write it in the beginning, then make the most of that. Sometimes what I do is to write a first paragraph that acts like a standfirst on the page of a magazine (that paragraph under the headline), giving the reader a burning promise of what he or she will find a little later in the story. This can also help the writer really get into the whole thing. One of my pieces, which was a simple two girls and a guy threesome deal, started off with a line of dialogue in which the narrator's girlfriend asked him: "would you be horrified if one of my friends had sex with you?"

From that initial promise, you could then explain how the lead character got to that point in time, or lead from it and explain the backstory along the way. But you might find that doing that gives you a little motivation to get there yourself, as the writer.

 

[Guest]

I guess you fix the flat .... inject a bit of life in it!!!

Take a breather to redevelop the story. A break should give you refreshing ideas!

 

[playful Kitten26]

Thanks

I just wanted to tell everyone that has given me this great advise THANKS. I have been going over the story that has been giving me problems and everything that has been told to me, trying to fix it. So far so good.

Thanks again