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Generally, the number of times you slam into walls when writing is inversely proportional to the amount of planning you put into your work before hand. For a piece of considerable length, you should have a very good idea going into it what will happen. I’m not saying that you have to have every little detail thought out before hand, but it helps.
First off, establish who your main characters are. It can be helpful to take the time to generate a bio page about each of them, who they are, where they’ve been, relationships between characters, that sort of thing. It’s not essential, but the exercise can often force you to think about who your character is more fully, rather than just oh say “Level 12 human warrior alignment true neutral etc.”.
Got your characters picked out? All right, now begin at the ending. You should generally have a very good idea of where things are going to head before you begin the actual process of writing. Again, what you begin with does not have to be what you eventually end with, but if you have a good idea going into it, it’ll make future steps easier.
So you know where things will end, now it’s time to think how they’ll begin. You are pretty much on your own here, since you can literally do almost anything you want. If you’ve got a group dynamic planned out, now would be a good time to introduce the necessary characters, get the band together as it were. If you’ve got one really cool solo character, now would be an excellent time to clue us in about he or she. Or not as the case may be, sometimes not telling the audience anything is half the fun. Just goes to illustrate that this one is largely up to you.
Okay, so you’ve got the beginning and the end, now it’s time to generate the middle. A large part of this process is deciding how long you want your final product to be. Once you’ve got some idea of that, decide how many sections you want to break that into. I understand that this may seem a bit intimidating at this stage in the process, so if you’re feeling down about it, randomly choose a number, say 20. Now get as many sheets of paper as sections + 1.
On that first sheet paper, break down the progression from start to finish into as many sections as you chose. Now write a single sentence that sums up that section. For example, “Group has lunch with the Elves.” Copy those sentence summaries onto the tops of the other pages, 1 per page.
Now comes the “fun” part. Go through, in any order you wish and write down what things you want to have happen in each of those sections. Make notes of any details that should be revealed, single sentence summaries of the kind of dialogues you want your characters to have, single sentence summaries of the flashbacks, introspection etc. As I said you can do this in any order, but you may find it easier to begin at the beginning and work forward, or to begin at the ending and work backwards. Don’t worry about chronological order in each section, you can rearrange to your hearts content once you actually start the process of writing.
Speaking of writing, its probably about time we got to it, huh? Now that things have been all plotted out, begin at the beginning. Read that first page of summary, warm up the typing fingers and tap happily away. Or not. It may be that you immediately start running into some walls. Consider then, are there any other parts that you feel more inclined to write? Thanks to the process of plotting you’ve already engaged in, skip ahead and write those segments first. You can always come back later and write what you skipped over. It helps to note where you’ve skipped to, and what you’ve skipped over, so you can facilitate that filling in process.
On the other hand, are you finding any single aspect of writing giving you trouble? For example, can you totally kick the ass of any action sequence which rears its head, but you’ve got no clue what your characters should actually say to each other? (Not to imply that I have such a problem, but I know that there are times I’d rather cut myself than write dialogue) Again, thanks to the plotting you’ve engaged in, you can write what you feel like, making note of what you’re skipping over. If you reach the end and you have studiously avoided one particular aspect (say dialogue) it may be time to talk things over with someone else. Try bringing someone in (hopefully someone who won’t totally crush your ego) and talking through the dialogue scenes. It’s a good idea to record these little sessions. Your stand-in will likely not be generating word for word what your character will end up saying, but it is possible that they will give you some idea of what your characters may actually say. (Oh yeah, as possibly kinky as it sounds, don’t be afraid to role-play. While your friend saying, “Well, I totally think your character would say blah cause that’s what I’d say” is useful in that gives you a realistic response, it’s a bit more helpful if they know what the character would likely do, rather than just themselves. Since most people have real problems role playing, this may boil down to about the same thing, but hey at least you tried. Also, if you wanted to segue it into something kinky, there’s your chance. Not that I’m suggesting anything of the sort. Just sort of putting it out there. (Yeah I know that I shouldn’t be nesting parenthesis, but meh. If anyone actually pulls this off, I want the stories. I’m kidding, I’m kidding ... sort of.))
All right, so that’s the whole planned approach. Let’s take a look at an opposing view. Some writers contend that their characters exist as entities separate of themselves, and that those entities are not wholly, or even nominally under their control. This may be, I can’t really say. However, if you’re not certain what a character will do in a given situation, you may not know them as well as you think you do. However, they’re are ways of dealing with this.
If you’ve chosen a more free form style of writing, and you get to a point where you just can’t decide what the heck happens next, consider doing the following. Write any number of possibilities down, assign each a range of numbers which correspond to a dice value, and let that d20 roll. Having put your faith in the dice, you must deal with its consequences. It’s rule over this point of your plot is absolute. Unless of course being faced with some wacky happening you wrote down only as a joke is so undesirable that you decide that you want to do something else, probably the something that you wanted / needed to do from the beginning but couldn’t consciously bring yourself to do.
Alternatively, if the tale you are writing is by far more character driven than plot driven, that is to say the circumstances are much less important than the actors taking part in them, than all you really need to do is throw an event, any event at your intrepid cast and watch as they dispatch / handle / seduce / flee from it. That being said, write down any number of seemingly interesting scenarios on separate pieces of paper and place them in a hat. Shake said hat, and pull out one at random. Now have your characters deal with it. Obviously, certain kinds of setting will deal with the madness that ensues better than others, so I’ll leave it to you to tie the entire thing together into some form of cohesive narrative.
All right, so that's a pretty broad brain dump on the premise avoiding the walls that writing can throw at you. If you have any questions about more specific aspects of the process, just let me know. This document is intended to offer advice, preferably good advice, but since I’m the one writing it, who really knows. That being the case, if you’ve got any other suggestions, or think my advice is absolute crap, that could prove helpful for the document as well, so comment away, or write your own advice down if that's more your style.
First off, establish who your main characters are. It can be helpful to take the time to generate a bio page about each of them, who they are, where they’ve been, relationships between characters, that sort of thing. It’s not essential, but the exercise can often force you to think about who your character is more fully, rather than just oh say “Level 12 human warrior alignment true neutral etc.”.
Got your characters picked out? All right, now begin at the ending. You should generally have a very good idea of where things are going to head before you begin the actual process of writing. Again, what you begin with does not have to be what you eventually end with, but if you have a good idea going into it, it’ll make future steps easier.
So you know where things will end, now it’s time to think how they’ll begin. You are pretty much on your own here, since you can literally do almost anything you want. If you’ve got a group dynamic planned out, now would be a good time to introduce the necessary characters, get the band together as it were. If you’ve got one really cool solo character, now would be an excellent time to clue us in about he or she. Or not as the case may be, sometimes not telling the audience anything is half the fun. Just goes to illustrate that this one is largely up to you.
Okay, so you’ve got the beginning and the end, now it’s time to generate the middle. A large part of this process is deciding how long you want your final product to be. Once you’ve got some idea of that, decide how many sections you want to break that into. I understand that this may seem a bit intimidating at this stage in the process, so if you’re feeling down about it, randomly choose a number, say 20. Now get as many sheets of paper as sections + 1.
On that first sheet paper, break down the progression from start to finish into as many sections as you chose. Now write a single sentence that sums up that section. For example, “Group has lunch with the Elves.” Copy those sentence summaries onto the tops of the other pages, 1 per page.
Now comes the “fun” part. Go through, in any order you wish and write down what things you want to have happen in each of those sections. Make notes of any details that should be revealed, single sentence summaries of the kind of dialogues you want your characters to have, single sentence summaries of the flashbacks, introspection etc. As I said you can do this in any order, but you may find it easier to begin at the beginning and work forward, or to begin at the ending and work backwards. Don’t worry about chronological order in each section, you can rearrange to your hearts content once you actually start the process of writing.
Speaking of writing, its probably about time we got to it, huh? Now that things have been all plotted out, begin at the beginning. Read that first page of summary, warm up the typing fingers and tap happily away. Or not. It may be that you immediately start running into some walls. Consider then, are there any other parts that you feel more inclined to write? Thanks to the process of plotting you’ve already engaged in, skip ahead and write those segments first. You can always come back later and write what you skipped over. It helps to note where you’ve skipped to, and what you’ve skipped over, so you can facilitate that filling in process.
On the other hand, are you finding any single aspect of writing giving you trouble? For example, can you totally kick the ass of any action sequence which rears its head, but you’ve got no clue what your characters should actually say to each other? (Not to imply that I have such a problem, but I know that there are times I’d rather cut myself than write dialogue) Again, thanks to the plotting you’ve engaged in, you can write what you feel like, making note of what you’re skipping over. If you reach the end and you have studiously avoided one particular aspect (say dialogue) it may be time to talk things over with someone else. Try bringing someone in (hopefully someone who won’t totally crush your ego) and talking through the dialogue scenes. It’s a good idea to record these little sessions. Your stand-in will likely not be generating word for word what your character will end up saying, but it is possible that they will give you some idea of what your characters may actually say. (Oh yeah, as possibly kinky as it sounds, don’t be afraid to role-play. While your friend saying, “Well, I totally think your character would say blah cause that’s what I’d say” is useful in that gives you a realistic response, it’s a bit more helpful if they know what the character would likely do, rather than just themselves. Since most people have real problems role playing, this may boil down to about the same thing, but hey at least you tried. Also, if you wanted to segue it into something kinky, there’s your chance. Not that I’m suggesting anything of the sort. Just sort of putting it out there. (Yeah I know that I shouldn’t be nesting parenthesis, but meh. If anyone actually pulls this off, I want the stories. I’m kidding, I’m kidding ... sort of.))
All right, so that’s the whole planned approach. Let’s take a look at an opposing view. Some writers contend that their characters exist as entities separate of themselves, and that those entities are not wholly, or even nominally under their control. This may be, I can’t really say. However, if you’re not certain what a character will do in a given situation, you may not know them as well as you think you do. However, they’re are ways of dealing with this.
If you’ve chosen a more free form style of writing, and you get to a point where you just can’t decide what the heck happens next, consider doing the following. Write any number of possibilities down, assign each a range of numbers which correspond to a dice value, and let that d20 roll. Having put your faith in the dice, you must deal with its consequences. It’s rule over this point of your plot is absolute. Unless of course being faced with some wacky happening you wrote down only as a joke is so undesirable that you decide that you want to do something else, probably the something that you wanted / needed to do from the beginning but couldn’t consciously bring yourself to do.
Alternatively, if the tale you are writing is by far more character driven than plot driven, that is to say the circumstances are much less important than the actors taking part in them, than all you really need to do is throw an event, any event at your intrepid cast and watch as they dispatch / handle / seduce / flee from it. That being said, write down any number of seemingly interesting scenarios on separate pieces of paper and place them in a hat. Shake said hat, and pull out one at random. Now have your characters deal with it. Obviously, certain kinds of setting will deal with the madness that ensues better than others, so I’ll leave it to you to tie the entire thing together into some form of cohesive narrative.
All right, so that's a pretty broad brain dump on the premise avoiding the walls that writing can throw at you. If you have any questions about more specific aspects of the process, just let me know. This document is intended to offer advice, preferably good advice, but since I’m the one writing it, who really knows. That being the case, if you’ve got any other suggestions, or think my advice is absolute crap, that could prove helpful for the document as well, so comment away, or write your own advice down if that's more your style.
The following is intended to be the first is a brief series of instructional pieces on writing. I was originally asked to write such a document by dbx-1138, whose specific request was something along the lines of how to avoid hitting walls in writing. While I still maintain that my writing on this is a bit like a man with no eyes trying to guide someone who is merely unencumbered with a sense of sight, I’ll give it my best shot.
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Hmm very interesting, coming up with the overall conclusion before hand would make my stories and storyboards a little more structured and meaningful, it would also allow me to confidently develop plot twists as I will always have the safety net of knowing where they will end up and so won't wonder too far off. Very good.
I usually free form but this always stops me going past short stories as I just haven't worked out enough depth to fill up an entire book, but with your helpful hints it's become more clear to me how novelists can fill that scary amount of pages. Thank you ^^
Another helpful hint you could mention is co-writing, teaming up with someone who shares common writing and story preferences or even quite different which can be interesting. Here it works just like you said about brainstorming with someone else but also including them in the narrative, again not too dissimiliar to role-playing if you choose to work that way.
When I last wrote a story with someone we each came up with a set of different main characters and then clued each other in on them allowing the other person to build and make the characters their own. The way it worked is we'd each write a section a couple of pages long moving the story along how we wished, then the other person would continue writing from where the other left off, remembering to check back on certain other character's actions, so that the end result was a variety of different characters interacting in a variety of different ways, each wrote about at some point by both authors who clued each other into secret plot twists or after discussing overall intention with the characters.
I never finished that story though so make sure the person you co-write with has a similiar time schedule and commitment to writing. This is just an idea from my experience that I found helped me, if it's not helpful just ignore it and I'm sorry I filled up space.
One question I do have though is about coming up with an idea of the conclusion first, it fascinates me and I want to try it. When you come up with the ending do you always think of the protagonist's personal story conclusion or main narrative conclusion (say for the whole fantasy world that you wish to tell), or even for both before you move onto the beginning?
I usually free form but this always stops me going past short stories as I just haven't worked out enough depth to fill up an entire book, but with your helpful hints it's become more clear to me how novelists can fill that scary amount of pages. Thank you ^^
Another helpful hint you could mention is co-writing, teaming up with someone who shares common writing and story preferences or even quite different which can be interesting. Here it works just like you said about brainstorming with someone else but also including them in the narrative, again not too dissimiliar to role-playing if you choose to work that way.
When I last wrote a story with someone we each came up with a set of different main characters and then clued each other in on them allowing the other person to build and make the characters their own. The way it worked is we'd each write a section a couple of pages long moving the story along how we wished, then the other person would continue writing from where the other left off, remembering to check back on certain other character's actions, so that the end result was a variety of different characters interacting in a variety of different ways, each wrote about at some point by both authors who clued each other into secret plot twists or after discussing overall intention with the characters.
I never finished that story though so make sure the person you co-write with has a similiar time schedule and commitment to writing. This is just an idea from my experience that I found helped me, if it's not helpful just ignore it and I'm sorry I filled up space.
One question I do have though is about coming up with an idea of the conclusion first, it fascinates me and I want to try it. When you come up with the ending do you always think of the protagonist's personal story conclusion or main narrative conclusion (say for the whole fantasy world that you wish to tell), or even for both before you move onto the beginning?