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WritersInk — Getting Your Story Written (Not Thought)
Published: 2014-11-10 22:44:25 +0000 UTC; Views: 1584; Favourites: 35; Downloads: 0
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Welcome to WritersInk 's latest help topic: Getting Your Story Written (Not Thought)
Our editorials and help topics will discuss issues which affect writers generally, as well as dA Lit specifically. All of which is to help you become a better writer.
So, you want to write a story. Great! But for some writers, this can take a lot of time; which definitely isn’t great if you’re on a schedule! I suffer from this same problem myself most of the times that I try to write, but I’ve figured out ways to get around the tricky subject of writer’s block.
Step 1: Shutting off your Inner Editor.
Everyone has one, right? That little voice which tells you to go back, which tells you that you’ve missed a full stop, which tells you that the story can wait if the punctuation or the point isn’t up to scratch.
You need to learn how to shut them up.
Whether that might be Zen meditation, awkward talks with yourself over coffee, whatever you need; just try to suppress that little voice that automatically checks over your work. Right now, they really are not what you need to focus on. Here are a couple of ideas on how to keep your inner editor quiet.
Sub-step 1: Run with some initial ideas.
Throw that pen across the paper. Well, not literally. Start by writing the first things that come to mind. It can be anything – literally anything – that you want/comes into your head, as long as you try to focus on getting it out there. After a while, you should be writing straight from your ‘stream of consciousness’ and you shouldn’t be hearing that little voice any more. If not, keep trying the takeaway exercise at the bottom of this workshop.
Sub-step 2: Enforce a ‘no-backspace’ policy.
This can apply both to the previous exercise and to your work in general. Force yourself to avoid that backspace key – tear it off your keyboard completely if you have to. Remember that what comes out of your mind is raw, it’s fresh; and it may well have a lot more meaning if you let it all come straight from your gut first.
(Obviously fix that backspace key afterwards, though. Wouldn’t want to be missing that now, would we!)
Step 2: Throw out some Drabbles.
No, I don’t mean dribbling; that won’t help anything. By this point your inner editor should be somewhat tamed at least, so it’s time to take that to the next stage.
Take the free-writing technique – sub-step 1 above – and apply it to your work. Choose a theme, topic, or character, etc. that are discussed/apparent in your work; they will form the basis of the drabble.
Then, once you’ve chosen a topic/aspect of your novel, write! Throw out any old words and ideas for it – they can always be refined later, so go wild. Get those creative juices flowing!
Step 3: Plot Notes
Again, it’s time to make that freedom of thought work for you. Throw out brief chapter-by-chapter plans of the novel; writing them now, with that flow in your thought processes, will help it tie together in the long run. Remember – don’t edit! Throw the words down and check on them later on.
Make sure to cover every chapter that you have ideas for in this section – if a chapter could go multiple ways, or you get a flicker of a different idea; throw it down as a copy of that chapter! It can always get slotted in if it fits the story better than your original idea.
Step 4: Unleash the Beast!
By now, your inner editor will probably be screaming at you. Scratching at the bars of their temporary cage, perhaps, begging to be set free.
And you know what? Now it’s time to let them out.
Go back over all the work you’ve been throwing out there onto the page, and set yourself to work on organising it all. Chop this, swap that; re-read your work up until this point and make the decisions on what you want to keep and what you want to throw out. At least now you have the words there, right?
By now, you should have enough roughly blocked out on the page to have some semblance of your story. But remember – these techniques aren’t just for prep! You can use them for writing your story’s chapters as well, which can be a huge help when you’re writing to a deadline.
Takeaway Exercise!
You need those words to flow, yes? Take a piece of paper and a pen. It doesn’t matter how fast you write, or how much you end up writing, just keep with it.
On this sheet of paper, write the words ‘I come from’. Start every sentence you write with this phrase, and throw down anything you think of. You’ll be the only one to see it unless you decide to show people, so try not to be shy! Using this pattern, write solidly for 5 minutes. No breaks, no gaps. Doing this helps to trigger the brain into thinking rather than self-checking, so try to keep writing even if your hand hurts. It’ll help in the long run. If you get stuck and can't think of anything, feel free to just write 'I come from' a bunch of times until something comes up.
Example:
‘I come from light. I come from air, and earth, and wind. I come from my parents, I come from, I come from, I come from writing and...’ etc.
And that’s it! Feel free to leave comments on how successful (or not!) the concept has been for you.
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Comments: 18
This really helps. I often instinctually press the backspace key when I know I made a mistake, and this helps me get out of this habit. When I was doing sub-step one, I was telling myself a few times "No, this will not work for a real story", but I pushed that voice away and wrote exactly what I thought for the story, unfiltered. Doing these exercises helped me become a better writer, so thank you for helping me.
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That's fantastic to hear, actually this was written before I returned to run the group so I might have to try doing this myself
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I actually write like that! It's the same as drawing, really; you first sketch, then polish it. ^^
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Featured this on my profile's Weekly Featured Work widget. 
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That's awesome. Thanks
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YES. This is awesome. I really needed this. This is perfect timing (from while I'm reading it right now). Thanks for this!
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I'm glad you found it useful
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You're welcome, glad to hear it.
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This is an amazing coincidence! Because right now, I'm getting ready for my forth story, called LoZ: Lands of the Dead. The information you gave is roughly like what I'm going though. I know exactly how not great it is to have a schedule when your writing the story. And it does take a long time for me. The inner editor in me does tend to claw the inside of my skull. I already wrote a synopsis draft of the story and I write anything else that comes to mind in separate files so I don't forget them and keep my inner editor under control. I've always been doing that since the first fanfic, always planning ahead before I really start. My story plot is still in alpha, and it still needs some smoothing out and loose ends to tie up. I did have a block when it comes to certain plot points that still has holes. When that happens, I just stop working on it and go do something else. I don't go back to it until I get a new idea that might solve the plot problem. Sometimes I have to throw out some ideas to make this story work. I still can't write perfectly, I needed my mom for the grammar correction, but I do put alot of effort into my stories on plot, characters, balance of light and dark elements, and grammar perfection, so they would stand out from the crowd of other fanfics. I understand most about what you're saying because that's what I've basically been doing myself when I write a story. Hopefully I will get all my ducks in a row soon so I can finally get started.
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Wow, sounds like you've got a lot underway already. I always like to plan first, and for NaNo (which I'm doing now) it's a must. I have never been a pantser. But even then, it can be hard to just sit down and do the work. It's so tempting to go back and chop and trim and rearrange. But you get so much more done if you just get to work, and worry about all that stuff later. Good luck with your project
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Thank you.
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NaNoWriMo. It's been running all month (with prep all last month). There's info in the last few Round-ups.
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