Start-stop, start-stop

On June 10, 2011, Limegreen wrote, I find that most of the stories I don’t finish are because I just start writing. I jot down some random beginning to a story and get a random idea for the story. However, when I do that, I have no idea where the story is going and the plot putters out after a few pages or so. But I also can’t seem to find a good way to outline my stories. I either over plot it and have no fun with the story, or I under-plot and my story putters out too. Any advice on how to fix that?

I’m not an outliner either, as I’ve said many times on the blog. Sometimes I attempt outlining, but when I start to write, I realize problems that didn’t occur to me earlier, and the outline doesn’t accommodate them. I suspect serious outliners spend as much time, or almost as much, outlining as actually writing. They anticipate the issues and also manage not to over-plot. Wish I knew how to do it.

Even without outlining, however, you might restrain yourself from starting your story until your idea gels a little. Write notes instead of actual story. Write what ideas interest you in the beginning you have in mind. Consider where you might go with them, loosely, and put your thoughts on paper. Think (in writing) about a few characters who might fit. I also like to think of real people I know whose personalities fascinate me. Can you put any of your fascinating people in, in a fictionalized fashion?

Then ruminate over how the story might end. Write a few alternate endings. You can commit to one if it strikes you as perfect or you can leave them all hanging out there as possibilities. As you write, keep them in mind. One may become more probable as you move along.

I hope you’ve been saving your petered-out beginnings. Go through them and pick one. Tentatively decide that you just didn’t stick with it long enough. Stare at it. See if you can coax a new paragraph out of the void and then another. What do you make of your main character? Ask yourself questions about him. Who are his friends? His family? What’s easy for him? What’s hard? What tempts him into trouble? Can you move the story toward that trouble? Did you start in the right place? Is it possible that your beginning is really the end, and what you have to do is write toward it?

Ask yourself these questions and any others you can dream up. Then go back to your beginning and see if you can make more progress.

Look over your false starts again. Do any belong together? If you combine them, do they move you deeper into your story? If yes, keep going.

You describe your beginnings and ideas as random, but I believe nothing in writing is random. I say in Writing Magic, and I think I’ve said on the blog that writing comes from a very deep place. Even the simplest, lightest stories do. Let’s take “Little Bo Peep” for example. Here we go:

Little Bo Peep has lost her sheep
and doesn’t know where to find them.
Leave them alone
and they’ll come home,
wagging their tails behind them.

I may not have broken the lines correctly. Sorry. But there’s profundity to spare here. We’ve all felt the desperation of losing something important, could be homework, money, even trust. And we’ve all (I think) had the experience of letting the lost thing go, and the relief of that. Sometimes the loss is never recovered, but sometimes we get whatever it was back, and it seems that the letting go made the return possible. All that out of a nursery rhyme!

Themes repeat, not just story lines. Look at your beginnings once more. Is there something that unites them? If you can’t find a thread, ask your friends or family to read them and suggest a theme. They may see more than one, which is great.

A frequent story thread I see in kids’ stories is a main character being kidnapped. So what might be going on underneath? You may think of more possibilities, but here are two of mine: the victim, Eloise, is wanted, needed, so desired for some quality (her mind, her lovableness, her beautiful voice, her paranormal power) that the kidnappers put themselves at risk to capture her; or Eloise is in danger of being taken over, of losing her will, even her self, to her captors. Or both. So where can the writer take these themes? How can he play them out? Who are her captors? What are their personalities, flaws, virtues?

In both these examples, Bo Peep and the kidnapping, what chokes off the writing may be the underlying depth. It may be scary to explore, in the kidnapping case for instance, what it means for a main character, the one both reader and writer most identify with, to be so valuable. It reminds me of the sequence in the old movie It’s a Wonderful Life when the angel shows George Bailey what his town would have been like without him. I love that part, but it also embarrasses me – kind of like imagining your own funeral and how much everyone loved you.

Now I don’t mean that we’re aware in the slightest of feeling frightened when we write our failed beginnings. The idea simply peters out. But if we look at our themes, bring them out in the open, that lurking uneasiness may melt away. What we have turns into mere story and we see where we can go with it.

Contrariwise, ordinarily I resist examining my underlying motifs because I suspect that their subterranean natures give my stories power. But these cut-off beginnings are a special case and make the exploration worthwhile.

Here are some prompts:

•    If you too have trouble staying with your beginnings, review your false starts. Seek out your themes. Ask friends for help. When you have a few ideas, see where they take you. If a particular thread makes your heart race a little, keep going. If your heart persists in beating according to its ordinary rhythm, keep going anyway.

•    Expand Little Bo Peep’s situation, showing her story rather than telling it. How did she lose the sheep? Where does she search? What will the consequences be if the sheep stay lost? Who will be angry? How will Bo Peep suffer? If you like, turn the nursery rhyme into a novel or a series, The Bo Peep Chronicles.

•    Look up nursery rhymes, like “Little Bo Peep.” Pick one or two or more and speculate about their deeper meanings. Write down what you think.

•    This familiar lullaby is totally crazy (and creepy), in my opinion:
            Rock-a-bye baby, on the treetop,
            When the wind blows, the cradle will rock,
            When the bough breaks, the cradle will fall,
            And down will come baby, cradle and all.

      Who put Baby up there? Does somebody want to kill him? Turn this one into a story or a novel. If you want to see my silly interpretation, look for it in my book of mean poems, Forgive Me, I Meant to Do It, coming out next March.

Have fun, and save what you write!

  1. "If a particular thread makes your heart race a little, keep going. If your heart persists in beating according to its ordinary rhythm, keep going anyway."

    Hee hee! Have you ever heard the quote from Jack London that goes "Don't loaf around and wait for inspiration. Light out after it with a club, and if you don't get it, you will get something that looks remarkably like it"?

    I tell my friends that one of the best things for a writer is to have a lot of other writers on your chat list, so that at just about any hour you can pop online and go "heeeeelp!" and have someone to talk plot troubles with.

  2. Thanks for the great help. I usually do outline my stories, but it seems I go through all that trouble when I never finish the story. It has a good beginning, maybe some incredible scenes all mapped out, but it is NEVER FINISHED.

  3. Thank you for this topic! I have tons of false starts on my hard drive, and I never thought of looking for theme at that stage. It's always been something I looked for in revision.

  4. From the website:

    Oh my gosh, this is the EXACT problem I've been having for the past few years! I have a ton of stories that I started, wrote a few pages or even just paragraphs, then ran out of inspiration or hit a roadblock and left the story at the bottom of my binder and/or flash drive.
    Yet, these stories still float around and around in my head. Sometimes I combine two ideas into one. Sometimes a new idea comes knocking.
    Other times… Nothing. I have ideas that were left to rot deep in the recesses of my brain, never to be used again. Sometimes I run into a book or movie that is basically my idea, only better. Other times, I unknowingly borrowed two much from a book or movie.
    Like that idea about a high school for wizards. Too much like Harry Potter, it will seem like a bad rip off.
    My other story, the one I think of as my “main” story, is almost over-outlined. And I still just can’t force myself to do the actual writing! I plan it all out, I solve story problems, I agonize over it, and yet I cannot actually sit down and write it! I have a few beginnings, even a few well-written scenes that take place in the middle. And I just can’t force myself to write it, to connect the beginning with the later scenes.
    Maybeawriter

  5. From the website:

    Great post! I always struggle with leftover ideas discarded after a couple of pages. I've been trying to figure out some books about publishing and I was wondering if anyone could recommend a book about publishing for me, a middle school-age kid.
    On another note, I've been wondering how you go about publishing a series, and I know you published your princess tales. What's it like?
    Elizabeth

  6. Elizabeth–I believe the road to publication for series is the same as for stand-alone books. I just googled "getting published," and found many choices. I don't know which is best, and I didn't see any specifically geared toward young writers.

  7. From the website:

    It just occurred to me to ask if I've been doing this wrong. I've been trying to use the "Email post" icon with the little envelope on your blog, but I assume you've never received them. I fill out everything and it tells me "your friend has been emailed, but it never works. Am I doing something wrong? I have an awful feeling I'm being a blond again!

    Anyway, since I'm here, I might as well say, very intersting post! I didn't have much trouble with this in my last book, but I'm having a really hard time with it in my new one.

    My question has to do with Maybeawriter's comment about having an idea that seems too much like somebody else's. How do you know if your idea is too similar to another that's already published? My last book and my current one were both inspired by other books, and I'm afriad they're too similar. Are there any quidelines to follow? I'd hate to plagerize someone else's work or idea – I'm pretty sure it's illegal, and besides that, it's just plain wrong!

    Oh, and my apology for having such a long last comment. As you can see, I have the opposite of Brianna's problem! And I didn't mean to sound so harsh on my friend's story; I just like using reasons and examples.
    Emm

  8. Emma–I haven't gotten your emails. I don't think you have my email address, which is nowhere on the website or the blog because I don't give it out much. If you like, you can post whatever you wanted to email me here or on the blog.

    Copyright is complicated and I'm not an expert. Ideas can't be copy protected, only their expression. Having said that, if your characters are very close to another author's or your plot is very similar, you could be in trouble. I just looked, and the Library of Congress put out a book or pamphlet (I don't know which) called COPYRIGHT BASICS. I have no idea how comprehensive it is but it might be a good place to start.

  9. When I start out a story, I usually have a vague idea where I'm going. I have two methods of starting a story, and usually I unintentionally rotate from one to another as I change projects.
    The first one is having practically no idea where I'm going. Usually I have a vague picture by the time I've written a couple chapters, and it evolves as I go on. Other times I have a pretty well plotted out picture.

    Either way there's a lot of loopholes – I hate plotting everything out beforehand because it takes away all the surprises, and I love all the breakthroughs I have when trying to figure my story out.

    @Rina – I love that quote! It's so perfectly true, and it's great inspiration in itself.

    BTW, I tried the Rock-a-bye baby prompt, and I loved it – there were so many options. Great idea, Ms. Levine!

  10. I seem to have the same trouble as Ella writing to Char. What should I call you? Mrs. Levine? Miss Levine? Gail Carson Levine? Gail- (I'm 13 so maybe not that one)? Or don't you care? Please pick one for me. I was just wondering which cover you liked best of all the different editions of Ella Enchanted. Did you get to pick the cover for any of them?

  11. From the website:

    I have a question concerning last week's blog post. In a book I read about writing, it said that you should always write at least 40 pages from the MC's POV before switching over. That way the reader can get grounded in the story. What are your thoughts on this technique?
    Thanks!
    Rachel

  12. Rachel–Jeez, I hate these absolute rules! Tons of stories are written in third person and the reader gets immersed perfectly well. The only inviolable rule I can think of is that writing involves words! Does anyone else have thoughts about this?

  13. Awesome! This is the most thoughtful response to a writer's question I have ever read. Thank you for sharing this! I can relate with Limegreen! Thank you, thank you, thank you for this, it was VERY helpful!

  14. From the website:

    @Rachel–I don't think that's true at all. It just depends on your story and what you want your story to feel like to the reader. If you think you can jump from character to character easily, then go ahead an try, especially for your first draft. If it feels like it's not working when you go to revise, then by all means change it. Like Gail said, there's no definite rule for those things, so whatever feels right is just what I go with.
    Elizabeth

  15. I know you answered a question on children's stories before in Short and Young, but I just started trying out writing children's books and wanted to know if you had any more advice. I've been reading some of my little brothers books trying to get ideas of how to go about it. Is there anything else I should be doing? Thanks 🙂

  16. Oh, your blog is brilliant! I will go by calling you Gail, even though I am only 12 years old… I love that you respond to comments! Oh I feel shy now. Keke.
    Do you have any suggestions for themes I could have in a story? For example I read a story and it was basically about having a dream. The theme of that story was that once you have a dream, chase after it as hard as you can and that there's no such thing as a foolish/fake dream.
    That kind of theme. I would like my story to be inspirational to someone like that story was inspirational to me. I would also like to base my story around a pretty broad theme that hopefully people can relate to. <3
    Thank you!
    -Pororo

  17. writergirlforever–Sorry! I don't have anything to add to that post, but there are suggestions in there, including books that will certainly give you more ideas.

    Pororo–I'm adding your question to my list, but my answer (it will take me a while to get to it) may disappoint you.

  18. This post is great! This is the type of stuff I have the most trouble on. I like the idea of exploring characters and ideas in writing before you actually write the story. (I tried it before, but not the way Mrs. Levine explains it in this post.) Also, forcing just one more paragraph of a story that I think failed…I think I might be able to do that…maybe I'll bulldoze right through the snag–who knows? Overall, a helpful post.

  19. @writergirlforever– just remember, when writing a children's book, DO NOT talk down to them. I feel as though a lot of authors underappreciate children's skills in understanding. You don't like it when someone talks as though you are a child, correct? I know I don't. But pretty much whenever I pick up a book for children, I am shocked at what writers, agents, and publishers think children 'like' or are able to comprehend. Kids aren't as dumb as we think.
    Sorry about the long comment– just had to get that off my chest. 🙂
    One more thing: choose an idea that kids can relate to, but not one that makes them feel talked down to. As before, kids love to be treated as an adult, at least in ideas for children's books. They understand more than we think.

  20. Gail- I have a question regarding the difference between writing books and writing papers. I have an English teacher that will never let us start a sentence with words like or, but, or and. She says you have to be able to say "I think that" before each sentence. You can't write something like this:
    But then he died. Because it would sound like:
    I think that but then he died. Teacher says it's an incomplete sentence. But I disagree. See? I just started my last sentence with the word but and it made perfect sense right? My sister says that authers can use whatever grammar they want in books though. Is this true? Why should papers be any different? My Mum's Greek professor once said that writing should be how it's spoken out loud and that their shouldn't be rules that just apply to writing papers. He was a Greek teacher however not an English one….so what do you think? If you need me to explain more I think I can but I need Help!!!

  21. Melissa–I don't agree with your teacher or with your sister. Authors have to pay attention to grammar in books, and I'm careful about my grammar here on the blog. But sentence fragments are fine, not constantly, just now and then, often for rhythm or emphasis or dramatic effect. Please feel free to share my opinion with your teacher, if you like.

  22. YES!!! anyway, raucous joy aside….

    @Melissa–as Gail said in an above comment (I just called her Gail! eeee!!!), there are no rules in writing, even if you're getting published, aside from that writing requires words. (And I'd add that not plagiarizing is another rule, too.) Books should have clarity, but clarity and perfect grammar are not always the same. There are hordes of writers who use sentence fragments as part of their writing style–I certainly do–and the world would be a little emptier (or a lot emptier) without them. Also, the rules of language can't be written in stone. The kind of English spoken in the middle ages, or in the Industrial Revolution, or even twenty years ago, is not the same as the English used now. Languages evolve–if they didn't, we'd still be speaking Latin or some other ancient tongue. Shakespeare was known for making up entirely new words, and today we don't shun him for that–we admire him, because he had the courage to try something new.
    That being said, I am not in any way suggesting that you make every jicking other treo word something you've yentilly made up. Like I said, clarity is still important, no matter what.

    @Gail (eee! I like calling you Gail)–a question just occurred to me–not really writing-related I suppose. How do you pronounce Char's name? Is it with a hard C or a soft C (as in "shar")? Since it's short for Charmont, I would think it would be a soft C, but in the movie they used a hard one…(though I know you didn't by any means have absolute power over what they did with the movie).

  23. @ Melissa

    Personally, I think that there is a big difference between writing books and writing papers. In English class, you're learning the rules of grammar, how to write different kinds of essays or stories and how to use English in the "proper way". The use of learning grammar–even when it doesn't apply for some situations in books, is that you know when it would make the most sense or when it would be better to break the rules.

    Writer for books have a different agenda. They have a responsibility to make their story easy to read but they also have a duty to coveying their story, character, setting, and mood in the best and most natural way possible. Everytime you break a grammar rule there is a trade off. You might be losing clarity or credibility (i.e. how can I trust the author to tell a story that will move me, if they cant even make complete sentences?). However, writing can benefit from breaking grammar rules when by doing so the writing reads more naturally, or creates a mood, or shows the way the character really talks and thinks.

    In summary–grammar is a tool. Understand all the rules and then understand when it would be profitable to break them.

  24. Thanks for all your ideas on when to use "proper" grammar.
    Charlotte- I know you weren't asking me, but I've listened to the sound recording of Ella Enchanted almost 13 times and the reader (Eden Riegel) pronounces it Shar. Eden is absolutely amazing! She sounds the perfect age for Ella even though her picture does not quit look it. She puts so much emotion into it and she pronounces all the Ogrees parts perfectly. You should try listening to it.
    I was actually wondering about that. Does anyone know if you get to pick the reader for audiobooks yourself?
    By the way Gail- Not trying to be nosy or anything but I can't help but notice that all your posts are written from 9:00 P.M. to 1:30ish. I'm not saying I can fall asleep before 10:00 but 1:00? When do you go to bed?
    Sorry, strange post….kinda random….just wondering.

  25. Gail, I wish you could be a part of the Southern Festival of Books! Have you heard of that before? We are traveling to Nashville to attend, and you would be the one author I would look for!!

  26. Charlotte–I think of an Anglicized version of Charmont, so the CH would be hard.

    Melissa–When I was just starting out, I didn't have a chance to weigh in on a reader's voice, but now I do. The audio book publisher sends me something that I click on to hear a short tidbit of a reading. I have nixed a few readers until I heard something I liked.

    As for when I post, the clock must be wrong, because I usually post late morning on Wednesday, only occasionally in the evening.

  27. @Brianna, thanks. I'll look her up. I also just read Gail's Ever and learned a lot from that as well. Sorry for the delay in responding. I was out of town and took an internet vacation while I was at it. I spent whatever free time I had (it was my daughter's wedding)and read and read and read.

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