AdrienneW

I have a problem with staying on one book until it's finished. I routinely wind up working on 3-4 stories at a time, and most of the time I wind up getting half-way finished with each and being frustrated that there is no end in sight. I know that if I can stay on one, until done, I could get it done in 3 months rather than having 4 1/2 done in a year. The problem is, staying on target.
Does anyone else have this issue?
Thanks

Krim

You really need to buckle down. See if you can mix the stories together into something sort of different, and more complex. I'm going to use Dark Tower here, so don't lynch me:

you have a story about a gunslinger hunting down a magician

you have a story about people living in a post-apocalyptic world that has reverted to being like the Old West

you have a story about a talented warrior who lost his best friends in a battle to save his world from evil

You have a story about people from modern day New York coming to another world.

Mix them all together. Get a story about an expert gunslinger who lost all of his friends in the battle for evil, hunting down one of the very last people of that evil side, who happens to be a magician. He passes through towns in the Old West-style, and you see relics of a world showing you that this book is post-apocalyptic. Eventually the gunslinger ends up finding people from modern day New York and makes them into his friends, who begin to slowly reform him from a killing machine into a human who cares about other people.

See what I mean?

__________________
"A terrible energy and strength began to grow in him. It grabbed his emotions and forged them into a solid bar of anger with one word stamped on it: revenge." - Eragon by Christopher Paolini, an international bestseller

lin

Excuse me, no personal offense intended, but that is just totally, absolutely nuts.

Don't let this flip you our, Adrienne. It's very normal at stages of development as a writer. I've done the same thing on a much bigger scale and am just finishing up things I started 20 years ago. And they are well done, which I couldn't have pulled off back then.

There's a time to crack down, and there's a time to relax and enjoy writing what you want to write. Otherwise you might as well be a tech writer or secretary.

Novels are a long haul. I get bored before they're done. For young writers it's a tough task, and many who crack down or burble happily through until they hit 90.000 words are not creating anything readable. They don't try to get junior high runners to do marathons, they work them out in sprints, middle distance, a couple of miles of cross country, maybe.

A danger can be having your crackdown regime force you into something you don't feel confident with and not enjoying it, so you find excuses not to write at all. It's like anything else, you push yourself a little, but you don't hurt yourself or force into situations you don't find comfortable.

Good luck
Lin

lin

By the way...I think the trouble you may be having is creating the architecture of a story. Do you have an ending for any of these? I find I work much better after I've written the ending.

I learned a lot about shaping stories from screenwriting, when you have to have a very pronounced shape in a very short format.

Try doing some thinking about what happens, how it ends up, what is signifcant bout the developments, etc.

Rahvin

I suffer from acute "can't be arsed-ness" while writing. I must have abiut seventeen introductions written for various things, shorts stories, novels, the works. I just write what occurs to me at the time, and then see if I like the idea enough to pick it up again. If I do, wahey! Another chapter might get written, or it might even get taken to completetion. If I don't, it stagnates on my hard drive, with all my other half-written things.

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AdrienneW

That would not work. The stories are completely different books.

AdrienneW

Yes.
I have actually finished some of the stories and been very satisfied with them. I feel like I have a severe case of ADD sometimes.

Ilasir Maroa

Mix 'em together on a larger scale. I have about eight different novels going, only one evn near finished, and I have just discovered that could all fit together in a series, even though tthey are about very different things. Of course, this may not work for most people. Just write what you feel like writing, and see how things go from there. When you run out of new ideas, go back to the old stuff...

Krim

If you can logically fit simplistic plots together into a more complex one, do it. I'm not saying you should take whole chunks of story and throw them together when they are incongruous. I'm saying take the bare aspect and when they can, put them together. You have a story about a man who escapes from being a wizard's slave; you have him escape, and you wanted to continue the story, but you don't know where to go from there.

Then you have a story about a man in the army. You want to add more depth to the main character.

Mix the two stories together: you have a man in the army with a troubled past as a slave. Maybe he ends up confronting his old master in battle and is recaptured. So you have 1+1=2, and then you can build off of that when you have new possibilities.

Why is it such a crazy idea? In my example I took several aspects of the Dark Tower series and made them into simplistic, stand-alone works. It's just reversing the procedure I'm talking about. I'm not saying to stack them so that you have half of a story and then suddenly you have another half of a completely different novel stacked ontop of it.

Anyway, Adrianne said that they wouldn't fit together since they're completely different (though if you look far enough there are probably small things you can lift from other stories into a main one to open new paths if you use your imagination), so the point is moot in this case. Still, there's no reason to say it's absolutely nuts.

__________________
"A terrible energy and strength began to grow in him. It grabbed his emotions and forged them into a solid bar of anger with one word stamped on it: revenge." - Eragon by Christopher Paolini, an international bestseller

Truth-Teller

Krim--that's probably the best advice I've heard on this website.

Bravo. Well done.

ClancyBoy

I didn't really like the Dark Tower series for that reason. It seemed to me like King was throwing together every movie he saw as a kid and trying to make one story out of it.

Still, I guess you can't argue with success.

__________________
"Mother Hitton's Littul Kittons wait for you down there. Little pets they are, little little little pets. Cute little things, they say. Don't you believe it. No man ever saw them and walked away alive. You won't either. That's the final dash, flash. That's the utter clobber, cobber." --Cordwainer Smith, Norstrillia.

Truth-Teller

What are you doing in China?

ClancyBoy

Workin'.

(I'm a graphic designer not an English teacher, just FYI.)

__________________
"Mother Hitton's Littul Kittons wait for you down there. Little pets they are, little little little pets. Cute little things, they say. Don't you believe it. No man ever saw them and walked away alive. You won't either. That's the final dash, flash. That's the utter clobber, cobber." --Cordwainer Smith, Norstrillia.

Truth-Teller

Cool.

Krim

Well, Clancy, might not have been the best example. There are some parts that don't work too well (especially in the last three books). And the whole Dr. Doom robots and Harry Potter snitches wasn't the best idea I've seen.

If you cut out the people travel to another world (which is quite the cliche), it wouldn't seem as convoluted. But that defeats the whole purpose of the Dark Tower being a nexus...

But it works well enough as an example. You just have to realize when you're packing too much in there.

__________________
"A terrible energy and strength began to grow in him. It grabbed his emotions and forged them into a solid bar of anger with one word stamped on it: revenge." - Eragon by Christopher Paolini, an international bestseller