Please come and talk to me. Just for some general writing chat and support...

[BiglyBadgers]

I am about a third of the way through editing my stupidly long book (this'll teach me for writing epic fantasy) and need some chat!

I really loved the chat and support on the nano thread, but now novel writing month is long gone and I am alone! There must be other people out there bumbling along needing a friend to chat to...surely....I can provide coffee, cake and excellent free WiFi

Yep SF is hard. Everyone knows how a horse basically works, but not so much intergalactic space travel etc. I have a biology background so I could write about genetics etc or possibly alien ecology, xenobiology with a lot of research but it all seems a bit serious and generally lends itself to darker/scarier stories, which I don't want to write. I basically just like writing warm things about feelings and nature and life and friendship and loyalty and love, and I realised that all the fantasy stories I was writing were essentially love stories or about finding one's identity, and that the secondary world was almost incidental... so I thought why not just make it contemporary. Especially as I end up moralising over every fight scene and either making my characters pacifists or destroying them with self-loathing any time they kill someone...

I do have a long list of speculative fiction premises for short stories, but I can never turn them into actual stories.

Hello everyone...I have been quietly observing for a while but thought I would join the conversation. So jealous of the work ethic you guys have! I spend hours creating in my head, but always put off the actual writing part. Doesn’t help that I struggle with the middle. I know how I want it to begin and I know how I want it to end, just never quite sure how to get them there...

Hello! I often wish I could download the stories in my head onto paper. I'd have written so many books by now . And so much gets lost in translation.

I also do a lot of writing in my head. The thing is when I come to putting it on paper I always find the act of writing results in the story changing anyway.

Ezzie have you tried just starting writing and seeing how it pans out? If you have a beginning the rest can sort itself out later. I write my first draft without any planning at all and then rewrite and edit a lot from that.

Slow going but up to 65k for my work in progress.. .probably 80k when done. And this isn't even my novel, it's fanfic!!!

Wow honey that's pretty epic. Good practice for writing your novel though.

Agree with bigly about things changing when you start writing. And to add: I used to think out scenes in my head in the night before falling asleep: literally narrate the scene then try to write it down word for word the next day. And it never went well. Always felt stilted and forced. And any scene or even line of dialogue that I'd come up with already was always awful to try and fit in. I've learnt now that it's better not to think up the scenes like this in advance. Actually the less I think about it the better the writing often is. I do still use my falling asleep time to plan, but either at a structural level or if I do play out a scene in my head it'll be an off-page one - I'll do it from the non POV character's POV (if that makes sense. I.e. What they're doing in between the scenes they appear in!) which helps me flesh out secondary characters and their motivations etc but doesn't stymie the writing of the actual scene in quite the same way. That's actually really garbled reading it back...

Anyway don't take advice from me. The short story I was trying to write is now probably going to be a 20-25k novella. I've written about 12k and just decided to change the setting, characters and basically while course of events so need to rewrite most of the last 8k. Pantsing has its issues...

Yes bigly I do just write without a plan and sometimes it works out, sometimes it just fades out...

I have a story I’ve been working on and off on for years and it’s so cliched (vampire fiction) I wish I could just leave it but every now and again it comes back and is like hey! Remember me? I’ve got a new turn for this plot! And then I write a bit and the inspiration goes for another few months.

I am always amazed by my ability to procrastinate when it comes to things I love. I’m the same with knitting, I love it when I’m doing it and yet for some reason always put off actually doing it, why is that?!

That pretty much describes my process as well Tippety. I find it really helpful to use my lying in bed time to go through backstory and other character pov, but not what I am actually going to write.

Unfortunately it took me about 15 years to realise the difference between actively writing as a craft and just attempting to transcribe a daydream. My writing is so much better now. Way less hammy.

Ezzie it is annoying when things just fizzle out but often the only way to know if a story has legs is to start writing it and see what happens. I bet all the successful published authors have drawers full of those first 30k "nearly" ideas. And the thing is that nothing is wasted. At the very least any writing is practice, and often ideas can be reused or recombined with other ideas to make a great story (Middlemarch was two ideas combined I think!).

I also have a pesky vampire novel that just won't die. Needs a stake. As well as 2 fantasy novels, another paranormal urban, a YA dystopian, about 5 romances/women's fic ranging from chicklit to 'serious' ... and the 2 novels I'm "working" on currently.... ie, working on by attempting to speedwrite a novella of a completely new idea. Which is clearly a sensible idea given time is limited

“Transcribing a daydream” that is such a perfect description, I love it!

Argh!! Trying to write first chapter of original work. Three women havimg a drink in a pub.
So hard after months of star wars. My fanfic chapter is about an attempted rape and then escape...strangely seems easier

And by funny coincidence, this picture came up on a FB writing group I’m in!

Thought I'd post this competition here as a few of us write fantasy: www.britishfantasysociety.org/british-fantasy-awards/short-story-competition/

Bit short notice as it closes on 30th! Only just heard about it. Think I might have one story that fits the guidelines, will have to dust it off and see...

That's certainly a shift in subject matter for you Honeyboo. I once wrote a flash fiction about three people have a drink in a pub, except one of them was a penguin, one a space pirate and the other a very small person in a very fat person's body...which later exploded. I'm not sure what I was taking when I wrote that, but I think maybe I should find out and take some more.

biglybadgers well, I even wrote a scene in star wars where they were at a pub, but this sort of introductory scene setting chapter is killing me... oh, well, least I have fanfic to keep my going. My productivity is dying though, I used to write lots in one go, now I seem to agonise over every sentence.

I'd find it hard to write more than one story at a time honeyboo, especially for an extended work like a novel. I have to completely live inside that story and can't even read other books while I'm working on it. Don't know if it's the same for you, probably I'm just crap at multi-tasking, but might be worth considering if you're finding it hard to find your character's voice? Also, playing devil's advocate so feel free to kick me, but is the scene in the pub really where the story starts? If notif it is just scene-settingthen that might be another reason you're finding it tough to get going?

Tippety, I wondered that too, but I'm trying to make a start somewhere, even if it doesn't end up in finished book and it will give me something to share at book class that doesn't take place on a planet in a galaxy far far away.. which is a shame as I got some really good concrit on my last chapter that had tension and action!

I know my two main fanfic characters pretty well... but yeah, maybe finishing that off first might be a good idea!

I have to outline or I get stuck so quickly. But I'm really bad at outlining middles so it tends to go tits up anyway!

Thanks for BFS short story tip - I'm trying to stop writing shorts but I do still have about ten making the rounds at various markets so if one gets rejected in the next 12 days (likely!) I will use that as my entry :D.

I was more productive during my lunch hours than my evenings this week... I'm just so tired at home, sigh. Need more sleep this week! (I say, posting after midnight).

Fair enough honeyboo, makes sense. It always takes me a while to write my way into a story (or I have an explosive start, write 10k then rapidly realise I have no actual plot). I once wrote a book that started with a group of friends having a meal in a restaurant. There was lots of banter that I found hilarious and which I convinced myself was vital for character introductions, but which now makes me absolutely cringe because it clearly had nothing to do with the plot and was just me entertaining myself. So ... I guess I learnt the hard way .

So starting with conversations in restaurants is now one of my rules, like not starting with the weather, or a dream, or someone waking up in the morning... except all great books break all of those rules. Fairly sure Return of the Native starts with a long description of the countryside and I love that book ...

I went to a workshop once on 'the first 100 words' and was told that they should convey the genre, the tone, an indication of what the story is about, an idea of the main character/s, and a conflict (not necessarily the main conflict, but enough of a puzzle that the reader is curious enough to keep reading). Which is a lot ... but the first paragraph is pretty much all we have to keep the reader (aka agent!) reading the first page, which is all we have to keep them reading the first three pages, which is all we have to keep them reading the first chapter... etc.

Other than middles and ends, beginnings are definitely the hardest... And my other 'rule' is to write the first chapter last--I have to figure out what the story actually is before I can introduce it.

Sorry just blathering on to myself really.

Wow generic, ten short stories! I think I've managed to complete two in my life. Any tips for writing short fiction? I struggle to make mine actually about anything. I just end up writing a few nice paragraphs that don't go anywhere.

I never got anywhere with shorts until I tried Holly Lisle's short free 'course' (pdf) on writing flash, which gave me five really bad stories but the confidence to keep going: hollylisle.com/how-to-write-flash-fiction-that-doesnt-suck/

Then I was on a SFF writing forum where there's a monthly challenge to write a short story or flash story (in password protected section) which motivated me to write a few more.

I use the Submission Grinder (thegrinder.diabolicalplots.com/) to look for new story markets (usually sorting by pay) - it's heavily slanted towards SFF but it's free. Duotrope is good for general/lit fic. The Grinder also keeps track of my submissions and my stats. It gets quite addictive seeing where your submission is on the market graphs and that makes you do more writing!

However you do get a LOT of rejections (unless you're very good). Since 2015 I've had 239 rejections (on 32 pieces) and 11 acceptances. I tend to focus on paying (even token paying) markets, but a couple of those were free ones. The good thing about the SFF market for shorts is there are a few more paying sites/mags than the literary world, even if the pay is still very low.

As you can see, there's a lot of instant gratification from writing shorts in terms of finishing/submitting/rejects/acceptances.

The downside to all this is I got hyper-focused on churning stories out to deadlines that were either on a forum or in my head, and getting a lot of rejections that I had to spend time on turning around to go to a new submission. I've spent hardly any time on novels since I've been writing shorts, there's no real money in it, and at times (even with a thickish skin) it's just depressing! Out of my sales, only approx 2/3 are credits that an agent might take any notice of. And if I want an agent I should try to write a book anyway.

Shorts are really fun don't get me wrong. Some people are born short story writers. But I'm not very 'literary' and it's taken so much time to get the sales I've had. I need a break for a bit :)

When my current subs come back with Rs I'm going to trunk them for a bit and breathe.

That was prob too much info :)

Wow no, not too much, really interesting, thanks. Never heard of submission grinder. My entire experience consists of submitting the two stories I've written to one place each, getting a rejection straight away, then giving up writing for 6 months ... So professional.

Will check out the course too. I just struggle with actually coming up with the story in the first place. I get ideas all the time but only for a premise, like 'wouldn't it be interesting if the world was like x'. But I can never manage to tell a story around it. With novels I come up with the characters first and find the plot just develops itself once I have the characters. So I should probably try coming up with characters to fit my premises but it always feels so forced... I really need to read more short fiction I think. I basically haven't read a short story since I stopped reading '50 amazing horse stories' anthologies aged about 12...

OK, I have now signed up to that course. Wish me luck! Though I don't anticipate getting much done tonight as ds is currently napping with a temperature of 40, poor guy.

My three year old is full of cold which means she will wake up cough cough coughing - not ideal! Good luck with the course. She is rather SFF focused (not as useful I fear if you want to write literary flash). Her guide is more about plot than writing. But hey ho, it's free!

Here's a screenshot from part of a market page on the Grinder once you have a submission logged there (ie you send off your sub and tell the Grinder you've done that). Your sub is a black dot and you can watch as people around you get rejected (red) or accepted (green) and obsess over what it means for yours (nothing at all).

I've finished very first messy draft of part 2 and in a moment of excitement I've started the first chapter of part 3. I'm giving a character a pov who hasn't had one before as in part two I killed of a couple of pov characters and the time just seems right for her. I'm just so excited to write her pov I couldn't help myself.

Good work bigly. It's a good sign you're excited about the character.

Started the course. I think it'll be helpful, definitely at making me write stories about something--the first exercise the emphasis is all on characters DESPERATELY wanting something but BIG dramatic problems getting in the way etc etc which a lot of these courses always do. And of course I like to write very quiet pieces about barely acknowledged feelings... Anyway I've come up with 10 daft story ideas so I'll see what happens when I try to write them.