Dear friends, lurkers, commenters, dippers,
I need some suggestions. I honestly do not have a plot for the story I've been writing for the past year. I cannot draw myself away from it. I want to use Nanowrimo as a tool to get it moving again, but I'm more at the polishing than the gross cutting out stage. Which may be the problem, and I should simply re-write the whole thing.
Suggestions?
Extra points if you can identify the rules behind my recent pseudo poems.
I admit, I missed yesterday. Challenging days at work. Exhausting. Stretched to my limits.
8 comments:
I would help, but creative writing is not my forte. School killed that long ago.
Sorry, I have neither ideas for a new novel nor rules for the poems. My head I hang in shame.
The only possibly useful suggestion I have to make at this point is "rest".
I'm going to 'plead the fifth'.
Just really quickly and off the top of my head:
Start again and retell it from the point of view of a different character every day for the first week, then run with the one that has most potential?
Find a point somewhere in the middle that you really like and start again from there as chapter one?
Start from a genre or shape that you like and have never written in and rewrite to conform to that?
Begin by writing a long introductory chapter that may not mention in detail anything you've already written about?
Rewrite it completely without dialogue, then put the dialogue back in?
Start again and write a very detailed and structured plot, then 'clothe' it in what you've already written (but since it's a novel not a person, if, in the end, you really, really have to, you can chop bits off the skeleton to make the clothes fit)?
On each page (or so) that you've already written, either add a substantial paragraph (digression or physical description, not additional main action) or take one out?
Start by describing, at length, the book you're writing, without quoting or paraphrasing. See if it wants to 'take off' to somewhere you haven't been yet?
Jean,
You have taken sword to my knot. Stories, chapters, each from the other characters who have their own stories. Main small character as a frame, not a center. I will do my 1700 words a day letting each of them speak. All of a sudden, I am flooded with ideas.
I shall go officially sign up for nanowrimo this evening. Thank you.
Glad my random thoughts helped. I know you'll do it, Zhoen!
Maybe I'll do NaBloPoMo, inspired by Udge's intention to do it again, and by your commitment to try and post something every day this month.
*jumps up and down, clapping hands*
No, you did not hear me squeal.
Moira.
I officially challenge you to do NaBloPoMo with Jean.
Ha!
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