Please see Styx thread on the Registered Shipmates consultation for the main discussion forums - your views are important, continues until April 4th.
8th Day, Write or Wrong: Writing the middle of a story
Golden Key
Shipmate, Glory
Long-time difficulty for me. I'm good at beginnings and endings. I get ideas for the middle; but it's hard to put them together, and write my way from the good beginning to the good ending, and have it all connected.
(Actually, in Dorothy Gilman's Thale's Folly, there's an interesting character who only writes beginnings--and they're really good ones.)
Thoughts? Thx.
(Actually, in Dorothy Gilman's Thale's Folly, there's an interesting character who only writes beginnings--and they're really good ones.)
Thoughts? Thx.
Comments
Longer stories are very much episodic - a series of short stories with the same people, each taking the big story on a little.
I too always have a problem with the middle - actually with the bits just beyond the middle, when I've set up the various plot threads and have got them reasonably well developed. By then I know just where I'm going, but haven't quite sorted out exactly how I'm going to get from here to there.
What I generally do, after a period of futile moaning to Mrs. Andras about how I'm stuck again, is to go way ahead in the writing and complete the closing chapters. When they're done and dusted I go back and fill in the missing bits, making all necessary editorial changes as required - usually not too much needs altering at this point, but consistency does need keeping an eye on.
Recently I ran across it it, started reading, was surprised to see how much I has written and it was really good, until - sigh. It just wouldn't work, at all. But it was GOOD until then.
Moral - let things go and tackle the next one. I didn't do that for too long.
Jengie
(smile)