Thursday, May 19, 2005

Beginnings are Hard, Endings are Even Harder - Part I

If you're like me and you're at the beginning of your writing experiences, then chances are that you have thirty or so unfinished novels in your My Documents folder of your PC.
You can't help it. You have a great idea, you sit down and start the novel. You may even get through the first few chapters but then time comes where you just stop working on it and move on to another idea you have. This one, you're convinced, is the winner, the one you will finish.

Why does this happen to beginning writers, you ask? A combination of things: 1) You get bored with your own idea. 2) The task of writing a novel seems daunting all of a sudden. 3) You get stuck and aren't sure where the plot should go from here. 4) You're convinced that what you've written so far sucks. 5) You're convinced this new idea you have is so much better.

What to do?
Here is what, here is why these things happen and how you can tackle them:

1) You're bored with your idea because all you had was one idea and you've probably exhausted it after a few chapters. You feel like you're repeating yourself. My solution - don't start a novel with just one idea in your head. Take a few ideas (at least two) and write about them. They will either come together on their own, or you have to find a way to intertwine them. This way you'll have a lot more to write about, become less bored and add even suspense to your writing as you're trying to combine the ideas.

Tomorrow I'll continue dealing with the rest of the problems that stand in writers' way to completing their novel.

No comments: