So, I'm planning a fic for the inuyasha fandom, but I'm having trouble getting started. I keep starting to write the beginning and end up not liking it about half way through it and discarding it. I don't always have alot of time to write, being an essential worker is a blessing and a curse, so when I do get time I want to write something I'll actually end up liking. Do you have any advice on getting ideas to work for you? Instead of abandoning them halfway through.
I’ve been working overtime through this pandemic as well, and first of all *hugs* ❤ I hope you’re getting some time to rest.
As for what I do in situations where I want to write and have no time? I write one shots. Short fics of 1500 words or less. Sometimes they’re a single scene. Sometimes it’s a few tiny scenes strung together.
I have one fic that 973 words and marked as complete that could easily be a 75-100K multichap with a main plot and 2 or 3 subplots. But I didn’t have time to write that big idea, so I wrote the little one instead. If I have the time and inspiration someday, I can go back and build it out but for now I’ve got enough of it written down that someone can read it and feel like it’s finished - and that I can go back and read it and pick that idea up and dust it off again.
When I get an idea for a fic, there’s very often one or two scenes out of the whole story that draw me in more than the rest. When I don’t have time, I just write those scenes without trying or expecting to write the rest.
What about the rest of you? How do you go about it?
When I get an idea that I really want to write but always feel like it's inadequate or lacking, I always find that 'stop giving a fuck', or 'fuck it', help a lot.
I mean, I will just keep writing and writing until I reached a certain amount of words without re-read it until I'm done.
The result always a mess, but it usually give me a direction and become something at least decent after got refined.
I never write beginnings first. They’re hard and usually not what I wrote the fic for. So, I write out-of-order. I write the scenes I want to write and leave placeholders in brackets telling myself what happens in the beginning and in-between so I can come back to it later and fill out the missing scenes. Sometimes, I work on other short fics as a break from the main one or to get a feel for a certain scene I’m working on. Sometimes, more scenes/details develop out of the ones I’m writing, so I make a note in brackets to add it earlier/later. This helps my fic look put together because themes return or are imbedded in different areas (foreshadowing, cohesion, etc).
Different things work for different people, so while I can’t guarantee that any of the following will work out for you, I’ll at least share some things I’ve found helpful:
Taking time to think about why this is happening. Do you dislike your stories/discard them because you find the writing bland? Do you feel like you’re just stuck writing the parts you don’t care about and you never get to the good stuff? Does it seem like it’s never as good on paper as it was in your head? Or something else? There’s tons of tools and advice out there, so actually figuring out what the problem is can help to pick out the solution.
Like the person above me, I also write out of order and use placeholder text to fill in later.
When you’re ready to start on a story, take some time to think about why you want to write it, and jot some notes down about that. Is there a scene you envisioned that got you really excited? Is there an aspect to the ship you want to explore? And so on. These notes shouldn’t be really long, and they’re not supposed to be a generic questionnaire (that is, the stuff in your notes may look different for every story); their purpose is to give you a goal, and to help you envision what the end result will be. As you’re writing and editing, you can look back at these notes and see if what you have aligns with them. Instead of discarding a whole story, you only need to delete some parts, and update others.
Seriously, don’t sweat the beginning. Some people feel that they need to info dump all the lore/background details at the start, and some others feel pressured to make the beginning amazing (I know I was taught in school that people are supposed to work on the “hook”...). But when it comes to giving the reader enough info, there’s some techniques you can use to help with that: culling down the info you’re giving only to what’s necessary; “show don’t tell”; spreading out the exposition (ie, if the info isn’t immediately necessary, you can explain it later on); etc. And when it comes to the hook, just remember that you’re writing fanfic--people are already excited to read your story the moment they click on it, since they know it’s going to be about a source material/characters/ship/etc they already like. Personally, I don’t take as much time on the beginning myself; just have enough details to set up the first scene, and then it can immediately start flowing into the dialogue/events that I want to get into.
Gaining some degree of persistence/giving yourself more time. If I get tired or mentally overwhelmed by a piece, then it’s probably a good time to take a break from it for at least a few days. Whatever it is that seems awful about the work won’t be so bad after I’ve had a break.
Not being a perfectionist. If there’s this part that I keep worrying over and it seems like nothing I can do makes it better, then I go back to those pre-story notes I mentioned earlier. If the part I wrote furthers my end goal, then just keep it in and move on.
