Current Events > All of the obstructions which prevent me from simply sitting down and writing

(+) Yeah! (+)

All of the obstructions which prevent me from simply sitting down and writing my novel:

• finalizing the name of [the primary female lead]
• finalizing the personality of [the tertiary male lead]
• deciding which antagonist is the one with the plan
• giving the story a "spectacle," an Indiana Jones action sequence
• finalizing the climax of the novel
• revising the denouement
• shoehorning in a central theme?

I have to be honest with that last one. It should have been the first or second thing that I came up with. However, I've had a rough outline for my story since April of last year. It's gone through multiple revisions since then, but the point is that it would be impossible at this stage to give the story a sincere central theme which drives the creative process. I've already gone through the creative process. If I want a central theme, I have to retrofit it to what I've already mapped out over the past two and a half years.

I'm not asking for advice or divulging the nature of my story. But if anyone is in a similar situation, feel to (vaguely) list your obstructions as well. I know some of you are working on stories, so this might be fun.

So having an imagination?

I feel like a decent chunk of that is getting too involved in planning to the detriment of execution.

Like, why not try starting and see if some of it starts coming out organically, instead of needing it all done beforehand?

Those are all the fun parts in my opinion.

My difficulty is just the putting words to paper part.

I think I just enjoy world building more than writing to be honest.

DrizztLink posted...

I feel like a decent chunk of that is getting too involved in planning to the detriment of execution.

Like, why not try starting and see if some of it starts coming out organically, instead of needing it all done beforehand?

I don't think I can take the "see where the journey leads you" approach. I might do that with regards to the character whose personality I've yet to finalize since he doesn't appear until partway through the novel. Once the other characters have been introduced, and their personalities are defined, I might see what's still missing and work from there.

Hospy posted...

Those are all the fun parts in my opinion.

My difficulty is just the putting words to paper part.

I think I just enjoy world building more than writing to be honest.

Yeah. Writing feels a little something like work.

[LFAQs-redacted-quote]


Yeah. It's easy to come up with names that are underwhelming, ill-fitting, or otherwise too on-the-nose for a character's position. "And here is the obvious Judas of the team, Slade Wolfskill. How nobody saw his betrayal coming from a mile away is beyond me."

Another thing I have an issue with is coming up with unintentional themes -- like giving characters of the same gender or same ethnic group matching initials. I had to rename two of the women in my story because I was assigning too many D names. If I had a Donna Dominguez and a Danielle DuPont, I figure people would think I was making a "Double D" joke at the expense of my characters and/or readers.

<_<

FortuneCookie posted...

"And here is the obvious Judas of the team, Slade Wolfskill. How nobody saw his betrayal coming from a mile away is beyond me."

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/f/f347d793.jpg

Aspiring writers will often put more creativity into making up reasons not to write than they do their work. They all sound perfectly reasonable, but they all amount to the same thing: excuses.

You don't have to know the destination before you arrive. You don't need everything to be right first time. Or second, or fifth, or seventeenth.

Force yourself. Write the fucking thing.

Doing names is fairly easy if that's one of the main things blocking you. Just give her a placeholder name like Andrea or something, then get to writing your story. If you come up with a different name you like better later, it's simple to just Ctrl+H to find and replace all instances of the old name with the new one.

ai123 posted...

Aspiring writers will often put more creativity into making up reasons not to write than they do their work. They all sound perfectly reasonable, but they all amount to the same thing: excuses.

You don't have to know the destination before you arrive. You don't need everything to be right first time. Or second, or fifth, or seventeenth.

Force yourself. Write the fucking thing.

Yeah. I'm probably going to mow the yard, get a shower, eat dinner, watch a movie, and then complain that it's too late to begin writing this evening.

[LFAQs-redacted-quote]


I had to rename one character because she her name was two letters off from a politician that I wasn't acquainted with until recently. The replacement name that I gave her ended up making her multicultural in the process.

FuriousFox posted...

Doing names is fairly easy if that's one of the main things blocking you. Just give her a placeholder name like Andrea or something, then get to writing your story. If you come up with a different name you like better later, it's simple to just Ctrl+H to find and replace all instances of the old name with the new one.

I know. I believe Stephen King once said that, if you had to list the capitol of Brazil as Los Angeles, it was more important to keep the creativity flowing than it was to stop and look up the capitol.

I've just never been good at following that kind of advice. I want to get the name right and not use placeholders. I guess I'm always afraid that someone will find my writing and think that those are the best names that I can come up with.

Why do you need a central theme?