heh. Sounds like a big problem, alright. I wouldn’t have a clue what to do with that. I don’t deal with flashbacks anyway, so I’d be stumpe4d from point one.

Here’s a good question to ask yourself: will it be more frustrating to have half a novel that you can’t use, or to never actually start because you keep changing things?

The l;atter is my big issue: I never actually get beyond around 3000 words before I decide to change some aspect of the story, be it wqorld, plot, characters, or even prose. So I’m stuck in this cycle of minor alterations and occasional major revisions, while never getting any actual writing done. If I’;d been able to just sit and write for a full novel, I would have done so years ago and been one of the many self-published teen hacks the good people at AS love to hate so much.
So I guess it’s a good thing in its way, but it’s bloody frustrating.

The l;atter is my big issue: I never actually get beyond around 3000 words before I decide to change some aspect of the story, be it wqorld, plot, characters, or even prose. So I’m stuck in this cycle of minor alterations and occasional major revisions, while never getting any actual writing done. If I’;d been able to just sit and write for a full novel, I would have done so years ago and been one of the many self-published teen hacks the good people at AS love to hate so much.
So I guess it’s a good thing in its way, but it’s bloody frustrating.

I’m going to get flamed for this, but who cares what they think? Writing something is the first step. So what if you’re a teen hack? All that phrase means is that you’ve got a novel in its first draft that you thought was good enough for the world to see when actually it stunk because all FIRST first drafts stink. a) that can happen at any age, and b) anything can be transformed into something else.

I know SMeyer’s not a teenager, but I’m going to use her as an example: if Twilight had been edited over and over, if plausible reasons for Edward’s daylightness and going-to-schoolness etc had been thought up, if Bella had been given a personality, if it had gone through a couple of major rewrites and then some more tweaking, I truly believe it could have been a stellar book. But nothing like that happened.

I don’t think people should mock the hacks. All they’ve shown is bad judgement (and bad judgement is a trait we all have in some form or other), and that they’ve had nobody to tell them it was rubbish on the first draft. Think about it.

*note: double post because there are two issues here.

That’s true, and I don’t necessarily consider being a teenage hack a bad thing… it’s when they get arrogant and won’t listen to advice or try to improve, that it becomes bad. but ‘hacks’ who genuinely take constructive criticism on board and work to improve their writing, wow. A rare breed, I’ve found.

Anyway, my novel, which has for many years been more of the concept of “I’m going to write a novel one day!” than an actual planned story, has gone through countless redesigns, at least 8 major overhauls that I can remember, but dozens of small tweaks, false starts and other small changes. I can never decide when to start the story, as in what the opening scene will be. Should I start it earlier, or later? My latest more-than-100-words draft got to the point where I had 5000 words of “honey, I’m home! Everything seems to be in order. What’s that, we’re out of beer? I’ll get some tomorrow. Want to play chess, son?” before I gave up and redesigned the plot, world, characters, prose and opening scenes. Opening scenes should not be 5000 words of pottering around the house, watering plants and playing chess. I mean, honestly. Unless it were an experimental slice-of-life about emotions and with some pretty active extended metaphors, nobody’s going to want to read it.

so, I try, try again, and probably will until my son carries on my noble work so I can be posthumously publishedto much critical acclaim but little popular success because of the archaic obsoleteness of fantasy in the postapocalyptic scifi future. :P

2. No, not yet. That wasn’t quite sarcasm, but it most probably was. As a narcissistic analloerotic, I doubt I’ll be developing any progeny outside of a petri dish by my own instigation.

3. What, the ‘pottering around the house’ bit, or the redeveloped plot?

I’ve had people tell me that scene was actually really nice, but it’s not what I want to write, if you understand me, I don’t want to be known for pages upon pages of prose that goes nowhere and characters who do nothing for most of the book. At the same time, much of this arises because I want to portray the reality of living in my world, which requires lots of little things like pottering around the house and cooking and cleaning and bowel movements, and the problem is in choosing which bits to show and which to creatively disguise with more prominent foreground action or dialogue.

2. Yeah, I use lots of long words when I do sarcasm, that is generally the first tip-off. That, or intentionally pretentious parody. Also, ‘asexual’ and ‘analloerotic’ are very different, by definition. ‘asexual’ means completely klacking in sex drive; ‘analloerotic’ means ‘lacking in sexual desire for other people, but not lacking altogether’. My right hand has a very healthy relationship with certain other— that’s enough now, I’ll stop. Brainbleach, anyone?

3 (is the new ‘2’) Sure, I can give you a quick rundown of the latest plot, which by coincidence I do need to actually get down in written form before it morphs within my headspace again.

Hah, “quick rundown”. I sure fooled you. tl;dr: a hotel owner needs beer, gets embroiled in political ploot. His wife gets caught up, but ends up sympathising with the antagonists. Taku and his father-in-law launch an attack on the antagonists, and the whole thing ends in an ambiguous blur of unresolved tensions and insecure alliances. Things are Learned, including the thematic message “racism and povery are both complicated things that never have either a simple cause nor a simple solution, and require a multi-layered approach to be dealt with, but even then cannot be completely eradicated.” Or something like that.

@ Taku: that sounds pretty interesting, actually. If it were on a shelf, I might pick it up!

But as for being on topic-If anyone remembers, I had kind of a similar problem with my JulNoWriMo draft. Of course, it’s not as much of a drastic change as what Steph was considering, but it was a pretty major change all the same. I’m adding in a character who’s going to have enormous importance, make the backstory more important to the main story, and all sorts of other things.

That would have been a pain to insert in my half-completed draft- especially the new character. So I decided to start again (with all you imps’ encouragement). Of course, I haven’t finished yet (haven’t even hit 5 pages yet, I think) so I can’t speak with much authority, but I think starting over might be a good thing. You can pay attention to things you didn’t pay attention to before, flesh out characters more, create more of a solid foundation, etc. etc.

Of course, no first draft is going to be perfect, and starting over and over again doesn’t get you anywhere. But if what you want to change fundamentally alters what’s going on, then I think a reboot is in order.

(in my humble opinion)

I agree. Yeah, mine was more about structure than O HAI NU PLAWT!

‘Finding Nick Nemo’

Sorry, that’s what I thought of when I saw it because I know a lot of Nemo-obsessed people. I don’t dislike your title or anything.

I had this problem too. I was thinking of having two parallel stories (one as flashbacks and one as the present), but I think I’ve decided against it.

I think I was halfway through, I would just stick with it out of sheer laziness, but that’s just me (I know you said that’s what you decided to do). That may or may not be the correct course of action.

I also dealt with deciding whether my story was really far in future, really far in the past (before any record would be known), or in an alternate world where it didn’t matter. I thought the past thing would’ve been cool, but then I had to deal with whether there would be technology or not and why that technology would have been lost. So I think I’ve settled on the alternate universe thing.