Ideas...Ideas... · 11:40pm Oct 2nd, 2013
I don't know how many stories I've started and never quite finished. Some ideas work out, and others find themselves forever incomplete in my "Documents" folder. As I rewrite my plans for Introspection for the fifteenth time (yes, I keep count), and finally settled on something that will work well, I have taken a look at unfinished stories and have been deciding what to do with them.
I have a "one-shot" story called V16, a humans in Equestria story about a group of ragtag climbers who get lost and find themselves in Equestria, so they might as well set some routes. The story currently sits at 25K words and less than a third of the original plan is complete.
Another "one-shot" called Persuasion that quit at 5k words, and is my only true "Mature" story due to a rather graphic nature.
I recently dug up a few of my previous ideas and incorporated them into my plans for Introspection, as well as began plans for another.
So much to write with so little time. Perhaps I will just add Persuasion into Shadow Play...
Ideas...ideas...
I know the feeling. I still have a dozen or more stories unfinished. Some of them have been sitting around on my various hard drives since college, back in 2003 or so. I wrote tons of stuff back then, but always short. 10k words usually. Anything that grew to bigger ideas started to get away from me and was left unfinished. Somehow, Pony broke the curse. I wrote that one story for Iron Author in 2 hours, surprised writing still came so easily. Then I set down with intent to write a proper short story, 8-10k words or so... but the ideas kept coming. This time I held onto it though, and rode the wave. Now, it's just about complete, and coming in close to 60k words. My first truly, novel length work, and it's fan fiction for brightly colored cartoon ponies.
I'm really proud of it so far, but it's not been seen by anyone else yet either.
What I can say from the experience though is this... ideas are great, and make for hooks. But if you get some characters developed well, then writing them into those ideas comes a lot easier, whether you roll them into larger stories, or have a lot of small one shots. Just get going on something, and once you hit a stride, try to stick with it. Another big tip I discovered a while ago is that when it's time to take a break from writing for a session, quit BEFORE you're at a stopping point. It's much easier to pick up next time than if you actually finished a complete idea last time.
Anyway, best of luck. If you need help, editing, etc... or just want a sounding board for ideas, lemme know. Oh, and at some point in the near future, I'm probably going to come asking for some help/opinions on that epic CMC novel I mentioned. Not editing or anything too detailed, but general prereading... opinions, and maybe catching major plot holes and stuff like that. Keep it in mind, but I'll totally understand if you don't want to slog through 60,000 words either.