So yeah ... I'll make it short I was wondering how I can easily start this idea of mine and put it onto paper. I have the plot and characters sorted out I just can't get the start. Chapter one. I can't dive in Thanks colourthemap
You've just got to put your butt in the chair and write. You don't have to start at the beginning. You can write a scene from the middle, the climax, or bang out your dialogue and insert the narration later. Whatever helps to get the wheels spinning.
I think starting from the start is actually harder than anything else. Start from a pivotal moment in your plot, and the rest should fit round it!
Indeed. The first words you write may very well not even make it to the final draft. The important thing is to start writing. A journey of a thousand miles begins with but a single step. Even if it's in the wrong direction. Or, to borrow from Nike - Just do it.
Ah I did indeed try that, my issue is I want to fully get to know my characters before I almost kill them. I just need a part where I get the ball rolling the rest will be the fun stuff Maybe I just need examples, or at least more.
? What do you mean you need examples? Branches slapped against Kaylee's face as she ran through the woods... GO!
You know I have no idea I think I wanted to know how others started writing, but well it may simply be a form of procrastination Oh the human brain.
LOL, well I sit my butt in the chair (as The Degenerate said), I turn on some tunes and I write. Sometimes it's just in my head, sometimes it's a dream I had, sometimes it's the music in my ear. Like I recently wrote a short story inspired entirely by a Florence and The Machine song... whatever hits me EDIT: Above all - stop procrastinating. Everything around you is a story, just look.
I sit down and just start writing. My first try at actually writing something more then a short story has evolved so much, it doesn't even resemble what it started as. What the original story evolved into is now the middle of the story, and only part of building to the climax.
When I start a new chapter, I first like to map out what's going to happen in a general sense, so this way I know where the writing is supposed to go in case I get off track. From there, I just pick the height of the movement/conversations/ACTION in the scene, and run with it! Sometimes literally. Best of luck to you!
Maybe you need a groundswell. So, I'll add my voice to the throng. Sit down and write. Stop coming to this site until you've batted out your first thousand words. Write them, even if they're terrible.
Dive right in, and don't stop diving! I started the first draft of my novel in the 80s. I had a first paragraph that I kind of liked, but never really felt was good enough. So I worked on it, on and off, for about twenty years. (Yes, you young'uns! Twenty years!) And I never got it right. So one day, I just cut it entirely. My second paragraph became my first paragraph. And suddenly my novel had better focus and more power. What I'm saying is, WRITE! Don't worry about creating the best opening ever. You may find that, after enough work, you'll just cut your opening altogether and find that your story is better. Write like you're not committed to anything you write. Write like you're one of those old explorers trying to find the South Pole or El Dorado or the Garden of Eden, and if you don't find it, refit and head out on another expedition. If you have to pull the plug, do it, and start again.
Ok. If you can't start at the start, then delve in somewhere else in the novel. Even if this piece of writing doesn't make it into the final draft, it's a start. I've jigsawed many a story and they've come out ok. So long as the links can be linked seamlessly, then you're on a winner.
Try writing either a line you really like and then branching your story off that. It usually works for me--it's just I get writer's block soon after xD
I start writing by punching the keyboard and trying to see it created anything that looks like legal words... just kidding I always start stories at their beginnings. But even before that I break it all down to chapters which I describe with one or two sentences. Then under the chapters' titles I write everything that's already in my head that belongs there. That's just to let the rough ideas come to the real world so they would stop polluting my mind. Then I start the first chapter. I simply describe what I see in my mind's eye when thinking of that part of the story. If something's written too roughly I still go on to tell the story, then come back later to refine it. It's like sculpting.
hehehe, I know what you're talking about. I planted the seed for my first novel in the late 80's. Then I quit writing for many years idk when, only to pick it up again last summer when I didn't have internet and needed something to do, plus I read a book that really inspired me to start writing again. The story has evolved A LOT in these years and multiple versions, and even my writing has improved, but the characters are the same and their relation to each other are the same too. the basic premisses are the same but the plot is quite different. before it was just an seemingly endless diary in first person of the female mc while now each of the 3 mc's have their own pov, in third person. it's quite fun to work for this long on a piece, it's like you know these characters as if they were living people, do you get that feeling too?
