1.) I'm stuck on my novella, I know exactly where to go and how to get there, but I'm stuck on one small part.
2.) Would Fragments and Feedback for novellas be under "short stories" or "novels"?
Posted by debhoag (Member # 5493) on :
I'd rather be stuck on a novella, than be stuck on an umbrella.
Posted by Wolfe_boy (Member # 5456) on :
1) If you're looking for assistance, you'll need to provide us a little more info than that. However, in the sake of expedience, here's a suggestion. Kill some secondary character, and have the fallout from this death propel your MC to the finish. *shrugs*
2) Novels, most likely. Once you get beyond 10K words, you're definitly out of the restraints of the short story format, and approaching novel-type issues.
Jayson Merryfield
Posted by Balthasar (Member # 5399) on :
Skip it.
Just write a summary of what you think should happen and then go forward. I'll wager that by the time you finish, you'll know how that "one small part" should fit.
Posted by Kathleen Dalton Woodbury (Member # 59) on :
What Wolfe_boy said: novels.
Also, what Balthasar said about summarizing what needs to happen and then going on to write the rest of the story.
Posted by Rick Norwood (Member # 5604) on :
Which brings up the subject of writing stories out of order. Often, I'll wake up with a scene complete in my head, and rush to type it out. Later, I connect up.
Posted by Balthasar (Member # 5399) on :
I don't see any problem writing a story out of order. There seems to be a big fear of rewriting -- that is to say, physically rewriting an entire story from beginning to end. This is probably because of the computer; we can cut and paste, and fix things up with ease, so why physically rewrite?
But sometimes it's necessary to make a story a coherent piece of work.
Posted by JeffBarton (Member # 5693) on :
Getting stuck in the middle happens to me a lot. I've found that my subconscious does a great job of working on the problem while I'm doing other things. That's one basis for the suggestion to mark the spot, maybe note the objectives of the scene, and continue on. You'll get all that other writing done and let your mind work on the problem.
Posted by Pyre Dynasty (Member # 1947) on :
1)Cut it. (I know it's probably integral to the plot, but if it's giving you that much trouble then it's probably a red flag in the back of your mind that something is not right.) See how the story works without it, perhaps by the time you get to the end you will know how the scene should go.
As for writing out of order, I'm all for it (even though I don't do it very often, I prefer writing in a straight line; it feels like reading.) I'd much rather read something that the author enjoyed writing than something they sloughed through.
Posted by Grant John (Member # 5993) on :
My vote is for writing out of order. I used to be afraid of it, but the reason was probably when I started writing the first book of my current WIP Triology I had no idea where it was going, I just had a couple of characters and a fun idea.
I finished that manuscript only writing a couple of pages out of order, then decided I didn't like how it started so decided I should go back further in time and write a couple of chapters, 28 chapters later I realised I had written another book whose last couple of chapters had been the first ones first couple of chapters, but still mainly in order.
Then for the third book wrote it out of order because my main characters spent less time together then spent a week last September writing all the bits that connected the sections and all those peices that had been so hard the first time through were easy now.