What's difficult?

[Hex]

I can't remember if we've had one of these threads (almost undoubtedly) but as I fight various bits of paper and chapter plans and leave notes for myself all over the place on double-sided, seven-dimensional graph paper, I curse the fact that I really struggle with structuring stories.

For me, having a story that's well-structured is absolutely the most difficult thing about writing, or at least, it's the thing I know I find difficult and I need to concentrate on. I'm sure there are lots of other things I need to fix that I don't know about yet but that will emerge like glistening, glittering er pupae as I learn more of writing.

Anyway, enough time-wasting. So, I find structure very difficult and would be delighted for any suggestions about what you do about it. I also wonder what you find especially difficult when you write .

 

[The Judge]

I don't consciously think of structure, so I can't help you with your travails, sorry. I'm a go-with-the-gut kind of writer, and assess my (and others') writing by whether something feels right/wrong without analysing it in detail. Then I chuck it at certain people who have MAs in creative writing and get them to do the donkey work. I've not yet trained them to do me graphs and such, though, so I shall be demanding that from now on in return for cake.

Actually, I suppose that's what I find difficult. Doing the donkey work of analysing structure etc. Well, I would find it difficult if I did it.

 

[Brian G Turner]

Every is difficult. Anything that looks easy, is being done wrong.

That's my experience, anyway.

 

[Kerrybuchanan]

Funny you should post this because I have just splashed out on Scrivener software (half price offer thanks to Nanowrimo). It claims to be able to help you organise all your ideas, notes, links, pics, plans, etc into one easy to navigate program. I'm ploughing through the tutorial and finding it exciting so far. I might start a thread later either praising or cussing it, depending on how well my ageing brain learns the new skills.

 

[HareBrain]

1. Getting characters out of difficult-to-escape situations I put them in, at least in such a way that isn't vastly complicated and long-winded.

2. (Not unrelated) keeping word-count anywhere near budget.

 

[The Judge]

You could try not putting them into difficult-to-escape situations in the first place, of course.

 

[HareBrain]

But being evil to characters is the whole point of writing!

 

[Jo Zebedee]

I do that too, Hb. My mantra is 'I got them out of the sodding quarry, I'll figure something out' (that'll make sense to Abendau betas).

I find structure okay and do it by breaking it into thirds - so about a third of the way there should be a mini-climax and then the middle section, ditto, and the final section blasting to the end. But I do have an issie with middle sections that lack conflict.

I find getting up to the word count hard. 50-60 k would be my preferred spot which
I can get away with in YA (hey, lightbulb, the new baby is nearly halfway, things are not disastrous...) but not in adult. This is mostly because I hate padding and I lack confidence in keeping people interested. For instance, I knew all the politics for Abendau but because I find it tedious in other books
I assume other readers do, and then Hex wanted to know more and it made the book stronger even though I only added about 6000 words (see what I mean about padding. That's the entire politics for two books...) usually I find my various amazing editors are great at picking up what's missing and then the book goes upwards again (I think Abendau's Child went from 90k to 106k on Teresa's guidance. We'll see where it ends up soon.)

I also still have some issues in the apostrophe arena, but @Hex and @alchemist are very patient with my bewildered emails. And the apostrophes. Boom boom and all that there...

 

[HareBrain]

Actually, I've just remembered what I find really difficult and wish I could do better, and that's writing credible men of the heroic or anti-heroic type: men like Sharpe, or the three leads in The Good, The Bad and The Ugly: confident, tough, and not riddled with doubt or weakness.

 

[Jo Zebedee]

Actually, I've just remembered what I find really difficult and wish I could do better, and that's writing credible men of the heroic or anti-heroic type: men like Sharpe, or the three leads in The Good, The Bad and The Ugly: confident, tough, and not riddled with doubt or weakness.

Oh, God, me too. I've largely given up - they want to be riddled, tormented types...really. they do

 

[Mouse]

Writing anything over 85k. Never done it, can't get up there.

Getting out of bed in the morning.

Just writing in general, really.

 

[Kerrybuchanan]

Keeping my word count to something acceptable for a first novel. I tend to get carried away, probably what Springs calls padding!

 

[AnyaKimlin]

Emotion is the thing I forget when I'm writing. I can do their reactions to things but I'm not good including how they feel about them. Especially in situations when I think it should be bleeding obvious how they feel.

Also whilst I am great at coming up with plots and characters I have a nasty tendency to have too much plot and over complicated characters so I need to reign them in but I don't like doing that.

SPaG is a work in progress but it's starting to get to the point where I don't feel ridiculous pointing out errors in the work of others.

 

[LittleStar]

I find it difficult to know of I've done enough. Just generally.
Not word count, thats fine for me, it is what it is, but have I done enough of developing this sub plot, or is two small mentions of someone's implied alcoholism enough to get it across, does the angsty teen just fall out of nowhere or is it hinted at enough to be believable for the story.
Just a few of the many 'I don't know if I'm doing it well's' from my edits of the current WIP.

 

[thaddeus6th]

Assessing jokes. Which is tricky, if you're writing a comedy.

 

[Jo Zebedee]

Science. Or, mostly, scientific ideas to support the story. Which is a bummer since I write sf....

 

[Hex]

Editing bits so that the whole thing flows. So writing a first draft is often a joy and I finish in triumph at about er 30,000 words.

Then my lovely betas tell me that x doesn't make sense and y is really annoying, so I try to clear that up without getting rid of too much of the stuff I wrote the first time round, which might have been incomprehensible but flowed and then I realise I have to write some more so I try to add a bit more explanation/description/subplot and the whole thing gets patchy and awkward. Blah.

 

[J Riff]

Well I can warn against overthinking.... as in, creating a complete detailed world in yer head... then thinking about it every night whilst going to sleep until it is just fabulously detailed... then sitting down to write it and find out that words aren't the same as pictures.

 

[Phyrebrat]

I feel your pain, @Hex as over the past year I've realised my planning methodology for the 4 novel-length stories I've had in me has ended them. What I now try to do is find a balance between having a rough idea of where things are going without working it out until I'm writing it. It's worked well for the new elements of Ill-Born but then that stalled when I got to the planned part, and it worked great for Gash which was written as an almost entirely pantsed piece (in fact, the last scene of Gash ended up completely differently than I had anticipated).

Ask me in a few weeks if it's going to be my new methodology as I'm using the same approach to Wheezer.

pH

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

Endings. At least for anything but the Writing Challenges (where sometimes the endings come first). I have the hardest time thinking up the last lines for a book or a short story, something that brings the story to a natural end (or in the case of a series a natural place to pause) without sounding too abrupt, or too schmaltzy, or too anything else.