Translating from mind to paper
I've had a story developing inside my head for years (literally about 5 or 6 years now) but every time I try to put that story onto paper it never turns out how I wanted it. It feels like this is my calling in life but yet I can't even complete even a little of it before becoming frustrated and trying again. It's a never ending loop. So my question is, how can I put my ideas onto paper how they are in my head? Is there like a exercise or tactics I can use?
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Other answers assume that the problem you are having is inertia, and perhaps they are right. Perhaps you just need to start writing and keep writing.
But perhaps inertia is not the problem. Perhaps that problem is that what seems like a story in your head is not a story when you get it down on paper. One way to test this is to write down the key story elements and see if they are fully realized. By this I do not mean an outline. An outline is what happens. The key story elements are why things happen.
One possible formula for this is to write down the desires of each character:
- What is the main character's main desire.
- What stands in the way of their achieving that desire?
- What are they willing to do to achieve that desire.
- How does the desire, or what they are willing to do to achieve it, change with each setback they encounter.
Since most of the setback to the main character achieving their desire come from the actions of other characters, you then need to ask the same questions about every other character.
The things that other characters do which frustrate the main character's desire are the result of the secondary characters trying to achieve their desire and are based on what they are willing to do to achieve that desire, which may also change as a result of their own reversals.
When a story that feels coherent in your head falls apart on paper, it may well be because these complicated dynamics of character and desire are not worked out properly. Somehow the stories in our head seem to easily paper over the cracks in the story shape, but putting them down on paper reveals the gaps.
Writing comes from imagination filtered through discipline, and to get a story out of your head and onto a page you have to subject your imagination to an appropriate discipline. The kind of discipline that works for each writer is clearly different. But one of the effects of that discipline is often to reveal that you do not really have a story (yet).
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Start writing a diary. At the end of the day, you will be able to imagine and put down that stuff which you have already lived. That is just a simple trigger. Don't take it for easy because you will have to struggle a lot in order to find the correct words and its formations in order to properly describe everything that which you experienced, that which you felt, that which you understand, expression of your perception, display of emotions, however subtle they be, and everything that is happening around the central theme of your existence i.e. you.
You have already spent 5 to 6 years imagining, spending a few more is not going to be a vain investment perhaps. It will take time but practice, for sure, will help you fetch that mastery which you desire.
This post was sourced from https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/24832. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
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