How do you know when to give up on a writing project?
Writing is rewriting. The first draft of a novel is commonly riddled with mistakes: the beginning doesn't grip, the characters aren't consistent, the plot has holes, the story lacks suspense, turns aren't foreshadowed and appear ex machina, the ending is dissatisfying, and so on. But that is to be expected in the normal course of things, and a revision will smooth those imperfections out.
Sometimes one rewrite is not enough and it takes a few passes to finish a novel. Tolstoy famously rewrote War and Peace seven times. Hemingway rewrote the ending to Farewell to Arms fourtyseven times.
But sometimes even accomplished writers have to give up on a project, because no amount of rewriting can overcome what appear to be fundamental flaws. Sometimes a novel cannot be salvaged – or the time and effort necessary make it unfeasible.
But how do you know? How can you tell when it is better to abandon a project, move on, and write another book? What are the warning signs that indicate reliably – or at least with a high likelihood – that a project has failed and I should divorce myself from it?
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I am not much of a writer, these days anyways. I had written a story which got to 90,000 words under draft two and a half. At that point a few friends had a skim over it and they liked it (to the point one was outraged when I told him I was abandoning it).
I put it aside for a while and would come back to it later, but a few months later I simply decided to abandon it and start plotting a new one.
The most important issue was that this was no longer the story I wanted to tell. It wasn't anxiety about any particular element being unpolished, it was that there were too many things which were fundamentally wrong. The whole thing would need rewritten to the point it would be a completely different story. What's the point rewriting everything to fit a new idea when you could just start writing a new story from scratch?
Only you will know if you still want to write this story. There's anecdotes of some authors who go to the trouble of doing fifty or so drafts of the same story to perfect their vision. But that's not the same as feeling like you've just moved on. That the core of the story is wrong, the messages implied from the text are wrong, that you could write better characters in more interesting environments to present deeper and more mature ideas.
You'll either know you want to write it, or know you don't. If you're feeling somewhere between, put it aside for a few months and see how you feel.
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So speaking as someone who has "abandoned" a 50,000+ word novel and its 50,000+ word sequel that had been written and were in various stages of editing, I think I can help out a little. And the reason why I did are numerous and include real life butting in, a rethink of the universe lore that would render much of the story of the two books unsalvageable. This is despite beta readers loving the work and enjoying the concepts... especially for a few beta readers who were out of my demographic falling in love with it.
Now, abandoned isn't the best word for it... more like... delayed further work in favor of projects that will better handle the retool. Some characters might be changed and some might be omitted from future works or redesigned... but abandoned, no. Really, I refined it to such a point I need to do a full rewrite of the story.
I've wanted to write books (in this genre for this audience no less) since I was in the 7th grade and I have been in a constant state of changing, rewriting, and reworking, and redoing stories to this day. Evolved would be a better word: Some stuff has changed with the times and other stuff has died, unable to adapt. In a few rare extremes some concepts have stood unaltered through the test of time with only the slightest of changes. Sometimes the character works but the story doesn't. Sometimes the setting is cool but I can't populate it with characters to explore the society.
I don't think I ever abandoned a story so much as shelved it for later. If I have ever come close, the reason wasn't anything personal so much as marketability. This work dealt heavily with Vampire lore. As I was working out details, unknown to me, Twilight was becoming a thing and wishing to avoid the image of riding a fad, I put it away and moved to other genres that couldn't adapt elements as much. I might pick it up some day in the future, but right now I have no plans to put it back.
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Don't abandon it, just put it aside.
There is a difference between abandoning it and putting it aside to work on something else.
At the point when you cannot stand working on it anymore, and still think its broken, trying various forms of analysis and breakdown and rewrite, whatever is in your toolchest.
Then my last attempt at fixing it would be this: Write as much as I can about what is wrong with it, what I don't like, why I think its crap. Include every detail I can think of. Just as a letter to myself. Then put it away. It is not abandoned, I just need six months to clear it out of my head. Or a year.
Write something else completely, even another novel. From scratch, preferably with a different plot and definitely different characters. Finish that.
Before you start another project, take out the project(s) you put aside, read your letter(s) to yourself, and then decide if it can be fixed you know how to fix it yet, or it needs to be put aside again. Perhaps a new idea can fix it, perhaps your experience with other projects can fix it.
Your letter to your project, which should be as thorough as you can make it, will give you the best of both worlds, the freedom to do something new and the freedom to come back to it and understand why you left, and if you have grown enough as a writer to rescue it.
What I would NOT do is put it aside and start nothing new. I might take a week and read somebody else's novel first, but I would find a new project and keep writing.
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