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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/38061
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

To put my answer into perspective, I am a new writer. I'm only 12000 words into my first novel. Let's say I am a month and a half in. I have a plot, I know where I want to go, I know where I am starting from, I don't really know how I am going to get there, but so far so good and things seem to be flowing.

I, too, am suffering from everything you have mentioned in your question.

I have an idea, but stemming from this idea are a hundred more. From these hundred ideas there are a further 100 spin-off ideas. Those ideas, too, get more ideas... it can be never ending.

I deal with this by having 1 IDEAS DOCUMENT of NOTES FROM THE MIND and one document that is my story only. I have both of these open at all times when writing.

Every time I am writing I keep my current story thought thread going on the story document. When a new idea that is NOT related to the current thread comes into my mind, I whack it down onto the IDEAS DOCUMENT, but only when I don't break my story thread. This _ideas document_ is then saved and I go back to my main story to finish what I was thinking.

When my current story thread has finished and has hit a natural pause I review my ideas document. What is applicable to my current story? What can I use next? Do I have any good ideas? If so I will explore those in my story.

If I am writing about stone age cowboys, but my ideas document has ideas about space aliens, I can discount it and that won't go into my current story. If I have an idea about a horse shoe falling off my horse and hitting a neanderthal in the head starting a race war between humans and neanderthals that ultimately ends up being the cause of prehistoric man being wiped out I will investigate that and see what that story can do within the current thread of my story. If it works I keep it in, if it does not then I might save it to a further document, which I call "ideas for future books".

Once this current novel is complete I will open my _ideas for future books_ and will use that as a basis for creating book 2.

Your story is like modelling clay. You can shape your clay any way you like. If you are not happy with the direction it is taking or what it looks like, squash the parts you don't like and then carry on from the part you do like. You are in control and you can do what you want with it.

Unless you are a famous author with tight deadlines to hit before publication, you have all the time in the world in order to write your book. You can explore and test news ideas within the book and then you can think to yourself "does this help or hinder my end goal or distract from my plot?".

When writing a story I just let my head take me on the journey. I am experiencing this book as the writer, just like the reader is going to experience this as the reader. If I was a reader what would I want to read in my book? If I can take myself on a journey then I am surely going to take the reader on one, too.

Failing the above: have you thought about writing a book from person A perspective, but then write the same book from Person B perspective?

This would allow you to explore both sides of the story and allows you to explore the two contrasting views and ideas that you have on the same story. There may be books like this out there but I personally don't know of any and I haven't read one myself.

But all in all, make sure you are malleable in writing. You might think you want to go from A to B via C, but if at some point while getting to B you suddenly think of D, which is far better than C ever would have been, would you want to miss out on that possibility?

This is how I manage a deluge of ideas and I find that it allows me to keep on top of everything and not feel overwhelmed.

Original score: 3