The official magazine of the Team Of Dreams
This month's theme: "to enjoy"
We want new and experienced authors to become more comfortable in their own skins as writers and poets. To this end, it is our mission to offer activities, education, and con...
This article was requested by one of our wonderful readers, UnravelAsha, who asked about keeping an interest in your WIP when it can take a lot of time, how to avoid distractions in the form of new ideas or a tendency to rewrite. Thank you for your request!
When we first start writing, we are always super inspired and excited about the new project. But our excitement often starts to fade as time passes. This is normal; it happens all the time. Once you've written a couple of chapters, you might run into tricky parts, or even plotholes. You re-read (bits of) what you've already written and it might not sound as great as it did in your head. If your story is the second (or third) in a series, you might get bored with the world or the characters. Or maybe you simply have so much going on in your life that writing is simply pushed to the back burner a little, and you start to forget about this work in progress (WIP). This article will focus on how to deal with such issues.
One golden rule in writing is that if it is boring to write, it's probably going to be boring to read as well. Your passion for your WIP will shine through in the story. So in order to create the best story possible, you need to stay passionate.
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There's a few things you can do when you notice the passion is fading. We've created a list with tips and tricks, but as always in writing, these might not work for everyone. This is also not an exhaustive list. If you have a different way of staying engaged with your own stories, please don't hesitate to share it with us in the comments! These are a few things you can try:
1. Develop your characters. The major reason for people to become invested in stories is because they're invested in the characters. Spend some time developing the main character; their personality, their background, their hopes and dreams, but also their secrets, quirks and not-so-great sides.
Perhaps just as important: do the same for your (important) side characters, and especially the antagonist. They are such an integral part of the story that if they're not written well enough, your whole story will feel underdeveloped.
Developing the relationships between your different characters will also have a major effect on the quality of the story, and thus your engagement with it. Remember that characters who are very different from each other have more interesting interactions. Using this to your advantage can really heighten the tension in your story.
2. Cut the boring parts. Copy your story into a new file and cut everything that doesn't immediately hook you. Get back to the basics of the story and figure out what your characters truly need and what the plot needs. This takes some planning, which you might not be used to if you're a pantser, but if you're stuck with your story, planning ahead a little might be exactly what you need to boost your creativity again.
3. Find your spark. What was it that first planted the idea for this story into your head, that initially got you excited and passionate about this story? Was it a line of dialogue? A song (lyric)? An image? Search it up again and your spark might just come back to you.
4. Take a break. Sometimes the best thing for you is to stop writing for a few weeks. Let the story play out in your head. Let the characters loose in your head and play through different scenes (not necessarily scenes from your story). This will help you get to know them better and might well help you connect with them again.
Alternatively, it might even work better to take a break from the story entirely. Don't even think about it anymore. In fact, work on a different story for a while. At some point, the story might pop up into your head again and something will spark your creativity for it.
5. Treat your writing like work. Write for a certain amount of time every day. Do not edit as you write (you'll have plenty of time to fix things later). Get rid of distractions. You could even go as far as to set yourself a certain word-count every day and when you've reached it, you just stop writing. No matter where in the scene you've got to. The advantage of this is that if you're in the middle of a scene and you have to stop, the excitement you feel about it will be lasting. The scene is unresolved both on the page and in your brain. So when you start again the next day, you'll be even more invested in it.
The other advantage of treating your writing like work is that it will be easier to avoid distractions in the form of new ideas or a tendency to rewrite. Write those new ideas down in a separate document and then close that document; that's for later, after you've finished your current project. Make a rule with yourself to finish the story before you start editing and rewriting, and stick to it. By treating your writing like work, you're already in a mindset of self-discipline, making it easier to stick to these rules.
6. Talk about it. Sit down with a friend or family member and tell them all about your story. Let them ask as many questions as possible so that you can tell them how it all works and how amazing the plot is that you've come up with. If this is not an option for you, you could also simply write down how this conversation might go. This will get your brain working and thinking through all the ideas you were so excited about before.
7. Go off-track. This could work in two ways. The first is to write random scenes for your characters. Put them in different situations and see where they end up. You'll learn new things about your characters that way. The other way this might work is to bring the story in an entirely different direction. Break the plot so that you'll be forced into new situations. Kill a character off, let the antagonist win, force your character to switch sides. Anything to get your story completely off-track.
8. Write some dialogue. Have your characters meet each other at random and talk to each other. Have your characters talk about each other. See what happens. Again, this is to help you understand your characters better and learn more about them, which gets you more invested in them and thus more invested in their story.
9. Do some research. Search for pictures that fit your characters or the world they live in to give you a visual aid in developing the scene. Research facts about the time or place your characters live in to have a clearer idea of the world around them. This might kick-start your creativity, especially if these were the things that got you excited about the story in the first place.
10. Change the small things. Sometimes a little nudge in the right direction (or simply a different direction) is enough. Change the font, the font-size or the layout of your story. This will change the way you look at it and might just help get you back on track.
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There you go, ten tips and tricks on how to stay passionate about your work in progress. We hope these can help you get back in the writing-flow. Let us know in the comments what works best for you.
As a final note, we'd love to hear any suggestions for topics we should cover next. If there's anything you struggle with in writing, let us know in the comments and we might just write an article about it soon.
