How to write a story without losing your way.

Question

I have written over the years maybe 30 different stories. I've finished about 10 shot stories. But the larger stories I try to produce I lose my way and it crumbles. I never know where to go, or how to finish a chapter. What would you smart beautiful people out their suggest I do, so that k am able to write out my story without losing ideas.

Answer 1

Have you thought of first sketching your story from beginning to end. For example: What do you want to write about? Who's your protagonist? What is his/her goal? How does he/she propose to achieve this goal? What are the obstacles he/she will encounter? How will he/she overcome said obstacles?

Once these are out of your head, you can start adding details such as description of scenery, characters, mood.

Next, work the mechanics of writing such as transitions, paragraph structure, word choice, literary devices.

Put it all together, focusing on flow. Does it make sense? Rearrange paragaphs if needed.

Start with a hook and end with a cliffhanger.

Have fun!

Janine D.

Answer 2

I'd advise you to plan plan plan!

Obviously, when writing short stories, you are focused on creativity and spontaneity, which can be hard to plan for, but if you start with the essentials, you should be able to return to your original goals.

Most stories follow the same storyline: Exposition, Rising Action, Climax, Falling Action, Resolution.

Exposition can and should include much of what Janine said above about defining who your protagonist is, but you could also consider doing this for the antagonist. For example, if someone is facing inner-conflict, you might use a character's inner-thought or conversations with others to describe what that antagonist (which can be a problem, scenario, and/or person) means to the story. Does the main character find out that she has cancer? Does a wife find out her husband is cheating? Does someone get killed? Does someone have the urge to travel but not the means? Whatever the conflict is, you can spend time developing that before you get into the rising action.

Once you start with detailed exposition, you should plan alternate routes for your rising action, climax, and falling action. You may start one idea and decide to change it, which is all part of the writing process. Maybe the character who finds out that her husband is cheating could either stay with him and face those issues, leave him and start life on her own, keep it from their families, tell their families, ruin his life, confront the other person involved, pretend nothing happened, etc. How do these play out? What conversations happen? What is your character thinking? Where does she go? What does she do? How do her small moments in her day change, not just her big picture life? If you have multiple options, you give yourself more opportunities to help your writing grow and hopefully not run out of ideas. Again, you can always change it!

I hope this helps!

Alexis