New Ideas

[LightNovelNovice]

Lately I've been trying to start a new story to write when I'm not super excited for my main story, but I've run into a weird issue. Writing my main story feels satisfying, and as if I'm simply pushing time forward in a living breathing world with real people doing what they feel is right... but writing the other stuff, or trying to? It feels so stiff, and lifeless. Like I'm trying to make a world with inhabitants, but it keeps turning out to be a bunch of lifeless cardboard cutouts on a stage.

Any idea why this might be happening, or experience anything similar?

 

[Deleted member 84247]

It can be that there are simply no sparks in those other stories. You might not be attached to the ideas. I've experienced this a few times. Sometimes a story is just not it. Back to the drawing board we go. You can also read something for a spark of inspiration.

 

[Hans.Trondheim]

You made it at times you need a break, thus, your alt work is uninspired. It's diificult to work on something you're just compelled to do, after all.

You can:

1). Take one work and focus on that. Leave the other in hiatus stage until you can fully devote your time doing it.
2). Drop it and use the ideas for the next story you'll write after the main one.

 

[LightNovelNovice]

Lately I've been trying to start a new story to write when I'm not super excited for my main story, but I've run into a weird issue. Writing my main story feels satisfying, and as if I'm simply pushing time forward in a living breathing world with real people doing what they feel is right... but writing the other stuff, or trying to? It feels so stiff, and lifeless. Like I'm trying to make a world with inhabitants, but it keeps turning out to be a bunch of lifeless cardboard cutouts on a stage.

Any idea why this might be happening, or experience anything similar?

I figured out what the issue was! I wasn't creating character with enough depth. They didn't have engaging flaws or traits that made them seem like real people, so it kept flopping.
Now I've got a couple characters who feel much more lifelike. :)

 

[Dieter]

Something you wrote could be brimming with meaning and significance one day and the next day be dead and dull. When that happens, don't panic and learn to appreciate what you wrote in silence. Music will come in time. You're going to find your 'main story' a cardboard cut-out eventually, but when that happens remember that it's you who can't relate, and not the world you envisioned or the people you created.

 

[TASTYLEADPAINT]

It can be that there are simply no sparks in those other stories. You might not be attached to the ideas. I've experienced this a few times. Sometimes a story is just not it. Back to the drawing board we go. You can also read something for a spark of inspiration.

As a man with 100s of drafts of new stories I can attest to this. But it's not all bad it's fun to write something fresh once in awhile.

 

[Jemini]

I'll tell you my process for coming up with new stories, and maybe that can help you a bit.

My method for coming up with story concepts is I only write the things that consume me. I will not write a story unless it's something that intrusively forces it's way into my thoughts, and I find myself obsessively going over character development and concepts and all the ideas really excite me.

Maybe it will take some research or development to bring to fruition. But, the subjects I need to research need to actually just spring to mind, and cause me to want to just excitedly jump into the research or world-building topics with wild abandon.

That excitement is the best sign that you have something good going for you.

It does not always just work like that. Sometimes, you need to get it over a block of some sort before it just starts... flowing like that. I have a currently unreleased story I'm working on right now. It was inspired by Raven's Dagger's "The Agartha Loop." He just dropped the story after the 2nd loop, and I felt disappointed. I wanted to tell my own version of a magical girl time-loop story that inspired all the same feelings Agartha Loop triggered in me, and managed to continue the story.

But, the thing is, I couldn't just write the same story as Raven's Dagger. That would be uninspired plajerism. So, I had to come up with my own take on the concept. But, I found myself bashing my head against the wall as I was trying to develop a concept.

What finally wound up working is I decided to flip my way of looking at it on it's head. I wanted to write an Agartha Loop inspired magical girl series because I loved Agartha Loop. But, in order to come up with my own take on the story, I had to look at it and figure out every single thing that I thought was bad about the story. Everything I hated, and every fatal flaw in the story that I felt should be improved upon.

I started coming up with answers startlingly quickly for a series that I'd loved up until that point, and all of a sudden I started seeing flaws everywhere. And, for every flaw, I also saw something that could be altered, changed, and improved upon.

After that, the ideas started flowing, and I had so many ideas coming so fast.

I am now writing about a chapter a day, around 3,000 words per chapter, and have plans to pre-write an entire 40 chapters ahead making sure all of them are very well edited and considered before I drop the first 10 for public release. (Just started chapter 29.)

That was my experience. Maybe there was something in there that could help you, maybe it's all useless to you. But, just giving you my experiences is the best I have here. If there's something in that you can use, then that's fantastic.

 

[RemHydragrove]

Are your side stories super new? You may not be as invested in them as you are you main story! Surely your main story has occupied so many hours of your time while thinking, dreaming, planning and writing it.

Perhaps the side stories just need some time to grow on you, too?

 

[CharlesEBrown]

As someone who has about seven or ten or so stories in various stages of development, I find sometimes one story or character will "call to me" and I really can't focus on the other ones, no matter how I try.

And sometimes I hit stumbling blocks where I need to research something either generally (like "menstrual cycle") or physically (a story needs a two to three hand poker game where each character ideally wins one round and the cards themselves - tweaked by one player's talent at "cheating" and the other's access to an AI - decide the final hand unless the cards decide I only need two hands by giving an undeniable win both times...
When that happens, I tend to leave those stories to lie fallow and just move on to another, until the urge to finish those scenes overtakes the other stories.

And occasionally I just have a "stub" or loose concept that never really goes anywhere, for example:

1. Female reporter investigates conditions in city slums, is rescued by a very powerful, fast moving man, who, when she asks his name, just laughs and says "Kadaver. With a K." She eventually tracks him down and it turns out he claims to have been the inspiration for Frankenstein's Monster, now just trying to survive in a world that does not believe he could possibly be real, and occasionally driven to help people in mortal danger just to have some form of human contact.

2. A "System" parody, "My Kaiju System" making fun of giant monster movies and the various System stories.

3. "Out of Time" - every once in a while I find the urge to go back to this but so far, in three months have written two chapters. An expedition to Egypt unleashes two ancient forces, one a monstrous evil bent on world domination, the other the heir to the power of a priesthood that focused on stopping the evil.

4. "Stranded" - the origin for a character from an old Champions game that did not last long, expanded. He is a semi-telepathic shape shifting ... alien frog. He can learn any language given time (partly to form the needed organs to use it), is strong on land and even stronger in water, has limited shape change abilities, and is, for the first time ever, separated from the Fleet Hivemind and able to think for himself. He finds a group of children and from them learns that Earth is not a world that should be added to their conquests. And that is about as far as I've gotten it.