> False starts are a fact of life for budding authors. It takes a lot of self-exploration, more than you'd think, before you can figure out for yourself what stories are merely interesting to you and what stories are interesting enough to you to hold your interest throughout the intense process of writing.

This is good to know.

> It takes a lot of work to figure out what stories and what genres will hold your interest long enough.

Also good to know.

> As for friends waiting patiently to find out what happened, eh. The mistake was in showing them an unfinished work. On a brief trip to fanfiction.net, I noticed this was done all the time. Practically every writer there was publishing chapters as they wrote, and attaching little notes like, "Don't worry, things will pick up in the next chapter." Bad practice. Not only does it write you into a corner in the sense that you can't revise earlier chapters, but it opens you up to the problem you have now. Not that this advice helps you now.

Question: What about posting for a small audience with the disclaimer that the works are subject to change and with the intention of bouncing ideas off of others and getting critical advice on your style? In case you hadn't guessed, this question is not hypothetical. :-)

> Generally this is bad too, and it explains why you got stuck. I've tried writing short stories blindly, and typically what happens is that I conclude the piece of writing before I even *get* to a plot. (Consequently, these pieces, strange as it sounds, are a weird source of pride with me. They aren't stories. They are exercises in establishing vivid characters and settings and illustrating obscure little truths of life. Granted, that probably only I would ever appreciate, but so what?)

Weird. I feel that much of my work to date has been like this, and I am now trying to work on establishing plot ideas before I start writing. I know exactly what you mean about the pride thing, though...

> I don't believe you need to have every step of the plot mapped out in your head before you start writing (although that's usually the best way to do it), you should at least have an idea of where you're going before you start writing. If all you have is the basic idea of the climactic scene, including not just the culmination of a plot but the personal decisions the characters are faced with, then that might be enough. Because then when you start to write, you are writing with a goal in mind, and your words will be geared toward a discernible, tangible end. If your ideas for the story come along after you've started, the beginning of what you write is likely to be waste. Either you retroactively fit ideas to what you had already written (in which case it is almost certain those ideas could have been done a greater service by approaching them in a manner specifically designed to do best service to those ideas, rather than in a way that randomly services them) or your ideas have nothing to do with what you've already written, in which case the beginning is waste.

I had to read it twice, but this paragraph makes sense now. I am actually surprised at how much there is in there to think about-- I don't tend to think about ANYTHING that much these days.

> Uh. Hopefully that made sense, but I'm not about to proofread it.

See above. :-)

> > PS: The hero of my SF parody is named Rock Fiasco.
>
> That name unequivocally RULES.

The name reminds me of Roc LeRoc from my high school French textbooks. I hated him, but only because his name was cooler than mine. :-) Rock Fiasco sounds like the kind of guy I would like to read about. If I understand your post correctly, there is at least one complete Rock Fiasco story out there... Would you be willing to give us a link here in the Forum?

Don "Still needs to read DSCSF/FWIR and find more time for writing" Monkey