"And then what happens?;" The writing workshop thread

[Amake]

I'm sure everyone has some forum-sized story, half written, with no idea how to finish it. Or maybe you've got some advice to help someone develop that story they're writing? There's hopefully something we can do in this thread. There's no bad ideas in brainstorming, Liz Lemon, so if you can think it, just throw it out.

Here's this cute little story about a cute little inflatable rubber balloon child I started writing, that I don't know how to finish:

Click to Expand

Lux comes back to Earth flying in a crooked spiral, giggling as her breath escapes her with a flatulent whistle. The navigational buoy slides off her as she deflates and she rises, free, without control. High above the old soccer field her breath runs out and she falls slowly to the ground. She sees Mom and Dad running to meet her down there and that's all right.

She lands in Mom's outstretched hands and they form a cup around her, almost like a hug, and Lux can understand that, she must seem so tiny and soft and helpless to them in this, her weakest moment, of course they want to protect her. Dad joins Mom and they look down on her, friendly giants trying not to let her see how relieved they are, the sweethearts.

Now Dad picks her up and wets his lips and blows new breath into the hole in her tail fin. Her rubber skin tightens and the space between her eyes grow, shrinking the world, and her painted on mouth with its many sharp teeth straightens so she can speak.

'Did you have a good time?' asks Mom, now eye to eye with her.

'Oh yes, Mom', says Lux. 'I dug a hole in the dirt, well I started on one, it'll take days to get anywhere.' She shows Mom her dirty pectoral fins and makes a face that says these are no good for digging and Mom takes the rubber flippers in her hands with a knowing smile. Dad closes her up with a plastic clip and slips the buoy over her waist with a little double-pat on her back that says good to go and Lux starts floating through the air towards the house, wiggling to stay in the air. A gentle buff from Mom gets her flying over their heads and she coasts for a few seconds until she comes down to about shoulder height and starts wiggling again. Dad bumps her even higher and she floats happily, thinking how other kids just get their parents lifting them by their arms but she gets to really fly. A little.

Back in the house, Mom helps Lux wash, taking special care of the dirt on her fins. She scrubs them ever so gently with a soft sponge and inspects them closely, finding many tiny scrapes, bright against her black skin. 'No more digging before these heal', says Mom. 'We don't want you springing a leak, do we?'

'No, Mom' says Lux, rubbing her face against Mom's chest. Mom pulls her close in a hug that squeezes air into her face and tail and that's all right.

'You don't think I worry too much about you', asks Mom.

'No', says Lux, after some thought. 'I like that you look after me. I mean, of course I need it, but I like it anyway. Um, it's been almost an hour.' Lux begins to feel stale and used and when Mom opens her to let out the air she feels relieved not just from the tension of her rubber skin relaxing. She closes her large cartoon eyes so she can't see the world grow around her, and then shrink as Mom blows her up again. She shakes off the few water drops still clinging to her and flips lazily along the floor into her room.

And then Mom and Dad eat lunch while Lux draws. As always, she makes pictures of the world on the other side, trying to show it to Mom and Dad who can't go there. The digital pencils fits awkwardly in her flippers, but she's better than she was a year ago. Slowly, methodically, she draws a landscape on the screen with abstract lines on the dark brown ground, and reddish blobs signifying twisted trees under a burning orange sky, and dark squiggly lines crossing over it. With a frustrated grunt she drops the stylus and rolls around on the linoleum floor. If she could draw, maybe she could understand anything of what she sees over there, there's so little that makes sense, especially the way the ground curves.

'Will I ever get a brother or sister?' says Lux, flopping onto the table between her parents with a light bop. Her eager toothy smile meets with uncertainty, fluster and even a little fear.

'Well honey, it's, it's hard to say', says Dad. 'Lots of complicated aspects to that question, some that would be very hard for me and Mom to explain.'

'The short answer is we don't know', says Mom, putting a comforting hand on Lux' nose. 'The real question, honey, I think is do you want a little sister or brother?'

'Yeah', says Lux, trying to bury her face in the table to get away from the embarrassment. 'If there was someone like me it'd be more fun. I don't know.' Hidden from her view, the parents quickly exchange several frantic looks and find agreement.

'Let's sleep on it', says Dad, and they both kiss Mom goodnight. And as Mom walks upstairs to the bedroom Dad says, 'Well, now it's just you and me until evening. What do you want to do?'

'I want to draw', says Lux. 'But it's too hard.' She bounces to her room, restlessly, and Dad follows. He insists that her pictures are very pretty, and she tries to explain that you can't see what they're supposed to show.

'Tell me what this is', says Dad, flat on his stomach with his nose almost touching the screen, pointing at one of the tree blobs, so Lux tells him about the red trees, their fluffy round leaves and their branches that reach for her as she passes and that one time they held her and tickled her until she wiggled free. Dad then grabs her dorsal fin and rolls over on his back and hugs her close and she feels a shiver running through his body and figures she should have left that part out.

'Are there other things there that move?' says Dad after a while, when he dares let her go. 'You haven't mentioned anything like that before.'

'Hmm, the clouds move', says Lux. 'But nothing else. That I have seen.' And as she goes on about the trees, Dad takes her fin in his hand and guides her stylus, slowly, making light dreamlike lines and she watches amazed as an old, twisted birch with branches full of secrets and sadness grows on the screen before her.

And when it's done and Dad has changed her air he pats her drawing fin and tells her that she's learning, that she's soaking up skills and knowledge every minute of every day and getting bigger, and that one day she will be able to do anything she wants, and Lux bounces up and butts her head to his and he laughs and throws her to the ceiling where she bounces loud enough to worry about Mom waking up and he catches her and hugs her and that's all right.

And after drawing and deleting a few more disappointingly sticky trees Lux decides she needs another look at the source. Mounting an expedition through the gate goes easily: First Dad helps her put on the navigational buoy, then he puts on a hat, and they go out the door. The buoy is an old friend, a rubber ring, inflatable like herself, transparent and covered with aerodynamic soft plastic fins; it weighs her down a little, but makes it easier to turn and to keep in one direction in the air. Outside, Lux likes to fly.

On the far end of the wild-grown grass field hangs the blue swirly thing in the air, with a pair of lawn chairs parked below, where the grass has turned a dark and bloody shade of red. As they get closer, Lux bobs wildly in excitement. Dad gives her fresh air again, and a kiss, and tells her to have fun, and that's all he can do. She disappears into the dancing light and Dad slumps down on a chair, checking his watch. He thinks about reading a book, or looking at that little crack in the hallway wall, or watching his wife sleep, but he knows he won't be able to focus until his girl comes home. The sun is nice and warm and he pretends to doze off for a while but he keeps counting seconds. Of course, they wanted an adventurous child, curious and unafraid. So he waits and he can almost see the shadows moving, counting the seconds.

As always she comes back after just over an hour, sagging down on the grass as if she was exhausted, rubbing and squirming to open her air hole and let out her insides in a long wheezing exhale. Small and spent, she enjoys being cradled in Dad's huge hands for a moment, until he inflates her again.

'Did you see anything fun', asks Dad, with a hint of longing in the corner of his eye.

'I went straight up', says Lux. 'I wanted to see how far I could see. So I saw a whole lot. But it was all pretty boring from so far away.' She falls silent, thinking about how to turn the pictures in her mind onto the paper. Silently, she bobs beside Dad while he takes a lap through the vegetable garden, picking out weeds, talking to the lettuce, watering the paprika. Lux butts her nose against a nearby sunflower and wonders what it smells like. She knows all about smells, except what they feel like. 'There's no wind over there I think', she says, suddenly. 'There's always some wind here if you go high enough, but I never felt anything there.'

'Maybe you didn't go high enough', Dad suggests. 'The world there could be much bigger, for instance.'

'Yeah', says Lux. 'Maybe I could bring a helium balloon and watch how it flies, it'll go up faster than me and it won't have to turn back when it's half out of air.'

'Hey, that's a really good idea', says Dad, standing up and stretching his back. 'My brain must be crusty, I don't know that I ever try to think of things that we can bring through to there anymore.'

'Yeah, you should leave thinking to the younger generation' says Lux, tumbling over to poke him in the ribs with her tail. Her cheeks turn a bright pastel pink as Dad's praise sinks in and she giggles as he lands an uppercut in her belly that launches her several feet into the air in a burst of speed.

'Come down here missy', says Dad, shaking his fist. 'Children should not let their parents know they're smarter than them!' He laughs heartily and she joins him. Without warning Lux finds herself paddling hard to circle the roof while Dad chases her from the ground with big, lumbering steps and feebly grasping hands.

And in the evening Mom wakes up and Dad goes to sleep, as always, and for one breath Lux lies in bed with them and listens to Mom's story and it's almost like a regular bedtime for a regular girl. Except when the story ends Dad is the only one sleeping, and Lux heads down with Mom to look at the sunset. They sit on the grass, Mom with a mug of coffee in her hand, and watch as fire soaks through the clouds and the sky grows dark.

'Why is it always so pretty?' asks Lux. What she wants to know is how sunsets work and how she could draw one that would make Mom happy, but she's not sure if Mom could answer that.

'Why is there pretty things?' says Mom, musing. 'There's beauty everywhere, love. Or maybe we are made to see beauty in all things. Look at this grass.' She picks a blade of grass and holds it close to her face, and Lux leans on her shoulder to see, and she sees a great many things. The edge curves beautifully; the the web of nerves trace a beautiful pattern on the surface; the color of the grass is a deep, beautiful green against the last light of the sun. 'There's beauty', says Mom, 'to make it easier for us to care about the world, to make it more important to us, more meaningful.'

'You explain things so different from Dad', says Lux and leans a little closer.

'Maybe things just look different in the night', says Mom, putting an arm around Lux' back and squeezing, tenderly. At these words something shifts in Lux' mind.

'Maybe it looks different to you since you just woke up', says Lux, hesistant, thoughtful. 'And if Daddy is up to see the sunset when he's really sleepy. . .'

'Yes, we may see very different things' says Mom, eyes twinkling with a mysterious smile. 'So who do you think is right?'

'Oh, I don't think you or Dad is wrong', says Lux. 'I like your explanations and his explanations. It can be both ways, can't it?'

'Of course it can', says Mom.

And the night passes, as all the nights with Mom, as far back as Lux can remember. Mom speaks in questions and riddles and lets Lux figure the answers out herself, and beams with pride and joy when she does, even though Lux thinks there's always something more than Mom lets her know, some deeper truth that would make Mom so happy if she could uncover it, and so she thinks very hard.

But the night is not all work. Behind the house, deep in the forest lies a little pond where mother and daughter goes for a midnight soak. Lux can't get under the water by herself, but Mom dives and pulls her down by the tail and when she looks up at the surface, glittering with minute reflected moonlight, with the water pushing her silently from every direction, Lux feels a thrill of danger and shivers, forgetting for a second about Mom. But then Mom lets go and Lux pops up out of the water like a cork and splashes and laughs.

When morning comes Lux can't remember how many times she has laughed.

And then Dad wakes up and it starts all over again.

It would be a shame to waste this setup I think, but I just can't figure out what happens next. Maybe it would work as a TV pilot, but I'd like there to be some resolution. Anyone have any thoughts?

[iamafish]

Hmm, what you have here is a really good set up - a really good act one.

You now need to ask yourself 'where is the character going?' how do you envisage the story changing the character? To work that out, I would try to think about the main character and what is lacking in her personality. What is her flaw or set of flaws? Then you can work out how those flaws are going to be resolved through the story and how the character is going to grow and develop. Once you have that worked out, the mechanics of how that happens should be easier to figure out.

I hope that helps.

[Amake]

Yeah, it helps. I wan't thinking about such basic concepts as story structure for some reason, but since you mentioned flaws I've had some ideas. I'll update my earlier post when I get something done if you want to read the rest.

PS.

Hmm, what you have here is a really good set up - a really good act one.

[Avistew]

HAve you tried the snowflake method? I find it pretty helpful. You go from a description of your whole story in one sentence to detailed description chapter by chapter + detailed character portraits. I really like it.

I've been frustrated with my writing for the past 10 years or so. In 2004 I wrote my first novel, in French, and was really happy with it (first final draft though. Other writers know what I mean). Then I met a Canadian who didn't speak French and decided "I shall write in English!" and ever since have worked on various projects in English, that I never manage to finish despite (imo) great ideas.

So I'm just starting to go back to my first novel and rewriting it in English. And OMG I notice the problem. I'm taking what I think sounds amazing in French and turning it into horrible sentences in English. But I'm going to do that for the whole thing, consider it a first draft, and then work on it. Hopefully having the whole thing there already will help me finish.

It's annoying because I speak English fine, and I type it fine. I don't think I remember the last time I couldn't think of a word. And yet it's obvious that my vocabulary and style are atrophied compared with their French counterparts. Ugh. It's like I'm going back to... not even high school, junior high or something, and having to relearn it all. Very, very frustrating, but hopefully I'll become a better writer for it all.

I'll definitely share the story with you guys if I ever finish it. I'm sure it will take years, but I've already wasted 14 years on a bad strategy, so a couple more, if they lead to something, are quite all right.

[Jamfalcon]

HAve you tried the snowflake method? I find it pretty helpful. You go from a description of your whole story in one sentence to detailed description chapter by chapter + detailed character portraits. I really like it.

That's the method I used to write my first novel (link, if you want more information), and I found it worked really well for me. Every previous attempt floundered and died because I didn't plan well enough ahead. I spent more time than I probably needed to planning (about two months), but as a result the whole thing went more or less smoothly, and I was never left wondering what would happen next.

I really like going in with a detailed plan. It lets me see a lot of problems well in advance, and going over the story multiple times like that means I'm very familiar with how it's laid out.

I went for something a bit different for my current book because of the style (many POV characters, very short, quick chapters), but still based it around that method. I could see it not being for everyone, but it works great for me.

[Prospero101]

So I had this idea for a novel called "The Con." It's based on that time the Chicago convention center held four different cons at once. There's a comic book convention, an antiques convention, an auto show, and a gun show all in this huge convention center.

Each con has some exceedingly valuable thing on display (I'll figure out the specifics later, but each of these fields has a few extremely sought-after items) that four different crews are each after stealing, all on the same day. A gang of Irish mobsters is after the comic con (because the boss is a closet nerd), a sketch comedy troupe that moonlights with small-time scams (inspired by LRR, but without insinuating that they're con artists) are after a rare coin at the antiques con; a group of Italian gangsters masquerading as stamp-collecting hobbyists are after a unique luxury classic at the car show; and a squad of ex-KGB Russian mobsters are out to "reclaim" some antique firearm from the gun show. The conflict is centered around the mix-up of the prizes after they're stolen, happening all in the middle of four different giant conventions.

What do you guys think?

[Master Gunner]

Sounds inspired by Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels. That's not a bad thing.

[Prospero101]

It's mostly inspired by that, but also inspired by the hilarity inspired from a game of Fiasco I played with some friends a few months ago.

[Amake]

Sounds fun, though I'm immediately wondering how you'd mix up a car with any of the other items. Maybe there are shrink rays involved?

Done well, you could have a climactic stand-off-switcheroo comedy to dwarf the gun/knife/car keys/suddenly crossbow scene in Scary Movie 4 on your hands. It'd have the potential to be quite extensive, in-depth, involving dozens of characters all talking to each other at once, lengthy negotiations, precisely timed or mis-timed handoffs, dysfunctional villains simultaneously trying to gain each others' trust while backstabbing each other. Sounds daunting to me actually, but that's more a reflection of my own weaknesses.

If you want one suggestion, it might be interesting if the reader is never told what any of the four treasures are. You could make it clear the characters know perfectly well what's what and that the groups value their respective treasures immensely, and put in enough details that people could make good guesses if they read up on the historical part, but leave them as package #1, package #2, package #3 and package #4 in the narrative. It'll be like the shiny thing in the briefcase in Pulp Fiction times four.

(Should I be worried that all my references in this writing thread are references to movies and TV?)

[Prospero101]

Honestly, the car show is the weakest of the four. I should think of something smaller. Something that can fit in a briefcase.

[Valkyrie-Lemons]

So I'm just starting to go back to my first novel and rewriting it in English. And OMG I notice the problem. I'm taking what I think sounds amazing in French and turning it into horrible sentences in English. But I'm going to do that for the whole thing, consider it a first draft, and then work on it. Hopefully having the whole thing there already will help me finish.

Do you mean the flow of the sentence, or how it sounds?

Since if it's the latter, then it's just how English is compared to other languages like French. English is a harsh sounding language, so it's hard to make things sound good.

If it's the former, then my advice is to simply use a thesaurus and to be much more wordy.

I.E, instead of:
"I was wondering what she was thinking."
You'd say
"I had to consider what she was imagining in her mind."

The problem is that some of the best sounding passages in English can be really unreadable at times. Like Chaucer or Shakespeare.



I'm actually trying to write a book of my own from a story I've had in my head for years. My biggest problem is moving on plot, I can spend ages on one scene, but find it hard to get things moving to the next part in the story. Plus I am aware of my overuse of dialogue.

[Avistew]

So I'm just starting to go back to my first novel and rewriting it in English. And OMG I notice the problem. I'm taking what I think sounds amazing in French and turning it into horrible sentences in English. But I'm going to do that for the whole thing, consider it a first draft, and then work on it. Hopefully having the whole thing there already will help me finish.

Do you mean the flow of the sentence, or how it sounds?

Since if it's the latter, then it's just how English is compared to other languages like French. English is a harsh sounding language, so it's hard to make things sound good.

If it's the former, then my advice is to simply use a thesaurus and to be much more wordy.

I.E, instead of:
"I was wondering what she was thinking."
You'd say
"I had to consider what she was imagining in her mind."

Honestly? If I had the sentence "I was wondering what she was thinking.", I would rephrase it not as "I had to consider what she was imagining in her mind." which sounds, quite honestly, worse to me, but probably to something like "What was she thinking?"

After a lot of work, it turns out I really need to scratch out a lot of that book. I turned the first 10k words into 2k words, which means the whole story is probably going to be tiny by the end. On the other hand it might end up better? I'm not sure. I'll keep trying though.

And to clarify, what I mean was that in French, it sounded natural while not being repetitive. In English, I find that one of two things happens: the text does not sound natural, or it uses a LOT less vocabulary, and things that I was taught as big "no-nos" when I learned to write (such as using the same verb for speech within the next page, rather than alternate between synonyms) became kind of impossible (I just don't know enough synonyms for "he said" that don't sound weird and out of place in the English version).

[Amake]

As a rule, use "said" to attribute dialogue. If you do it consistently, it becomes as invisible as the tail on a word balloon on a comic book page. If you try to use different words for "said" at every opportunity you'll pull a reader's attention away from the story to the language of the story and generally end up as a cautionary example on this TVtropes article.

I estimate you can get away with about one different word in a thousand dialogue attributions, to spice things up. But just like spice in good it depends mostly on taste.

And by the way, I'm a qualified English genius and I run into terrible trouble trying to translate my novel from my native Swedish and making it sound good. It's the ultimate test of your mastery of a second language, I think. It's not enough to be able to think and communicate fluidly in two languages, the act of translating one to the other is a different sort of task, and much harder than speaking. Don't let it get you down if you're not as good at it as you'd like is what I'm saying.

[Valkyrie-Lemons]

Honestly? If I had the sentence "I was wondering what she was thinking.", I would rephrase it not as "I had to consider what she was imagining in her mind." which sounds, quite honestly, worse to me, but probably to something like "What was she thinking?"

The problem then is the way you've phrased it makes it sound like a question of disbelief rather than one of inquiry. I meant that sort of phrase to be in a sentance like "I saw her look over the bay with glazed eyes. I was wondering what she thinking," (Or however you want to phrase it) rather than, "She punched him in the face. What was she thinking?". : )

Anyway, I take your point about how it sounds.

And to clarify, what I mean was that in French, it sounded natural while not being repetitive. In English, I find that one of two things happens: the text does not sound natural, or it uses a LOT less vocabulary, and things that I was taught as big "no-nos" when I learned to write (such as using the same verb for speech within the next page, rather than alternate between synonyms) became kind of impossible (I just don't know enough synonyms for "he said" that don't sound weird and out of place in the English version).

Don't worry about it sounding weird. Watson often Ejaculated to Holmes.

No really...it's another way (admittedly used less these days) to say someone spoke.

Like I said, if you're stuck for words, just use a [thesaurus] to help you expand your vocabulary. English has a ludicrous abundance of words to alight the imagination of any bibliophile.

[Avistew]

I appreciate advice from both of you. I've found English behaves quite differently from French, in that someone reading a book in French with "he said, she said, they said" without variety would find it to be poorly written. Then same book in English would only seem poorly written if every word was different, as it makes it look like a beginner who wants to sound good and uses tons of words that they wouldn't actually use in real life.

It's a real language difference that makes it tricky to rewrite in another language. French works very well with somewhat complicated phrases, metaphors, descriptions. A book in English reads better if it's as simple and plain as possible, or it just sounds pretentious and you spend so much time looking at the words that you can't pay attention to what's actually being said.
So I'm doing my best to accept the loss of those sentences that sounded so good in French. Putting them in the English version despite how weird their look and sound would just make the whole story seem, well, pretentious, and break the 4th wall a bit too much by drawing too much attention to how it's written.

The problem then is the way you've phrased it makes it sound like a question of disbelief rather than one of inquiry. I meant that sort of phrase to be in a sentance like "I saw her look over the bay with glazed eyes. I was wondering what she thinking," (Or however you want to phrase it) rather than, "She punched him in the face. What was she thinking?". : )

Then just add "about". "Her eyes wandered. What was she thinking about?" I find it's usually best to keep it simple.

[iamafish]

I would be vary wary of using a thesaurus, especially if you don't know what the word actually means, because generally speaking, no 2 words in the English language mean exactly the same thing. They can be interchangeable in certain situations, but two words will not always be interchangeable, so you can't rely on a thesaurus to reliably give you more variety. The best way to expand your vocabulary is by reading widely (which also helps you to better understand different styles, conventions etc).

As for dialogue attributions; I wouldn't try too hard to find different words at the end of each line, in fact, I often don't bother with attributions in a 2 way conversation. The reader can see where the dialogue ends, then don't need to be told as well. Only use attributions if it's necessary to say in what way the person speaking spoke of if it's not obvious who is speaking.

Avistew: it might be worth trying to curb your ambition a little and start off by just writing short stories, or even shorter practice pieces. A website like The Write Practice is really good, both for advice and for giving you writing prompts, so you can try out different techniques on a really small scale, allowing you to focus on writing style and make mistakes with it actually mattering.

Your general instinct with writing in English is correct though; it tends to be better to keep things simple. That's not to say that English can't be elaborate or highly descriptive, but overly flowery and complex sentence structure often detracts from descriptive writing, rather than adding to it!

[Phailhammer]

I'm currently in the process of rewriting a novel I wrote with a friend a while ago. The story follows a space naval fleet deployed to a system on the edge of the Terran Commonwealth embroiled in civil war. After arriving, some of the officers on the fleet's command ship, CNS Deutschland, discover that there may be more to the rebellion than the factions on a single planet. The plot also deals with the resurgence of the empire the Commonwealth replaced, around 40-50 years before the start of the novel, and their infiltration of Commonwealth positions.

The main problem I had with it was that I hadn't figured out the overarching plot properly before starting, and still hadn't by the time I wrote the latest chapter (a couple of years ago now).

What I currently have is the version on FictionPress (The Vitaris Insurrection, linked in my sig), a newer version in a Google Doc, and around 12 pages (around A5 size) of handwritten material covering the backstory and overarching plot.

[Avistew]

Good luck, Phailhammer! I can't imagine writing a story without knowing where it's going... I have the opposite problem, I tend not to write until I have decided on everything already. I've been trying to get over that by working with prompts (I started a few weeks ago, so it was good to see it suggested to me, I must be doing something right) but whatever I produce from prompts I hate and I feel like it's setting me back rather than making me progress so it annoys me.

[Phailhammer]

Good luck, Phailhammer! I can't imagine writing a story without knowing where it's going...

That's what I'm trying to fix at the moment. I've written 13 pages worth of general plot so far.

[Prospero101]

Okay, so I took a crack at the Con idea and, frankly, it's just too many characters to keep track of. I can't give them all their own arcs and development without it being a thousand pages. Not the best for a first attempt, I think.

Instead, I had a different idea. So there's this new, fancy casino and resort opening in the middle of the Nevada desert. But on the night of the grand opening gala, nuclear war strikes, and it's revealed that the casino's owner is a hardcore survivalist who outfitted the hotel with everything to make it a giant, impregnable bunker. Each floor is sealed off from everywhere else. The conflict centers around a reformed con man turned lounge singer, the casino owner torn between the idea of surviving at any cost and having an audience while he does it, and a prominent Marilyn-esque actress, stuck between them and a crippling nerve disease that leaves her in constant, horrible pain, such that she has to drown herself in painkillers just to get out of bed.