Help Needed: Managing Ideas and Writing Practice

[Raeligath 59]

I've had a problem lately that's keeping me from getting any writing done: I have too many 'big' ideas. That is to say, I can't seem to come up with any small ideas to get started with, and instead am only getting ideas in my head for these big, novel-length monsters. The problem is, while they seem like good ideas at first (some of the time anyway), I soon remember how daunting of a prospect working on a large story can be. This, in turn, leads to me getting overwhelmed when I try to start writing, and thus I never get anything done.

Unfortunately, this also means I'm not getting any practice. This makes me sad. I really want to get back into writing so I can improve, but I'm struggling with how to get going again.

One idea I had was to try to start writing short stories, but to do that I need to learn how to 'think small', so to speak. Does anyone have any advice on how to think up ideas for short stories? Or at least just prompts for practice? For that matter, does anyone have any advice on how to keep ideas from getting out of control?

Other than that, I am open to suggestions for other ways to practice. My main goal is really just to practice writing again, and to get feedback on that practice so I can improve.

Any advice on this matter would be greatly appreciated.

[Taialin 217]

Ever heard of 30 minute ponies before? It was a weekly writing exercise wherein writers were encouraged to briefly plan a story to a defined prompt to be written in no more than thirty minutes. The prompts were no more than ten words long, though they were rife with potential story ideas, and they were rather open-ended. As an example . . .

 

—Some days, I just wanna take your big, dumb, dummy head and just... n-n-nyeahhhh!—

The first thing I think of when I hear this is Rarity and Rainbow Dash. They just don't get along most of the time, "Rarity Investigates!" being an exception. Their interests are too disparate for them to get along for long. So, to satisfy the prompt, I'd think of a situation where the two were forced together, and the first thing that comes to my mind is a doctor's visit, where both ponies are sitting in the waiting room for some time. And oooh, Rarity does happen to be both more detail-oriented, vain, and reactive than Rainbow, so say Rarity is concerned about some tiny mole that she's concerned is going to spread or something? And Rainbow makes fun of that because why would one be concerned about something like that at all? Boom! Story!

 

Sadly, the 30 minute ponies tumblr is defunct now, having shut down about a year ago. The legacy prompts are still available, though, and there's a group on Fimfiction that's continuing the legacy.

 

Hopefully that'll give you some ideas. 

[Raeligath 59]

Ever heard of 30 minute ponies before? It was a weekly writing exercise wherein writers were encouraged to briefly plan a story to a defined prompt to be written in no more than thirty minutes. The prompts were no more than ten words long, though they were rife with potential story ideas, and they were rather open-ended. As an example . . .

 

—Some days, I just wanna take your big, dumb, dummy head and just... n-n-nyeahhhh!—

The first thing I think of when I hear this is Rarity and Rainbow Dash. They just don't get along most of the time, "Rarity Investigates!" being an exception. Their interests are too disparate for them to get along for long. So, to satisfy the prompt, I'd think of a situation where the two were forced together, and the first thing that comes to my mind is a doctor's visit, where both ponies are sitting in the waiting room for some time. And oooh, Rarity does happen to be both more detail-oriented, vain, and reactive than Rainbow, so say Rarity is concerned about some tiny mole that she's concerned is going to spread or something? And Rainbow makes fun of that because why would one be concerned about something like that at all? Boom! Story!

 

Sadly, the 30 minute ponies tumblr is defunct now, having shut down about a year ago. The legacy prompts are still available, though, and there's a group on Fimfiction that's continuing the legacy.

 

Hopefully that'll give you some ideas. 

 

Thank you very much for the advice. Agh, I'm just sorry it's taken me so long to get around to a proper reply.

 

One of these days, I'm going to have to sit down and give this thing a try. Was the original challenge ever to write a (very brief) story in the 30 minute time limit, or only to plan one? It could be interesting to see what kind of story, or even just a scene, one could write in such a short period of time, though I worry that it might take longer than that just for me to 'get in the groove' for writing, so to speak.

[Randimaxis 8,633]

Have you ever seen 'Heavy Metal: The Movie'?

 

In it, there's a central theme that has a touchstone in each of several short stories; a mosaic novel, in movie form so to speak.

 

My thought would be to write a simple short story about a single thing (person, item, whatever you like).  However, once the story's written, find breaks in it, go back and intersperse short stories about the thing WITHIN the story of the thing.  In this way, you're still putting together a larger project, but in bite-size story form so it doesn't overwhelm you.  Plus, you can add (or NOT add) as many stories in between as you wish, and you've already got a central theme.

 

It's still allowing you to exercise your short story ability, and even making it easier by providing a central theme (less mental time, more writing time).

 

For help with keeping your subjects short, try describing a simple five minute scene of everyday life:  five minutes at a bus stop, a single Taxi fare, standing in the check-out line at the grocery store.  Small, simple, slice of life things - because if you can make something 'normal' come to life with words, then the extraordinary will be putty in your literary hands.

[Taialin 217]

Thank you very much for the advice. Agh, I'm just sorry it's taken me so long to get around to a proper reply.   One of these days, I'm going to have to sit down and give this thing a try. Was the original challenge ever to write a (very brief) story in the 30 minute time limit, or only to plan one? It could be interesting to see what kind of story, or even just a scene, one could write in such a short period of time, though I worry that it might take longer than that just for me to 'get in the groove' for writing, so to speak.

The challenge was always to take as much time as you needed to plan a story but keep the actual writing time to thirty minutes.

 

And it is actually quite surprising how much one can get done in thirty minutes! Take, for example, Esle Ynopemos: he wrote 30 days' worth of 30 minute ponies prompts for each of the Mane 6  (that's 180 [!] stories total). You can refer to those if you need a little inspiration or demonstration of how it works.

Edited April 21, 2016 by Taialin

[Raeligath 59]

Have you ever seen 'Heavy Metal: The Movie'?

 

In it, there's a central theme that has a touchstone in each of several short stories; a mosaic novel, in movie form so to speak.

 

My thought would be to write a simple short story about a single thing (person, item, whatever you like).  However, once the story's written, find breaks in it, go back and intersperse short stories about the thing WITHIN the story of the thing.  In this way, you're still putting together a larger project, but in bite-size story form so it doesn't overwhelm you.  Plus, you can add (or NOT add) as many stories in between as you wish, and you've already got a central theme.

 

It's still allowing you to exercise your short story ability, and even making it easier by providing a central theme (less mental time, more writing time).

 

For help with keeping your subjects short, try describing a simple five minute scene of everyday life:  five minutes at a bus stop, a single Taxi fare, standing in the check-out line at the grocery store.  Small, simple, slice of life things - because if you can make something 'normal' come to life with words, then the extraordinary will be putty in your literary hands.

I'm afraid I'm not familiar with the movie, and I'm not quite sure what you're describing. Is it like a series of semi-related short stories set in the same continuity, or a series of stories within stories, each one acting as frame to the next one?

 

As for the suggestion, that sounds like an interesting way to go about it. Is the 'slice-of-life description' meant more for writing entire short stories, or just single scenes for practice?

 

 

 

The challenge was always to take as much time as you needed to plan a story but keep the actual writing time to thirty minutes.

 

And it is actually quite surprising how much one can get done in thirty minutes! Take, for example, Esle Ynopemos: he wrote 30 days' worth of 30 minute ponies prompts for each of the Mane 6  (that's 180 [!] stories total). You can refer to those if you need a little inspiration or demonstration of how it works.

Well that does sound like a challenge. Although I suppose, like most things, it's something you get better at with practice. I'll try to check these out soon to get a feel for what such mini stories even look like.

 

Anyway, thanks for the idea and the clarification. I'll definitely have to give this a go sometime!

[Randimaxis 8,633]

Scenes for now - if you get comfy enough, you certainly COULD use that formula to write whole stories.

 

As for the movie, I would suggest you watch it (warning: a bit NSFW); the sphere shows up in each short story, all leading up to the finale.  GREAT stuff... good music, too!

[Overlord0909 479]

I've had a problem lately that's keeping me from getting any writing done: I have too many 'big' ideas. That is to say, I can't seem to come up with any small ideas to get started with, and instead am only getting ideas in my head for these big, novel-length monsters. The problem is, while they seem like good ideas at first (some of the time anyway), I soon remember how daunting of a prospect working on a large story can be. This, in turn, leads to me getting overwhelmed when I try to start writing, and thus I never get anything done.

 

Unfortunately, this also means I'm not getting any practice. This makes me sad. I really want to get back into writing so I can improve, but I'm struggling with how to get going again.

 

One idea I had was to try to start writing short stories, but to do that I need to learn how to 'think small', so to speak. Does anyone have any advice on how to think up ideas for short stories? Or at least just prompts for practice? For that matter, does anyone have any advice on how to keep ideas from getting out of control?

 

Other than that, I am open to suggestions for other ways to practice. My main goal is really just to practice writing again, and to get feedback on that practice so I can improve.

 

Any advice on this matter would be greatly appreciated.

Though I'm no great story writer (the abridged series I'm writing doesn't count, the scenes are already there), I get what you mean about big ideas. My mind works more like real long movies though, it can all fit into one long episode or movie, but nobody could sit through either. So one thing you need to learn is to maybe break up the ideas you already have (not disregarding the two above suggestions ).

 

Say you have a long epic tale of adventure, a story that requires every word to make it's impact on the viewer, but it would come to a unreasonable length to write for someone who just wants to practice. Why not take the story, and change it's genre a bit? Make it more like a comedic fantasy, where everything becomes a play by play, so that it can all be separated into short stories, that will both be entertaining, and a good way to practice.

 

I may have not said it right, but I hope you got something from that lol. As I said, I'm not a great (story) writer.

[Raeligath 59]

Scenes for now - if you get comfy enough, you certainly COULD use that formula to write whole stories.

 

As for the movie, I would suggest you watch it (warning: a bit NSFW); the sphere shows up in each short story, all leading up to the finale.  GREAT stuff... good music, too!

Okay, that makes sense. I can start by working with scenes, then build up to short stories if I feel like it's working. So yes, thank you for the idea!

 

And I'll keep the movie in mind if I can. It's not often I find time to sit down and watch something for too long nowadays, but if I have a moment and can find it I'll check it out. It sure sounds like an interesting premise.

 

 

 

Though I'm no great story writer (the abridged series I'm writing doesn't count, the scenes are already there), I get what you mean about big ideas. My mind works more like real long movies though, it can all fit into one long episode or movie, but nobody could sit through either. So one thing you need to learn is to maybe break up the ideas you already have (not disregarding the two above suggestions ).

 

Say you have a long epic tale of adventure, a story that requires every word to make it's impact on the viewer, but it would come to a unreasonable length to write for someone who just wants to practice. Why not take the story, and change it's genre a bit? Make it more like a comedic fantasy, where everything becomes a play by play, so that it can all be separated into short stories, that will both be entertaining, and a good way to practice.

 

I may have not said it right, but I hope you got something from that lol. As I said, I'm not a great (story) writer.

Hmm... I think I get what you're saying. Basically, if you play around with a bigger idea, you might find a way to make it easier to break down. For example, if you were to take a serious epic adventure and change it to focus more on humor, you might be able to break it down into an almost episodic format, while maintaining some of the same content and themes. That way you can have your big idea without having to be daunted by the big picture, so to speak.

 

Is that what you mean?

[95% Chance 78]

Well, one thing that's always helped me, and take this as you will of course (everyone is different after all) is that when you do happen to cook up an idea in that noggin of yours, simply start writing it, regardless of other projects you may be working on. Idleness breeds laziness of course, and putting that idea to good use as quick as you can, rather than putting it off is always better than losing it entirely. When an idea is fresh in your mind is always the best time to start writing.

 

Writing, like traditional art, is more about erasing than creating. You write, then you realize you could've done something better, then you go back and fix it, and it continues in a cycle forever until you're left with a Frankenstein's monster of a story. And you love it, because it's yours. Or maybe you hate it. Your muse is always going to be against you,and being proud of one's work is something that takes getting used to.

 

But as for your main problem, I can't really say anything else that hasn't already been said before. Best of luck!

[Overlord0909 479]

Hmm... I think I get what you're saying. Basically, if you play around with a bigger idea, you might find a way to make it easier to break down. For example, if you were to take a serious epic adventure and change it to focus more on humor, you might be able to break it down into an almost episodic format, while maintaining some of the same content and themes. That way you can have your big idea without having to be daunted by the big picture, so to speak.

 

Is that what you mean?

Yes. Exactly! I guess I can write then. Yah!