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Reply To: What shape are your ideas?

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#2946
Philippa East
Participant

Just seen this post…

I too am floundering about in the “half-idea” realms…. I think I usually need two sort of “touch points”: an inciting incident of some kind, but then another event of some kind to head towards in the narrative. At the moment, I sort of just have my inciting incident and not another “way point”. Grrr.

These days, I find it hard to put pen to paper unless I have a fairly good sense of where the story is headed, the main drives, arcs, characters, etc. I’m trying to develop ideas for novel 2 right now, slightly under time pressure, and it’s a challenge! (I’ve had to abandon my original novel 2 idea for now, and go with another one, so I’m back to the blank page. Literally.)

This morning, I got a stack of blank paper and brainstormed. Like, asking myself a question (e.g. “what is my MC’s secret burden?”) and then just chucking down every idea I can think of in the hope that something will resonate or stick.

It’s all very messy right now. I think this stage requires a lot of faith that the “right” story will in time emerge if we keep brooding away on it.

Chocolate, tea, etc. good too.