Challenge Fifty Titles in Search of a Story | We have a winner! Congrats to divapilot :)

Raissa, I have to admit, your title is what drew me into this challenge and I am rather jealous of it (I know it has been done before, but I’ve always wanted to take the idea of Han’s blindness post-carbonite as being permanent).

My advice would be to don’t force yourself to write anything you are not totally passionate about. Yes, this is a bit of a challenge and going out of one’s comfort zone is part of this (goodness knows I am totally over my head with my action/mystery fic), but forcing yourself to write 12,000 words is just going to drain you (in my experience). This is just a fun hobby at the end of it all. And, of course, take care of yourself as well.

As for ideas, that mystery fic sounds like a great start. But if you don’t wan’t to write it, here are a few brainstormy ideas from me:
a literal interpretation of the title - a character goes blind (it doesn’t have to be permanent)
a person is blind/unknowing to something
a person is in denial about something
blindness (or lack there of) of the judiciary system

I hope that helps a bit.


And, just a personal opinion here, I don’t think the challenge needs any modification. If I have to write an action story longer than my longest story (which was 51,000 words), I will drop out.

 

Wrap-up week 4

Okay, trying to draw some conclusions from what was said this week... I'd say that the key idea that comes out of the discussion above is that we like to let our chapters grow organically.

We all define a chapter as a section of text that should contribute to the development of the story, either by moving the plot forward or providing an element of character development (or both). There should be an element of completion in each chapter, i.e. the component of the story it covers should somehow tie up some loose ends while setting up the stage for something that will happen in the future.

A chapter may consist of one or more scenes. Proposed definitions for a scene include an event taking place in a single time and space, or a section of text defined by the entry/exit of characters. A scene may be a subsection of a longer chapter, or may be a chapter on its own if the scene is longer or if the writer adopts a shorter chapter approach.

We all seem to have a rather elastic approach to the preferred length of a chapter. My general feeling is that we like our chapters to "make sense" and to be of a size that makes reading easier on the boards, so if a chapter comes across as too long we'd rather post it scene by scene or break it down into smaller units. The size may also vary depending on the type of story, the stage of story and the pacing that the writer is trying to achieve.

We like to end out chapters at a point that we feel makes sense for the story, mostly defined as the idea that the element we wanted to develop is complete and that it is time to move to the next step -- either picking up from where we left off or shifting to a different component of the story that happens in parallel. Many of us like to build a cliffhanger in order to keep the reader's attention but overusing cliffhangers comes with the risk of trying to artificially ratchet up the drama.

It seems that our approach to outlining mirrors our approach to chapter writing, in that the control freaks structure their chapters very strictly whereas the seat-of-their-pants writers just go with the flow of the general outline. The range of approaches goes from writing scenes instead of chapters and building the story from there, to breaking the plot into story arcs and working on sequences of chapters instead of individual ones.

Lastly, s_heffley probably summarised the balancing act that is writing in a serialised fashion quite well: it's easier to write short bits than the whole thing, but then you have to worry about how the bits fit in the whole.

(As always, let me know if I forgot something and I'll come back and add it!)

 

Week 5: Free discussion

This is the time to post in this thread anything that comes to your mind at this stage of the challenge.

• If you still need brainstorming help, just say so and we can all try to come up with ideas,
• If you have a general idea but need to turn it into an outline of sorts, post it here,
• If you have an outline of sorts and need to beef it up, put it up for discussion,
• If you want to catch up on questions you didn't answer, or add something to your answers, or challenge what someone said, feel free to do so,
• If you have an existential crisis, pour your heart out,
• Etc.

Just to avoid everyone posting at the same time and questions getting lost in the flow, please wait until the person before you gets a couple of replies, or try to reply yourself, before you post your own question.

We already have a dilemma put forward by Raissa Baiard:

 

Now I'm feeling super-guilty, because I can see that my PM put you in this situation I had kind of assumed that you liked to outline, mostly because of Raissa Baiard Solves Them All, which came across as very well-structured (and it was a mystery story too).

I'll second what Bri said about not writing a story that you're not excited about, and since you sounded pretty excited about the murder-in-a-restaurant thing I'd say you go with it and just ignore everything I said in my PM. If you can spare the extra time in February, you could take advantage of the word race to write as much as you can of what you have in mind (without an outline, like you normally do), and then, after you have a basis of text, you can go back and expand on it, add the clues where they need to be, develop the characters, etc. I don't think that it's possible to write a mystery story without taking at some point a step back and making sure that the different plot elements you need are there (although I may be wrong about that), but I'm sure it's possible to start writing by the kilometre and look back at it later to see what is missing and what needs to be changed or moved around. Heck, even with the obsessional amount of planning I do I always end up restructuring at one point or another.

At any rate, the deadline to start posting is in two whole months, and there's no specific requirement for the first post, it can be just a couple of paragraphs. So think of it this way: as long as you have an idea of how you want to begin your story, you have until June to actually structure it, whichever approach you choose. That's plenty of time to ruminate and write, structure, re-write, re-structure, etc until you have something you're happy with

I'm very reluctant to touch the word count rule because it's pretty much the only objective indicator we have in this challenge and I feel that changing that now means that the challenge would stop being what people signed up for, you know what I mean? If you feel that the idea you have in mind doesn't have enough story to it, maybe you can post it here this week and we can all help you develop it.

I thought I'd answered this already for someone else, but it must have been in a PM instead of this thread. Any narrative format is acceptable as long as the story is a single story, it doesn't have to be told in a linear fashion. For instance, K'tai's Bits and Pieces is a collection of drabbles that jump from one character to another and one moment in time to another, but it still tells a single story, so it would be okay for this challenge.

The challenge is to write 12,000 words every month, did you miss that? [face_terrorism]

 

Originally, it was meant to be a celebrity biography, sort of.

The current form I have on my mind is a collection of newsflimsi articles, a script for a HoloNet special and a couple of other things They are on the same topic, but they will look pretty bizarre together. There may be a couple of graphics I made in December. As in, in-universe material.

If this is OK, then great, but I assumed it was not and that this would've been a DQ.

 

Let me put it this way: as long as it can be summarised in the form "in the beginning A happened, then B happened, then C happened and in the end D happened", it qualifies as a single, unified story, even if A, B, C and D are told in no particular order in the text itself. If on the other hand it's "what we know about this character is A, B, C and D but we don't know where s/he came from and where s/he's going" it doesn't. Does that make sense?

 

Yup, it does make sense and it still falls into the second category. The title I got did inspire me a lot (or, to put it better - it matched what I wanted) and I will probably modify it and credit this challenge for inspiration. The story is alive and it wanted to be told in a slightly unorthodox manner, as well as serve as a plot point for other stories.

 

I'm still lost on A Season in Hell. I'm no good at gritty war stories, and I don't know what else would be best. All that comes to mind are those gritty war stories that I know I would never finish.

Help!

 

It could be subjective hell for a Jedi in training, a clone troopers, an adolescent going through puberty or someone locked in an uncertain time of crisis but since the word season is mentioned, thankfully it resolves and things get better.

 

I get what you're saying, but I'm still drawing a blank. I think what I need is not so much general concepts as it is a few more specific plot bunnies, from which I can then spin my own yarn. I'm no good at inventing plots from scratch.

 

jcgoble3 I've noticed that you wrote a few stories in the JA timeline, so would something about a Qui-Gon/Obi-Wan mission gone wrong be an option? A few other possibilities I can think of from the top of my head: something in the Vector storyline about the Rakghoul plague, something to do with the Krytos Virus, something to do with the Yuuzhan Vong taking over a planet and/or the planet before its liberation. Also, taking "season" literally and writing an adventure that takes place during the hot season on Tatooine/Jakku, or the cold season on Hoth -- maybe the story of a group of Rebels who had to survive on Hoth until they could be rescued?

I think it would make it easier for people to give you ideas if you were a little bit more specific about the sort of thing you'd like to write, e.g. if you could give an indication of the timeframe or characters you'd be interested in.

 

I had a bit of a stumper with my title, Seasons of Migration to the North. Then the more I thought about it, a season is a pattern that repeats. It doesn't last forever, but it can be depended upon to come back again. Maybe thinking about the "season" part of the title might help shake something out? Something that comes again after a long break, and your character must prepare for anothe season of hell?

 

Actually, that helps a lot. I might be able to figure something out now. As for "the sort of thing you'd like to write", I'm not really picky about that and I'm willing to try new things. But the Qui/Obi mission gone wrong seems like it might work. I just need to figure out what went wrong and how much story I can get out of it. Thanks!

EDIT: divapilot: that helps too. I'll think about that as well.

 

divapilot & jcgoble3 - I've also been thinking of a thing that repeats as a pattern. Specifically, based on ffs I've read the thing with the First Order and the decimation of the Jedi -- for my story, I wanna nip that in the bud while at the same time make a credible threat. I want redemption and reconciliation by the end. I also wanna merge Legends with new canon. Guess who I want to pair with Luke?

 

You are a troll I read that when I woke up this morning and I had to do a double take.

But I agree. Everyone signed up for 12,000 words (IN A YEAR ) and that is the basic premise of the challenge. I hope to help everyone make it.

I'm always up for crazy, random brainstorming

Also, if you are one for motivation, the word race accepts words written in outlines, character sheets, etc as part of your total.

 

Now I am at a mere 1000 words with the first two scenes/chapters. And with the word-race coming My title Flowers of evil had me coming up with a new villain and an entire new timeframe (Darth Krayt).

jcgoble3 A season in hell can be about a training mission on a planet nicknamed 'Hell'

 

Now that gives me a possible idea: the training mission that every Padawan dreads.

 

Raissa Baiard I'm 100% with you!!! I've actually spent a lot of time on this (more than I have before on anything else I've written) just...thinking. I was immediately inspired by the title I got and had the immediate plot bunny...and then it shriveled up! I couldn't figure out how to make the plot bunny into a coherent story that would stand up to that. much. content. I did my first-ever outline, and that actually helped. It was totally not "legit" and way less organized than some of the ones the pro's posted on here, but it worked for me and it helped me get where I was going. Haha, it actually felt like I just developed one plot bunny, that I outlined into 12-ish plot bunnies that area all one after another, when you put them together, a story!!




jcgoble3 I could see "A Season in Hell" also be like...maybe a really good event that a character just can't handle how great it is, so they go do something to "mix it up" or "keep the edge" and then they go spiraling down. OR you could go with (I think it was?) mavjade who wrote a main character AU with them becoming a drug addict and then getting clean (one of my fav's ever!!). Or I could see you could do a life story...as others have pointed out, there are many seasons, and they're repetitive and cyclical. So maybe the crazy things of someone's life? Or what about a typically "good" guy AU who goes down a bad path and becomes a shockingly bad guy...and then maybe comes back at the end (a la Darth Vader) or not?? I don't know...just some ramblings.

Well...as to the questions posed:

I feel like I'm always having an existential challenge, so thanks for the invite! Kidding I'm kinda glad we're just airing all out thoughts this week, I'm really glad to see that other people are struggling, and not just me! I was feeling like the only one sitting here going

I think my biggest challenge now is just sitting down and writing the darn thing. I'm a big (1) word vomit, (2) hack, (3) hack some more (4) re-write sections (5) hack (6) Tada!!!-style writer. So I just gotta start. Also, I'm having to do some...building to get me from point A to the point where the super AU stuff happens that's the actual meat and potatoes of the story....and for whatever reason, that's been really challenging for me.

I will throw out there I'm really excited to "meet" people from other sections of the boards doing this challenge. I stay pretty exclusively in Beyond, but I'm excited once we all start posting to start reading your stories in other parts of the boards. I guess I'll use you all as my diving board into new worlds!

Would anyone be willing to just look at my ideas, and maybe help me knock it around a bit? I’ve settled on a L/M AU in Beyond (Legends). I have it very roughly outlined into 15 chapters (holy that’s a lot of chapters!) with basically the main plot events that will happen. But my biggest concern with where I’m going is that the conflict I’m planning to be the initial ohsnap! moment that drives the rest of the story….might either be OOC or silly or I’m just trying too hard. I could post it on here, but like a sucker, I don't want to ruin the plot!!

Irish

 

And/or the training mission where two Padawans who can't stand each other have to work together? [face_all_sorts_of_evil_ideas] Yes, Lazy contaminated me.

I'll let the L/M specialists express themselves but if you don't find someone to help out here you can always try the L/M thread or the Beta Reader thread as well. I'll post a general reminder of useful threads for writer support at the end of this week.

 

Irish_Jedi_Jade - I will devour your ideas like chocolate. Yuppers, just start a conversation.

Woot!

 

I would offer to trade you, but I'm not sure I could do any better with your title

Please don't feel guilty! Once upon a time, I wrote an interactive SW murder mystery party, so I had some idea of what sort of planning goes into a mystery. Part of my freak out was remembering how long it took me to do the framework for "Murder in Mos Eisley" and realizing I still had to write the entire story after that! (With the murder mystery party, I wrote a dossier of clues for each character, but my guests ad-libbed all the dialogue). Another thing that made writing the mystery party easier was that I was working with established, if minor, characters like the Tonnika twins, Bib Fortuna, and Figrin D'an, which made figuring out their motivations much easier.

I also realized how much I was limiting my potential clues with the dark dining/blind waiters angle....no visually based clues to establish a timeline, the characters' movements, etc. I think a good mystery writer could make a really fascinating story from the premise, but I doubt that I have the skills at this time.

I'm still toying with the murder-in-a-restaurant scenario, and I've been reading Agatha Christie's "Sparkling Cyanide (Remembered Death)", which has a similar premise, to try to get some inspiration. I do feel like I'm missing my "hook," though. Even "Raissa Baiard Solves Them All" started with a simple idea, which was how could I subvert the "cat up a tree" trope.

I will keep playing around, and contending with DRL, who insists, every time I put pen to paper, that everything I write is crap.

 

On the other hand, the no-visual-clues approach could lead to a bonanza of red herrings, with non-visual clues resolving themselves into multiple options for visual clues when the investigator arrives and the lights go on. E.g. something is heard falling, and when the lights go on there are three different items on the floor, or someone trips on something soft in the dark, and that could be a wrinkle in the carpet or the foot of a Wookiee or a purse, etc. Actually, this kind of thing sounds right up your alley

A little gift from me to DRL:

Spoiler

 

Raissa Baiard - oh that sounds like an amazing thingy - the interactive SW mystery. Sorta like Clue -

The red herrings for a mystery in a restaurant are terrifically varied. Who was the intended victim? How did the perp make sure that an unintended person didn't get taken out instead? Or would they want to have more than one victim -the secondary ones not being fatal) just to muddy the waters?

Was it the chef or the wait staff or did he/she (one of the diners) carry the stuff in unobtrusively and slip it in during the meal?
And, if there was a party being catered at the restaurant, that brings in a whole new batch of suspects, the caterers.

 

My turn to ask for help. My title is If This Is a Man and I've decided to make it a Frankenstein's monster story, but that's pretty much as far as I got. I did consider writing it in another fandom (both Firefly and Battlestar Galactica came across as good options) but that would require far more background research than I can afford to do, so Star Wars it is. Basically we're looking at a cloning experiment gone wrong. Could you guys suggest an appropriate setting for this sort of story? Timeframe, Canon or Legends storyline, planet, possible characters, etc? Any and all ideas are welcome. Thanks

 

Er, sorry, what kind of Frankenstein's monster story do you have in mind? Monster as menace or pathos? And what sort of cloning experiment?