Quote:
Originally Posted by G J Lau
I my experience it takes more than a great idea. I have way more ideas than finished stories. You need to know the set up and how you want to end the story and how you are going to get there and most importantly who is going to get you there. All that takes a lot of thinking time. Months, maybe years. And a lot of commitment to the story. You have to really feel this is something worth investing huge amounts of time to draft and redraft and redraft again. And you need confidence in your muse to come through with the right idea at the right time, even when you mind feels like it is a complete blank. Mostly though it has to be fun. You need characters you like in situations that interest you the writer. Anyway, that's what works for me ... when it works at all.
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That is one style for sure,and I will not knock it. I know greats who I have read give that kind of advice, such as Orson Scott Card. But the flip side of the coin is authors like Stephen King who say, the exact opposite. Stephen King absolutely has no idea where his stories are going when he starts, nor any idea who is them. Read his book,
A Memoir of the Craft where he encourages new authors to abandon the concept of planing.
Different people work in different ways, the key I think is to try different things till you find what works for you.