I love the story ideas in my head but they are so hard to get out! There are novels I've started years ago that are nowhere near completed. I just... never seem to be able to keep writing. I have one particular book that I really really want to finish, but I feel so woefully uneducated... I would pick a courtroom drama as my first major novel! How does anyone do the research for that?

Sonny, some things that come to mind for researching a courtroom drama (aside from watching LOTS of Law and Order ):

-- Read other courtroom dramas -- especially if the authors are connected to law (John Grisham, etc.).

-- Sit in on some court cases if you can.

-- If you have any friends who are lawyers, ask to pick their brains (I have a friend from church who's in criminal law, so I would definitely be pelting him with questions if I were writing something like this).

I hope that helps. I sympathize with having trouble getting words on the page and finishing things. The book I mentioned on the previous page is only the third one I've finished (and the only one I've finished and edited) in the 15 or so years I've been writing "seriously".

Currently I'm working on two projects: The sequel to Albion Academy and a short story/novella that's a "Beauty and the Beast" retelling (with a few modern twists). The BatB story is actually helping me jumpstart my writing habit after close to two months of almost no progress on the Albion sequel.

I love the story ideas in my head but they are so hard to get out! ... I would pick a courtroom drama as my first major novel! How does anyone do the research for that?

This is why I stick to the realms of fantasy, sci-fi, and superheroes. There, no one's going to care much about the details you get wrong.

I know what you mean about story ideas, though. They love to show up in the weirdest places, but actually forcing them out of your head and onto paper is a lot like trying to take a 4D image and draw it on a 2D surface. Your ideas are never kind enough to sort themselves out and figure out all the details in between!

The only time I've ever really finished anything was when I did it as a NaNo project, and even then I'm usually unhappy with the end result and I never want to go back to it. Ironically, the one year that was an exception to that was the year that I just started with a brand new project where I had little to no plan and had no intention of following up with it. I've since adapted many of its elements to flesh out another story that my brother and I are working on.

One thing I've been trying to do in recent years is to try to focus my stories. When I was younger and had more time, energy, and creativity (and less sense of quality writing ), I'd pretty much just write whatever idea came into my head, which is how I ended up juggling dozens of different stories all at the same time. I've narrowed my list down closer to 7 unrelated stories, and while they won't work as sequels, some of them at least fit in the same world, and I'm trying to identify common themes/storylines and figure out how I can make them part of a larger narrative, instead of me having the same basic ideas with different characters over and over.

While this does help a bit for focusing, sometimes I feel like I'm trying to hard to squash all of my story ideas into a workable mold, and in the process I squeeze out on the weird things that made me interested in them in the first place. There are days when I'm not sure I'm a very good storyteller, I think I just like to make up new characters and justify their existence. *Siiiigh*

Oh well. At least I'm writing again. I found the transition from part-time to full-time work a lot harder than I thought it was going to be, so I almost stopped writing entirely for the past three years because I didn't know how to balance my time. Right now I'm working on the story I've developed most over the last 10 years, even though I keep starting over almost completely from scratch every couple years. My goal this time: write down a complete draft and DO NOT start anything over for any reason. Kind of NaNo style, except without the words per day push, more the "just get it on paper and stop worrying about how awful it is".

Oh, yes, the space setting! I think I've heard a bit about that, though I don't always understand what is going on. I hope you get the opening scene to work out soon. Do you think that it is the writing itself, or are you having problems with how to start it exactly?

I don't blame you for not understanding what's going on--there are days when I don't understand what's going on in the story and I'm (supposed to be) the one writing it. I think the problem is in the writing. I know the setting and situation I want to use, I just can't get the balance between exposition and action to flow and carry the characters and reader into the next scene. Ah well. I'll figure it out eventually.

*cheers Rya on* You can do it! If nothing else, you'll get a little closer to your goal.

Not pushing my family barrow or anything, but my kinswoman (former member Tiggy) has just published her first novel today!

Restoration Day is about a princess turning 18 and wanting to take on her role in life - but like all good fantasies there are challenges to overcome first. The e-copy will be available soon, but paperbacks can already be ordered (Amazon, Barnes&Noble and others). Among the reasons I enjoyed reading it during its development are its humour, interesting long words, remarkable characters, hope, sense of good needing to triumph, and plenty of "Aha" moments.

If you do read it, I'll be interested to hear what you think of it, so do PM me!

Here is a link to her latest blog, in which she quotes a prophetic poem from the book.
https://deborah.makarios.nz/blog/

Hello, my lovely writers

I am popping in on a shameless quest for promoting an event, however, a little background first. We of Ditto Town have been looking to find ways to make the town a bit more friendly and welcoming. Since we have, for a long time, hosted various writing groups, we thought it would be appropriate to expand on that idea and encourage more people to share their own original writing. In an attempt to do so, we are hosting a flash fiction event right now. We're wanting to encourage people to share their writing, continue their writing, or just get in conversations about their writing, and as such, we would love if you visited. You can find the thread here, and, if you choose not to post in this thread, but have thoughts on the overall process, we will be opening a discussion on flash fictions or other possible Ditto Town events after the flash fic thread closes.

Hope to see you around!

When you realize the last time you were active on this forum was 2012...

So this may be a shameless plug on my part since I haven't been here in forever, but I now have my own author website! I don't have anything published yet but I thought I'd share it here for anyone who is interested in checking it out. I have a handful of short stories and flash fiction posted on the blog.

My author website!

I just finished up a ton of academic papers for my university courses. I need a break from that kind of writing, so I'm going to try and write out a fictional scene I've been mulling over for awhile. It is a dialogue between two odd characters who eventually become really good friends.

Dialogue is my favourite thing to write. Does anyone have any good suggestions for books/articles on the topic?

Dialogue is my favourite thing to write. Does anyone have any good suggestions for books/articles on the topic?

I would suggest the Writing Excuses podcast. They've got lots of great stuff for writers.

Dialogue is my favourite thing to write. Does anyone have any good suggestions for books/articles on the topic?

I would suggest the Writing Excuses podcast. They've got lots of great stuff for writers.

Thanks Fire Fairy! That sounds great. I will check it out

You're welcome!

Do you guys have a favourite place you like to do your writing? There is a library at my university that is in a gothic style, so it is a perfect atmosphere for writing! There is also a nice cafe near my house that has the most delicious baked goods. Writing in there is nice because I can munch on wonderful cupcakes and cookies at the same time.

I actually haven't started the dialogue scene I mentioned earlier, but I will head out to the cafe on Monday and try then. I just get lazy when I plan to write at home!

When the weather is nice, I like to write outside in a local park, sitting at a picnic table in the shade. But sometimes there can be distractions there - a hike to look at wildflowers, watching waves crash on the lake, that sort of thing. Sometimes I write with old fashioned paper and pen, and other times I'll take the laptop to the park since I can type far faster than I can write.

Sounds lovely, stargazer! I wish there were a nice lake nearby to where I live!

I'm similar to stargazer in that I like to write outside when I can - I tend to have a huge burst of creativity as spring and summer start and I can go outside more easily again. I also tend to go for the laptop, since even though I find that pen-and-paper writing makes me less prone to trying to go back and re-write what I already have, it also, like stargazer, just takes me so much longer. However, I like to listen to music online while I write, so I tend to just sit right outside my house, still in range of the wifi, to write.

I've tried writing at a coffee shop near my house, to avoid the distractions of wanting to watch TV or the like instead of writing. It was effective in that regard, but it was a bit too noisy and I was distracted by that. Plus, I have to work up the energy to drive anywhere after coming home from work. There's a cafe/ice cream shop/something like that near my house that I haven't tried yet, though, so I may have to give that one a whirl this weekend and see how that works out.

Good luck on that dialogue, Valiant_Nymph! Here's hoping you hit that rhythm quickly and can knock it out.

I've been doing a writing goal this year where I'm writing a set amount of words per day for a particular story (usually around 350, so not a huge time commitment), and while I've been keeping up with it lately, it's been proving hard. On the one hand, I'm proud of myself for not jumping ship to a different story every time I get bored or frustrated. On the other hand, right now I'm completely stuck on the scene I'm trying to write, and there are three other projects which want my attention and are actually being cooperative. But, in an odd way, it's kind of motivation to get my writing goal done - if I put in the minimum required amount of work on the story I'm supposed to be focusing on, that frees up my time/attention so I can switch to whatever I'm actually interested in at the moment. (*Siiiigh* Oh, writer brain, how you control my life. )