Writing: Knowing When to Start Over Again

Here it is in late September, and Halloween is just around the corner.  For the past couple of Halloweens, I've felt inspired to dabble in horror fiction and try to develop my own zombie story.  I came up with this really cool idea where zombies could overrun a deep space mining colony, and a bunch of troopers would bust in and fight them! The idea was thrilling enough for me to dive in and write up the first page or so of this story.  I set up the situation nicely, and was ready to get to the deep space colony and start the bloody mayhem!

Problem is, it never happened.  My single page of exposition just sat there for the past couple of years, beckoning me with its promise of thrills and chills, but never developing into anything substantial.

This year, something changed.  Quite bluntly, I took that one page, threw it out, and started over.  And you know what? The story is coming along nicely.  It is evolving a life of its own, with real living breathing characters and strong thematic parallels and everything.

What changed? I realized that plot and action alone is not enough to motivate me to write out this story.  Sure, I probably could have fudged my way through the extended writer's block, but the story was simply way too dry, too uninteresting, and too shallow to proceed any further.  What changed was that I didn't start the story with a dry and boring briefing room scene:  I changed it to start with a character portrait.  By introducing the protagonist and his core problem, I kicked off a whole new internal conflict that would make the story substantially more compelling.  It would also be the key factor in building up the relationships and chemistry with the other characters.  Heck, it even helped me visualize the settings and situations more clearly.

This is not the first time I've had a story go through a bad start, and needed to start over.  My first story (Rider of the White Horse) took three drafts before taking on its finalized form.  My current main project (Perfectly Inhuman) went through three incarnations before getting to where it is now; the first of which was substantially different than what it turned out to be.  In all these cases, it was never a case of me just jumping in and writing a complete draft all in one go; I had to test the waters first.  I would write so many pages, get stuck or dissatisfied in some way, and have to start over.  I've come to learn that this is part of the natural evolutionary process of writing; you can't force a story to be what it shouldn't be.  If I'm having trouble getting through a story within its first few chapters, then chances are that I need to start over and approach it from a different angle.

So if you're trying to get a story off the ground and find yourself getting stuck, it may be more than a mere block, you may need to consider starting over with a significant change in your storytelling.  Some things to consider are:

• Changing or mixing up the characters.  The story won't go far anyway if they're too shallow or uninteresting.  I personally can't seem to stand it when characters are dry and lifeless, so sometimes it helps me personally to inject the characters with personality, issues, conflicts, or even quirks to pump new life into the story.  It may also help to consider adding in characters, removing others; heck, you might even have to change the protagonist and antagonists around completely.
• Changing or mixing up the settings.  Setting is important not only for building the plot, but also for visualizing it in your head.  If you can't mentally picture it, then it's really hard to turn it into tangible writing.  It may help to consider transplanting it to a different location or era.  For example, if you're trying to develop a crime drama of some kind but can't picture a city setting, try relocating it to the country instead.  Or a foreign nation.  Or even outer space.
• Changing or mixing up the genres.  It can be very interesting to try and mix and blend genres together; whether or not it works will depend on its execution.  Something to consider, however, is that some genres are far more liberal than others.  Writing a historic epic or war drama may require a greater amount of research and realism than sci-fi or fantasy; you may find it extremely liberating to take your story and transforming it into a fantasy, especially if you're finding yourself constrained by too many rules or stigmas.
• Changing or mixing up the plot.  Some of the most interesting stories have a mixed-up narrative; some of them will start in the middle or end of the story, then use a flashback to tell it all from the beginning.  That's one tried-and-true method for quickly developing a hook for your story and making it hip all at once.  That's not all though; sometimes it helps to simply re-arrange the major plot points.  For example, with my manuscript for Perfectly Inhuman, I initially wanted to have this major plot twist toward the end, but I wound up putting it at the beginning of the story.  You know what happened? It was still a plot twist, but it also helped serve as an inciting incident.  I may not have made a mind-bender out of this, but I did succeed in using the plot twist to make a really awesome revenge story.  Chances are that you may need to consider such drastic changes to make your stalled projects work too.
• Changing or mixing up the conflicts.  To me, a story without conflict is a story without plot.  If that's what you're going for, then I can't help you.  But if you're finding that your story is dry and uninteresting, then maybe you need more conflict to spice it up some.  It can get pretty dull if the characters always get along.  Other things to consider:  man vs society, man vs nature, and man vs himself (the latter of which is easily the most interesting).
• Changing or mixing up the prose.  Experiment with the point-of-views; turning a third-person POV into a first-person will change the writing style drastically.  Changing the tenses (past or present) around might also alter things in a positive way.  Are you considering other stylistic embellishments, such as turning your story into a collection of journal entries instead of straightforward chapters? The overall writing style and syntax of the story can either help or hinder your motivation, so I'd recommend experimenting with it until it sticks.

Starting a new novel is usually a trial-and-error process, because the first time I do anything is usually the worst and sloppiest.  If you're finding yourself stuck conceptualizing the story when you're in the opening pages, then you may have to play around with it some more in a fresh new draft.  I've found that toying with the above aspects have helped me mold my stories into better, more tangible forms.  Maybe it'll help you too.