Write Because a Story Bruns Within You

“Write because a story burns within you, and you find yourself thinking and dreaming of it every free moment.” Christoper Paolini (The Inheritance cycle) tweeted this some time ago. I can very much relate to this quote. While I have written (or better said started) several stories before, nothing burned so within me as the current one does. Wanderers’ Tale saga (this is the working title of the series) that I write with a co-writer, is always on my mind every free moment. Unfortunately it tends to slip to the front of my mind when I shouldn’t be thinking about it as well.

For those who do not know, I am co-writing a story that started out as a fan fiction (we used our idols as the main characters) but we decided that the plot was interesting enough to turn into an original story. Now we are finishing off the fan fiction version and will use that as a rough outline for the original story.  We are writing this round-robin: we each take turns writing short pieces, continuing on what the other has previously written. This is a very fun way to write and explore possibilities but it also creates inconsistencies and is very very slow.
 
I do love this story a lot, especially the characters, but it is starting to become tedious. It has been dragging on for about 10 months now and we had to postpone the deadline a couple of times because we could not reach it. The latest deadline we agreed on is the end of October. While the story is coming to a close, we are not going to be able to finish it in time unless we rush. Thus we agreed to abandon the deadline and just try to get it finished as soon as possible. It is not an ideal solution, but there is not any better. This weekend I actually realised how tired I am of this method of writing. It was the first time I had not really thought about the story for more than a day. The last 9 months the story and the characters have been on my mind daily. I love plotting and creating scenes while I try to sleep, it relaxes me and helps me fall asleep. It became a habit that I finally broke this weekend. It felt good!
 
The most annoying thing of it all is that I have quite some free time and thus writing time this term, but there just is not much I can do! I could prepare some world building for the rewrite of the story though as long as my co-writer and I do not have a contract about the book(s), I am not very keen to start on it. My co-writer is very busy until the end of the year and then, when I will have a busy term, she will have more free time.
 
Waiting to be able to write something can be frustrating. I tried to start on another story, but I discovered that I could not really get into as long as Wanderers’ Tale is stuck in my head.  I suppose the only thing I can do is have patience. I am, however, not a very patient person. What makes up for that is that I do not complain easily and thus when I am frustrated, I do not show that quickly.
 
In the future I am going to try to post at least one blog a week in the weekend and write more about my personal writing and share my struggles and victories!

Kill Your Darlings

My favourite character out of the series I am writing is very complex and difficult to understand. He was hard to get to know and seemed to try and evade me. The more I get to know him, the harder it became to fit him in the story. There was this one thing that happened in his past that would influence how he coped with certain events and this would have a great impact on the story. More and more it seemed as if the story needed to bend around him in order to make him fit in, but he is not the only character. It just did not feel right.

 At that point I started to consider that perhaps this was not his story. But I was not going to give up that easy. I did not want to give up on him so easy because to me he was far more than just another character. Parts of me are in him and he is very loosely based on someone that I admire a lot and has been inspiring me for a decade. I did more research in the hope to find something that would enable me to bypass his problem and make him fit in the story nonetheless. The answers I found were not the ones I wanted. Maybe this was not meant to be.


I was very close to killing him. I did not want to and the thought alone made me very sad, but it he would probably cause the whole story to come crashing down and I wanted to avoid that at all costs. I ensured myself if I had to kill him, I would not bury him. When the time was right, I would resurrect him and give him his own story. But luckily I did found a solution. A very simple one, actually. The trauma of his past was not important for the story, so why would I make him suffer so much? Taking the trauma away wouldn't fundamentally change him but it would make him able to be in the story. Everything is now starting to fit together again and I am very relieved because of this.  

But finding a solution for one character/scene/plot point/sentence/... does not mean there will always be a way to make it fit. You always have to look at the bigger picture. If something does not fit in, do not force it. It will make your story's quality go down. It is not because you kill it now, that you cannot use it later. Keep a notebook or a document were you save all the ideas and things that had to go because it did not fit. Maybe in time you find a way to rehabilitate them. Writing is great fun, but sometimes I can be very hard and it can even suck. Turn your heart into a stone and kill everything that does not fit.

"Kill your darlings, kill your darlings, even when it breaks your egocentric little scribbler's heart, kill your darlings."

On Writing by Stephen King

Wanderers' Tale

In December my friend and I decided to write a round-robin fan fiction. We decided not to discuss the plot and see where we would end up. Three of the four main characters are singers of famous bands and the other is an original character. As the story progressed, we tumbled into the fantasy genre and noticed that the plot was quite interesting. Eventually we decided to finish of the fan fiction and than start to reform it into an original story.

Now that the fan fiction is coming towards it's end, we started planning the original story which got the working title Wanderers' Tale. It's going to be a series since too much is going to happen to be able to tell in one book. Now we have the idea of for books in our mind, though that can still change. While a lot of people think it isn't wise for a first time writer to start with a series, we will do it anyway. I know it is going to be hard to find a publisher, especially because series from unknown authors are risky. But if we cannot find a publisher, we might as well publish it ourselves as an e-book. That part is, however, still far away since we still have to write the first book. What makes the writing process perhaps a bit harder, is the fact that we are not writing it in our native language Dutch, as the title suggest, but in English. Perhaps studying English linguistics and literature at University will come in handy to write these books.

The series will be about four people who get lost in the woods due a storm. Getting out of the woods, however, is a lot harder than they thought, especially with the mysterious events that start taking place. More I cannot say (yet).

I am going to use this blog to post updates about the story but you can also follow the progress on Facebook and Twitter.