Young Writers Society

ok this is something i have terrible trouble with (and little tin fish knows!)

well, i dont know how i do it, and i dont know why, but it seems i can write incredibly fast, and have many many pages of a story in a short space of time, but absolutley nothing happens. (well nothing good)
i've tried using better grammar and developing paragraphs with better description, but it doesn't work. I thought it might just be that my stories aren't interesting, but im just very restricted in my words.

i know its much better to get a little bit done thats wonderful than have pages of rubbish, but its hard i tells ye!
please help! i finish stories very quickly that are somewhere between 300 pages on word and nothing is any good! its all very bad! veryveryveryveryvery bad


ok im a bit better now i had a slight midlife crisis (yes...i'll die at 30.... )

Okay, this is a problem many of us have. It's not easy trying to decide if what you have is worth keeping or not.

So what you need to learn to do is ditch anything that can go and keep stuff that should stay.

Examples of things that should go:

-descriptions of the setting that go beyond a paragraph

-info-dump: anything that just simply tells your reader what is happening instead of something that is actually happening

-descriptions of people that are not somehow fixed into the storyline; for example: "Mitch arrived at the house. He had dark brown hair and blue eyes and a patch of whiskers grew on his upper lip." Blech.

-scenes that add nothing to the storyline

-scenes that preach to the reader

-paragraphs that you might consider profound pieces of literature, but might actually be just filler


Examples of things that should stay:

-good dialogue that shows a character's personality

-action that doesn't confuse the reader and also has a purpose

-any small little quirk that you use later to show something

-descriptions that are short, sweet, and are easily woven into the story

-anything else that furthers the plot and gives motive to the character


Now these are basics and pretty broad in and of themselves. Read some of your favorite authors and try to get a feel of what types of things they have in their writing. Hopefully you'll be able to figure it out.

Great, now I have to find something useful to say after Trident's advice...
Just something in general is this: Save an old draft of your story, then take the new one and shred it. Rip it to pieces. Shred it, edit it, turn it to coleslaw. Delete whole scenes, whole chapters if you need to. Don't mark time; move the story relentlessly. If anything is needlessly slowing the story down, don't hesitate: take it out!
One more word of advice: one of the best ways to make things happen quicker is to have a deadline or a pressing mission.
In case you were wondering, I'm currently editing the second part of my story and trying to make it shorter. So I'm suffering through this editing process too!
Good luck!