Young Writers Society

Well, okay. So I am trying to re-start a story. I had 126 pgs of it down when my computer went nuts and destroyed it. So now, in the midst of my anger and grief (okay, so this actually happened two or three monthes ago and I am just getting over it. Sue me.) I am trying to pull the pieces together and write my book anew.

Unforutately, I have this dreadful feeling that it is no good and stupid and rather childish. So how do you know? I assume I am not the first person this has happened to, so how do you judge whether something is worth re-writing? I worked on this for about a year and I have all the notes and stuff for it.

Put simply and rather vaguely: Follow your heart.

Trust your writer's instinct. If it says you need a rewrite, you need a rewrite.

Eep. I hate rewriting a story.

If the very idea of the story makes you hate yourself, don't rewrite it... or at least, don't rewrite it yet. But... I know how hard and difficult it is to rewrite a story, especially in that way, so I'm glad you had a chance to calm down afterwards. But it sounds you really love the story, so I think you should write it.

And really, who gives a pig's ear about whether it's childish or not? I love children's stories!

Just go for it!

There's no such thing as a bad idea, there's only bad execution.*

I think the classic example is Stephen King's Christine. (... A possessed car? Are you serious?) Even Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings are silly and childish when you think about it. In the first, a chosen one goes to a magical boarding school - neither of which are new at all. In the second, there's a big evil overlord that an underdog has to defeat by exploiting his One Weakness™.

So, maybe a better way to say it is that there's no such thing as a good idea, you just have to make it sound good.

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*some restrictions may apply

I think those we're gross oversimplifications Meep, and an insult to one of the greatest works of fantastic fiction - Lord of the Rings. Remember that it was one of the very first books to use that idea, if not the original, and that its only a cliche now.

I could write a full length essay on why what you just said was so wrong; those were shocking examples to use.

Truly, the most absurd and ridiculous of ideas have already been published, so for the most part what you would think is cringe worthy, can in fact be quite tame and aceptable compared to previously published works. Not that I'm encouraging judgement based on comparison alone. As long as you have some solid characters we can relate to and engage with on some level, your fine. Characters carry the story, both literally and figuratively. Work on that, and interesting ways of saying things that have already been said, and you should be right.

Cheers.

OOOH! same thing happened to me! i lost my disk with my entire life's work on it! but actually its ok now because i realized after recovering a few pages of my story that it SUCKED. so i'm quite happy to restart.

I love Lord of the Rings, matey. I wasn't dissing it at all. Rather, I was using it as a classic example of something that sounds really silly when simplified, but is amazing because of the way it was fleshed out.

Maybe, if you really don't want to retype everything and stuff, then just take the old scraps and make a new story out of it. Tweak a few things, and it'll seem way better than just grudgingly retyping it all over again.

I'm like Snoink, I honestly love a story that's a tad ridiculous. Because things just are anyway, in my opinion, and a story never seems to capture the whole of everything without it being a little silly or stupid. So, you know, don't take the stupidity thing as a bad sign.

Also, most people have moments where they think badly of their work. You really should ignore yourself when you do this. I find it works better than listening to yourself and stressing about how terrible everything you do is, because stressing doesn't really improve the situation, but practicing and trying things out does.

As for knowing ... that's a heart question, really. Ye old, Follow Your Heart, which has already been said. But if your heart is having difficulty getting around and is thusly hard to follow, or something, then just remember that you can stop at any time and it's probably better to have a go at it than to give it up for dead.

If you think it's going to be childish, so you don't want to write it, then don't write it.

But sort of what like Meep said. I'm thinking of plot right now, in preperation for NaNo, and to try to get it flowing, I was thinking of other plots of published stuff, of books and movies I like. And the thing that I thought was that none of my examples seemed to have much of a plot, even though they do. For example, simplifying the plot of A New Hope: Luke gets two droids, meets an old Jedi, has his family killed, goes with the old Jedi to a place where they meet another guy. They go with the guy to an enemy place, fight about a bit, rescue a princess, watch the old Jedi get killed, then go on to the rebel base, where Luke destroys the Death Star.

[Don't think I'm slandering Star Wars; I LOVE A New Hope sometimes to the point of indecency.]

What I was looking for was a plot that lead up to a climax, had the climax and then ended. Looking at A New Hope in that way, it seems to be just a train of events, laying out what happened. But that never crossed my mind when I was watching it, and it was only when I looked at it in a certain way that I saw it that way. When I watched it, all I was thinking about was how great a film it was.

The moral of this is, It All Depends On How You Do It.

The Sword of Shannara is based off of LOTR, but that doesn't stop it from being a great book. Eragon is based off of LOTR and Star Wars, and shows it in almost every word; the writing isn't very good sometimes, though not bad in other places.

Terry Brooks is good enough to get away with copying LOTR, but Paolini isn't.

I'M THE EXACT SAME WAY!!! like i was writing this thing, and i played it through my head like a bajillion times a day, and then it just seemed wrong. and i looked it over and it WAS wrong, then i went into a state of depression (hence me not having posted since, like, august), so...even starting over is hard, so if you can do that, you'll be fine!

to answer your question, there really is no way to know if your writing is good or not unless you give it to someone who will give you good constructive criticism. So...just post what you have on YWS! i'm sure it's great!

~Deoris

God, do I hate rewriting stories. I've had to rewrite my fantasy story three times due to computor failure, and I'm still agonizing over how dumb it seems every time I rewrite it. Like I always say (as of a few days ago), if you don't like it, make it better yourself. If you truly hate the idea of rewriting exactly what you had before, then suck it up and give the story an extreme makeover, like they do with those houses on TV, except with a story. Whenever someone does that, everyone's crying tears of joy at the end. >.>

I think your be a bit critical of yourself. I agree with Meep, your idea can be silly but it's the way you exectue it and add your own spin to. If you still think it's silly, drop it for a while and go on to something else and if later on you want to add on to it just do it.