History That Never Was

Chris Lott (https://www.flickr.com/photos/fncll/10537925625) CC-by-2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/)

In recent weeks, I’ve had a couple different stories that I’ve started writing, and then realized that I was approaching it the wrong way. Either the plot was going off the rails, or it was too close to something else, or it just wouldn’t really get to the meat of the plot in any sensible way. And in both cases, I’ve stopped working on one version, started working on a different version, and wound up with stories that worked!

Even though it’s hard for writers to abandon something they’ve put a lot of work into, sometimes that is the best solution for something that isn’t working. You may still find pieces of the first version that you can work into the new version, or you may find that the first version is just a pre-writing exercise that will make the new version even better!

Tags: advice, prewriting, revision, short stories, writing

This entry was posted by dawn.vogel on Monday, January 28th, 2019 at 6:00 am and is filed under Advice. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.