writing and plots

[Anonymous No.16723235]

hello /lit/. i have a growing list of story ideas but i dont know which medium to express those in. writing seems like the only option but i dont know if theyre compatible with it.

it seems impossible to tell a story and create images in someones mind while also having subtle and perfect beautiful sentences. when im reading, it doesnt matter bcuz i just read and the images are in my head but when i try to write, im always trying to find the perfect phrasing. i love sentences on their own without their meaning, they both imply so much and sound good and create the emotion you want like music, but sentences with meaning in the context of a story are there to serve the plot and when they have that purpose they lose their beauty and mystery. i guess in one you start with the plot and find sentences, and the other you start with the sentece, but then theres no plot.

so my choices are either creating a work filled with stupid sentences but the images and the plot and the big picture are beautiful (almost all of literature) OR having a collection of unrelated but beautiful sentences without plot or meaning. is it autism?

[Anonymous No.16723244]

>>16723235
>is it autism?
Yes. Also: Write for plot and images. Most people don't care for musical prose.

[Anonymous No.16723316]

>>16723244
but im bored by writing that way bcuz i already know the plot and the images. you dont return to plots as you would a song

[Anonymous No.16723349]

You haven't read enough if you think this is a problem. Poetry is the musical structuring of images and information. A good writer will be able to wrap the music around the image and plot. Think about the possible entry points and find the best means of attack. Condense down, say, a scene of a fight to the three most polished images with lyrical potential and keep on going from there. It takes actual thought and creativity to achieve this and you should hone it like any good craftsman rather than falling to your worst impulses. Start hitting those books.

[Anonymous No.16723361]

>>16723349
narrowing things down to the essentials and making it shorter is a good direction thank u. but the problem is still there. youre starting with a plot or an image you want to convey instead of the sentence itself (like in a one sentence long poem). so its poetic or musical but not poetry or music u know?

[Anonymous No.16723393]

>>16723361
Listen: You take your images and your ideas and you put them into beautiful words – that is all there is to it. Whatever viscious circle has taken hold of you, you will just have to write yourself out of that hole. All this thinking is getting you nowhere.

[Anonymous No.16723394]

>>16723361
Ever read any epic poems? How do you think Homer & co. did it? Stop bitching and get back to reading and writing.

[Anonymous No.16723415]

>>16723393
well i dont wanna get there if its flawed from the start, i dont write for money. some ideas cant be expressed in written form. maybe this is one of them
>>16723394
homer and co started from the images and plot. i dont read ancient greek so i cant judge the lines by themselves but for me the odyssey only works on the image plot level

[Anonymous No.16723420]

>>16723415
Hey there might be an entire medium for that called poetry? Whaddya know?

[Anonymous No.16723439]

>>16723420
ye i guess :/

[Anonymous No.16723453]

you have made it so far to waste other people's time with your hopeless thinking. nobody can answer your question. either you can combine good ideas with good language or you can't. which of these is the case, you will only find out in a practical way - or did your thinking help you? what kind of answer do you actually expect? a lecture about the compatibility of musicality, language and philosophy? open any classic. that is proof enough for the possibilities you are asking for. another question, however, is whether YOU can copy the great ones. and you will only be able to answer them in a practical way.

Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)

[Anonymous No.16723556]

>>16723453
why are you getting upset? i wasnt even hopeless. i think >>16723349 gave some good advice and maybe poetry is the way to go but sadly i havent read a book (with a few exceptions that did very specific things that dont have a lot of room for variety) that really was that way on a sentence to sentence basis. most writers, even in classics, care about plot and images. they sometimes give poetic flourishes but thats just that. they make a functional idea poetic afterwards and not a sentence thats inherently poetic from the start. i know its stupid but at least i get to learn if others share this concern
>a lecture about the compatibility of musicality, language and philosophy
i am interested in the compatibility of language and musicality actually. id love to hear opinions

[Anonymous No.16723565]

>>16723556
Just read Finnegans Wake already and fuck off

[Anonymous No.16723606]

>>16723565
well exactly. is finnegans wakes style compatible with telling a story story?

[Anonymous No.16723897]

>>16723556
>why are you getting upset?
because your posts seem like the thoughts of an idle person to me - that is: I project my own writing problems into your posts. Maybe read By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept.

[Anonymous No.16723927]

>>16723235
>it seems impossible to tell a story and create images in someones mind while also having subtle and perfect beautiful sentences.

No matter what, it will always be better in your head. There's a reason we say "ideal" and "idealized".

The quote below is by Ira Glass. The tl;dr is "the reason you think you suck is because there's a gap between your skill and your taste; the only way to reduce that gap is with practice". Musing on which medium is the best will get you nowhere, it's just an excuse to procrastinate.

If you keep thinking about ideas, you will only get more disheartened -- the gap will seem even bigger, because you put so much thought and energy into your ideas, that they will seem even more unreachable. The sad reality is, "no battle plan survives contact with the enemy". It has happened to me, the second I wrote the first sentence, I realized that the idea I had been entertaining in my head wasn't as good as I thought.

Ideas are ineffable, it's easy to fall in love with them. Don't think too hard about your story while you're actually sitting down and writing it. And don't forget to read! Go stand on the shoulder of giants.

>Nobody tells people who are beginners — and I really wish somebody had told this to me — is that all of us who do creative work … we get into it because we have good taste. But it’s like there’s a gap, that for the first couple years that you’re making stuff, what you’re making isn’t so good, OK? It’s not that great. It’s really not that great. It’s trying to be good, it has ambition to be good, but it’s not quite that good. But your taste — the thing that got you into the game — your taste is still killer, and your taste is good enough that you can tell that what you’re making is kind of a disappointment to you, you know what I mean?

>A lot of people never get past that phase. A lot of people at that point, they quit. And the thing I would just like say to you with all my heart is that most everybody I know who does interesting creative work, they went through a phase of years where they had really good taste and they could tell what they were making wasn’t as good as they wanted it to be — they knew it fell short, it didn’t have the special thing that we wanted it to have.

>And the thing I would say to you is everybody goes through that. And for you to go through it, if you’re going through it right now, if you’re just getting out of that phase — you gotta know it’s totally normal.

>And the most important possible thing you can do is do a lot of work — do a huge volume of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week, or every month, you know you’re going to finish one story. Because it’s only by actually going through a volume of work that you are actually going to catch up and close that gap. And the work you’re making will be as good as your ambitions. It takes a while, it’s gonna take you a while — it’s normal to take a while. And you just have to fight your way through that, okay?

[Anonymous No.16724183]

>>16723897
i am idle. thanks for rec

>>16723927
theres a lot of wisdom here. ill hang it on my wall or something :) but there are some stories that arent suitable for some mediums. rite of spring couldn't be a novel. if you tried to make it, youd feel a dissonance and i guess i felt that dissonance. but like u said
>Ideas are ineffable, it's easy to fall in love with them
very tru

[Anonymous No.16725177]

This thread helped me. Thank you.

[Anonymous No.16725183]

>>16725177
Same, thanks guys.