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/lit/ - Literature

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7949320 No.7949320 [Reply] [Original]

I am good at writing. But I cannot come up with a good story, I have tried many times. This is preventing me from writing, it's not just that I feel I have nothing to say, very few people in this world have something to say. But I need to learn how to write a good plot. Or it isn't necessary?

>> No.7949324

>>7949320
Perhaps you should do journalism or analysis? You may not be gifted with creativity and that is alright.

>> No.7949325

Base it on a true story

Like that guy who got rabies from a racoon then became an organ donor

>> No.7949331

>>7949320
>very few people in this world have something to say
ok then so if that's the case why did you start gravitating towards writing in the first place?

>> No.7949341

>>7949320

I had this same problem when I was 17 and wanted to write good stories. It took me about 11 years to solve it. Maybe you'll do better. It amuses me to know I could spare you years of frustration but choose not to do.

>> No.7949343

Grab some famous story and retell it with our own words

you can't go wrong

>> No.7949365
File: 31 KB, 313x499, as i lay cumming.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
7949365

>>7949343
make a gay erotic novel out of it

>> No.7949388 [DELETED] 

>>7949341
Listen! We have a unique snowflake here on our premises! His wisdom surpasses his years, many as they are, and he knows of the ways of Great Writing! Run! Run to the corners of the room, you filthy undeserveds, and curl up into balls as you torment yourselves, lacking understanding of the basics of Nature, for you are not Our Great Writer, and he is; Not ours, but his own! May God bring him many more years of mercilessness, and many more years of reign!

>> No.7949393 [DELETED] 

Listen! We have a unique snowflake here on our premises! His wisdom surpasses his years, many as they are, and he knows of the ways of Great Writing! Run! Run to the corners of the room, you filthy undeserveds, and curl up into balls as you torment yourselves, lacking understanding of The Secrets of Nature, for you are not Our Great Writer, and he is; Not ours, but his own! May God bring him many more years of mercilessness, and many more years of reign!

>> No.7949394

>>7949320
Outline a coherent plot, a theme or two (or many if it's a longer worker), and if your writing is actually good that's all you need.

>> No.7949407

>>7949320
Write shitty meaningless stories until you come up with something good. Most writers do not publish the stories they write because theyre shit. Writing is aout finding the diamond in the rough. Franzen apparently writes two or three novels for everything he publishes, full on and quasi polished books. So basically if you cant think of any shitty story to tell you're not a writer or you're not trying hard enough. Also just keep reading, books are made from other books, at least that's what they say.

>> No.7949410

>>7949341
Listen! We have a unique snowflake here on our premises! His wisdom surpasses his years, many as they are, and he knows of the ways of Great Writing! Run! Run to the corners of the room, you filthy undeserveds, and curl up into balls as you torment yourselves, lacking understanding of The Secrets of Nature, for you are not Our Great Writer, and he is; Not ours, but his own! May God bring him many more years of mercilessness, and many more years of reign!

>> No.7950557

Write about what frustrates you in life and what fills you with rage.

>> No.7950565

Wankers will tell you it isn't necessary but anyone who actually writes gets that prose is childsplay once you fiddle around a little bit. Studying poetry pretty much nukes any mystique it could have.

But I do understand for some authors its the exact opposite.

Either way you do need both, research on formulating characters and plot, I recommend Lajos Egri

>> No.7950752
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7950752

>I am not good at writing because I cannot come up with a good story.
Fixed

>> No.7951151

Do what shakespeare did: search for some obscure stories with good plots and mediocre execution and use the plots,the skeleton of the tales as your base. You can even search old movies for that kind of material. In the end you will mould them into new crestures. You can also select more than one plot and blend them into a single unity. Good luck.

>> No.7951175

>>7949341
Have you published anything yet?

>> No.7951186

Yeah. You're good at writing but you can't cum up with a good story. This is a fucking contradiction. And you must get back to class or do some real writing, you maggot piece of shit.

>> No.7951209

>>7951186
Bullshit. I can write beautiful sentences, but I can't write stories. My imagination is not that good.

>> No.7951219

>>7949394
This, the story doesn't matter, the writing does

>> No.7952949

>>7951151

this

There are lots of good plots in movies than can be altered or modernized and end up producing good stories.

Just one example: the adaptation of Scarface (1983) from the Scarface of 1932.

>> No.7953019
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7953019

>very few people in this world have something to say

>> No.7953079

>>7953019

He is right. The vast majority of people (the wise or the foolish, the dumb or intelligent) tend to say mostly the same old things, the same old lessons and common-sense perceptions. Even great writers generally work upon the same topics over and over again, every one of them on its own way, but still: it is just the recycling of the same themes like death, fear, war, peace, envy, love, greed, how to live, how to die, time, decay, youth, love, etc, etc.

Sometimes a line of thought or philosophy gets a revival, but when you pay attention to it you will find that other people have already said the same thing in the past, in a different way, but still: it was the same thing. The world is very old and people have been living and writing for several generations: it is logical that we are mostly keep hitting the same keys.

The few people who have new things to say are generally saying it through mathematical equations or in scientific articles with specialized terms. If one wants to see fresh new information, things that were never dreamed and stated in the world before, then it is on this kind of places that one has to look.

Writers are not generators of new and original ideas: they only remodel the old and dusty notions of the past in their own personal ways.

>> No.7953103

>>7949324
is right. You may not fit this medium. I've always been told for years I was excellent when it comes to write, that I outperform all my peers whenever producing some text is required. I've been writing poor stories and a failed novel before I realized I was made to dialogues.

>> No.7953135
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7953135

>>7953079
>The few people who have new things to say are generally saying it through mathematical equations or in scientific articles with specialized terms. If one wants to see fresh new information, things that were never dreamed and stated in the world before, then it is on this kind of places that one has to look.

>> No.7953347

>>7952949
The Howard Hawks Scarface is a masterwork you fool.

>> No.7953357

>>7949320
You can always write a story about how you can't write a story.

>> No.7953438

>>7949407
Writing and throwing away plot and statements seems like an extreme waste of ideas. I think there aren't many, so how do you stomach writing something nobody will read?

>> No.7953504

>>7953357
Please don't

>> No.7953541

you gotta do pee pee

>> No.7953556

>>7949341
then i will help.
here are a couple good books that help with plot:
How to Write the Breakout Novel (or the workbook version)
Write Your Novel From The Middle

both are available from the usual free download sites/channels

>> No.7953577

>>7953103
>excellent when it comes to write
Can't tell if the irony is intentional or not.

>> No.7953618

I have the opposite problem, OP. I come up with a half dozens of ideas for stories every day, all pretty much fully plotted at the moment of inception, and one or two best suited to prose. Maybe a quarter are even good. But I'm a slow as hell writer and I don't have the work ethic or patience to realize any of them. Putting together prose is torture to me. It took me ten years to write two novels, and I have two dozen lined up waiting to start. My "Ideas" folder is like 4 gigs and I have three boxes of paper notes. :(

>> No.7953642

>>7949320
Just write dude. Eventually a story will form itself.

>> No.7953669

>>7949320
I had a similar problem, up until quite recently. I had good ideas for short stories, and could write reasonably well (better than a lot of the shit that somehow makes it through the publishing process, at least). My problem was that I'd always wanted to write something longer, but couldn't seem to come up with any ideas long enough to form a novel. About this time last year, I gave up on writing completely, since I'd decided that I wasn't good enough at it.

Anyway, on Boxing Day, I very nearly died. I went out to a party in a field near my house, and over the course of the night, I got blind drunk, did shitloads of coke, took MDMA, took some 2-CB, and smoked so much grass that Jamaica's wealth probably doubled overnight. I was so fucked up that my mate Jamie (huge cokehead who usually wouldn't do shit like this) not only suggested that I go home, but actually escorted me. After about fifteen minutes, I felt a bit better, and went back out to see if I could get even more fucked, and I don't really remember much after that.

Somehow, I'd managed to get home at some point, and drag myself upstairs into bed. When I woke up in the morning, I still felt weird as fuck, like there were these waves passing through me, from head to toe, sort of like how I imagine it would feel to be a wire. And I remember feeling wet, and smelling something awful. My face, my chest and pillow felt sticky and cold, and when I went to rub my forehead I could feel something hard on my skin. Eventually, I worked out that I'd been sick in the night at some point (which is dangerous in itself, considering I sleep on my back). It didn't register at first, but I wanted to get a shower so I went into the bathroom, and out of the corner of my eye saw this great big fucking gash on my forehead, and crusted blood all down my face (I later found blood on the corner of my bedside cabinet, and I'm assuming that I had some kind of seizure in the night).

About a month passed, and the wavy feeling didn't really go away. It's not permanent, but it comes back a few times a day, leaving me lightheaded and with tunnel vision. I couldn't really deal with how I was feeling at the time, as weird as it sounds, because it was a lot to take in. So I began to write again. I sat at my keyboard, just typed whatever popped into my head, not stopping and correcting, just typing, keeping the flow, rhythm unbroken, until before I knew it, I had a moderately coherent (albeit extremely basic) outline of a plot that I could use. I hadn't even been thinking of that at the time, I was just typing shit, but there it was, right in front of me.

I'm now halfway through at about 120,000 words, and I'm hoping to begin working on the second draft by the end of this year. Essentially, all that you need to be able to write a good story is a reason for writing that story--and if that reason is money, it'll show through in your work (think about somebody like Stephanie Meyer, and how shallow "Twilight" is).

>> No.7953758

>>7953669
Céline wrote for money.

>> No.7954348

>>7950565
>childsplay

icing on the cake

>> No.7954354

>>7949320

literally just re-write a story, combine it with some other stories. Change the setting, literally steal characters.

good authors don't plagiarize they literally steal.

>> No.7955275

>>7953642
This is terrible advice unless you want to write memetic "pomo" drivel. Good story requires structure and that structure has to be in place from step one or your entire work will crumble by the end.

>> No.7956071

>>7955275
You know, there's a reason it's a good idea to write a first draft and then edit, and then write another draft and edit, and repeat all of that until you have something solid.

If you keep trying to think about the perfect original story etc. not only will it take months (time you're spending doing nothing instead of writing), but when you actually start writing it, you will be frustrated because the words coming out probably won't do justice to this "perfect idea" that you had.

So no, it's good advice, as long as you don't treat the first draft like anything else than a piece of shit.

>> No.7956879

>>7956071
>You know, there's a reason it's a good idea to write a first draft and then edit, and then write another draft and edit, and repeat all of that until you have something solid.
I've never heard a serious authority on craft every say any such thing, so this 'YOU KNOW THERE'S A REASON...' sophistry really doesn't work on me. Maybe this works for a few autistic geniuses but if you actually want to make a humble attempt at creative writing it is good practice to get structure clarified and put it in place before you ever put pen to paper. Just writing from your gut and hoping you can somehow impose structure from outside once you've got all of your demented scribblings down is the sure sign of an amateur who will never be published.

>> No.7956945

>>7949320
I've glanced at some of the popular books sold in grocery stores. All you need is a special snowflake "troubled" protagonist going up against some plainly evil bad-guy.
And a couple of witty side characters and a big twist midway through.

Also be sure to make your protagonist have alcohol/romance/drugs/family issues.

>> No.7956967

I'm fucked on both fronts. My writing is terribly unclear and I'm not the slightest bit creative either.

Sorry if I'm hijacking your thread but I'd like to expound a bit on a problem I have. Whenever I read an article or book or whatever, even if it's relatively complex, I find I have a good grasp of 99% of the language (I know what the words mean, how they fit contextually etc.) Except when I sit down to write something I can never find the right word. It's like my brain goes blank and my vocabulary consists of only ~50 words. Am I just naturally inept in this area?

>> No.7956993
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7956993

>>7949365
>mfw this is real

>> No.7957033

>>7956967
I have a very similar problem. Find myself reusing the same tired phrases and only making use of a select few descriptive terms.

The only solution I've found is to write a simple skeleton of a sentence, then pull out a thesaurus and inject as many pompous words as possible.

>> No.7957131

>>7957033
Yep, it really is frustrating.

That exercises sounds fairly helpful, I might try it out.

>> No.7957176

>>7949320
You could substitute plot for an oulipian constraint, OP.