Quantum Storytelling

Jane In Progress has a great post in her archives that resonated with me. In TV, a writer doesn’t just go off in a corner and churn out random pages of text for a few months. Yet when it comes to novel writing, that’s what novelists do? Granted they are different mediums, but one of the hardest parts I found in writing a novel is that most of the advice you will find in regards to writing boils down to you sitting at your desk and just hashing out prose.

Over the last couple years struggling to put stories together, believe it or not I’ve actually found sitting down and hammering out a novel and a half and two half-treatments isn’t the best way to develop a story.

Sitting down and throwing scene ideas out, and talking about my characters and plot with fellow creative people is usually what pushes me forward the most. Maybe this is just a personal preference, as I enjoy developing stories more than I enjoy writing them. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy writing them too, but my biggest frustration is to waste prose trying to get across the story I’m trying to tell and failing because it just wasn’t developed enough to sustain across the pages.

Have problems with developing your story because you’re letting it develop within the writing itself too much? Maybe you need some TV or Hollywood style story development?

Maybe some of us should form a story development group?