Thanks guys, the post was meant to be slightly tongue in cheek, but I do appreciate the advice. I understand frustration is part of it though I’m not sure alcoholism is a solution @Stenstyren. Whisky never seems to work with my other problems (maybe it's the brand?).

 

Writing those first three chapters was a valuable part of the process of creating the overall story. They may not appear in the final draft, but they will definitely have contributed to the final product. Your understanding of where plot and characters are going will be clearer and more grounded in chapter 1(4) than chapter 1(1), and the subsequent quality will typically be much improved.

Plus, that was three more chapters of practice to hone your craft. That's never a waste. I once heard an author say that people should strive to write a million words before they even begin the first draft of their first attempt to make a serious publishable novel, and they had something of a point to my mind.

 

This is pretty much every story I've ever written. You kinda have to figure out why it's happening. Is it just that people like instant gratification, or is it because all the extraneous world building stuff could perhaps work better as the behind-the-scenes motivation for the characters? Words need to have a purpose, and that purpose isn't always evident at first.

 

You should feel complimented. Christ, I wish I could drink at work. I'd get so much more writing - that is to say, any - done. Would have an easier time falling asleep under my desk, too.

@Niez; I had an English teacher in high school who once told my class that there is hardly a work of fiction out there that can't be improved with the removal of the first chapter; he never elaborated because some smart ass suggested trying that with the Bible and long-story-short my mother had to talk to the principal.

 

I have a constant problem with writing fics. It's this niggling voice in the back of my head that's telling me:

"You're doing it wrong! You're doing it wrong! You're doing it wrong!"

This, of course, refers to a lot of things. The ones I have in mind are pacing, characters, story flow, plot, etc. Whenever I think how I want the story long-term to go this voice rears its ugly head.

Mind you it's not an actual voice, I'm not a schizophrenic. I think I'm just too paranoid.

Do you guys have a particular way of dealing with this, if it happens to you? I just bang my head on a desk.

 

This isn't that specific of a question. I have my doubts about how my story I'm currently writing is going to turn out, but there's virtually nothing I can do to make that go away, so there's no reason to worry about it.

 

Good point. I'll just ignore it.

 

Thanks. It does seem like a sound idea.

Particularly because you can just write the outline like a script format. That feels strangely appealing now. Sure, I'll know how everything happens, which might be a bit boring, but I won't be stumbling around in the dark.

Thanks a lot, Ched.

Edit: I keep getting fucking Grammarly ads even though I already use the goddamn app. Fuck you Grammarly.

 

I’ve just seen this, and I empathise with this so much. I miss the absolute surety I had when I was younger that the defecation I threw up on ffn was solid gold.

To an extent I’ve found that the deeper my understanding of models of outlining becomes, and which works best for me, the more the voice that tells me everything I write is dire is diminished, too (although outlining has become its own sort of vice, now).

So yes, the first reason I’m writing this is just to say this resonates with me - on a ‘I’d join your cult’ level, yogi Ched.

The second is to ask, does it resonate with whoever else is seeing this thread too? I wonder if there’s something we can do about it as a group - if there are more than three of us.

 

I have the opposite problem. If I write by the seat of my pants, inspiration can carry me through. If I sit down and try to outline something, I always set an inadequate space for the idea I have and cram them too tightly, and end up needing five times the wordcount to get to my original goal.

Maybe I'll take a leaf out of Halt's book and make some plot technique threads when procrastinating from actually writing.

 

This is going to sound tautological, maybe even redundant, but I tell myself the story.

Okay, I was wrong. It sounds stupid.

What I mean is, I say it all out loud; if it makes sense out loud, I write it down. If it doesn't, I rephrase it until it does, or if it never does, I don't write down. Stories are just words in your head, used to put words in other people's heads. If the story you tell makes sense to you, it'll make at least some sense to people with similar points of reference.

Stories should only slow down if you're going into detail; go into detail only if you're introducing something or talking about something obscure -again, talk it out until you hear it make sense. Likewise, you can assume everyone reading knows what water, bread, cars, phones and rabbits are. No need to explain. Even thoughts and feelings, realisations and insults can happen rapid fire.

Another solution is to write only scenes. Leave them completely disconnected. You'll have to train yourself to do this; it's like building a muscular system without ligaments. Just seems wrong, but remember that you can go back and adjust the connective tissue, adding in a few lines here and there between the good stuff you're certain of to smooth it out. This way, you're only working in small, digestible chunks.

 

I'm going to echo Ched. It actually looks like we had the same thought at practically the same time, though I don't check this thread that often. I've been working on bringing one of my fics out of hiatus. Had been there for a couple months now. Essentially put it off to the side to write the Daphne challenge, and that challenge fic took me like a months to plot out and write. So when it was over, I was struggling to get back into this fic I put over to the side, but it was at something like 40k words, and I didn't want to just give that up. Don't get me wrong, I've dumped fics that size (and longer) in a blink, but I wanted to try and salvage it.

Getting back into it was rough though. I decided to edit the entire thing, and that was probably not the smartest idea. Turning something into a grind is not the way to go about trying to get back into and enjoying the story. After that, I decided to actually post the chapters (after doing another edit), hoping that some feedback would get the creative juices flowing. Decided to post on SB for an ego boost (it's a Worm fic). Turns out getting an ego boost from people who can't differentiate Harry Crow from Wastelands of Time doesn't do as much as I'd hoped.

Eventually, I hit a wall again. I hit the point where I actually needed to write new words, and it was a struggle. The issue I was having was writing a fight scene from the POV of someone who can see the entirety of the battlefield but isn't skilled at hand-to-hand combat herself (Taylor). My normal writing processes is a very loose outline, where I note down every single idea that comes to mind and try and have a rough idea of a timeline for where those ideas would pop up, and then I sort of make the bridging scenes connecting those ideas on the fly. It wasn't working this time, because I had to keep track of too much going on at the same time, it was a bit overwhelming. So I ended up very precisely outlining what I wanted to happen. Like, if the fight was 2000 words, I spent 500 words outlining it. It helped me figure out what I wanted to do, but without spending too much time floundering around with the scope of it. It was almost like choreographing it. That being said, that doesn't necessarily mean that it's good, just that I managed to force myself through the wall.

 

I could be wrong, but I think this is the only reference to Harry's grandparents in the whole seven books:

Spoiler

“Where did you go?” asked Harry, staring at him.

“Your dad’s place,” said Sirius. “Your grandparents were really good about it; they sort of adopted me as a second son. Yeah, I camped out at your dad’s during the school holidays, and then when I was seventeen I got a place of my own, my Uncle Alphard had left me a decent bit of gold — he’s been wiped off here too, that’s probably why — anyway, after that I looked after myself. I was always welcome at Mr. and Mrs.
Potter’s for Sunday lunch, though.”

J.K tells us about Harry's grandparents dying of old age in an interview from 2005, I think, and of Fleamont and Euphemia in Pottermore. So yes, I think the safest, and easiest way to resolve you problem is to simply ignore those later statements and go with Dorea and Charlus as James' parents, rather than concocting a whole new branch of the family that mysteriously dissapears before Harry is born.

 

@Sesc
Of note here is that Charlus and Dorea do not exist outside of movie canon. Harry's grandparents were never mentioned by name in the books and it was with Pottermore that JKR expanded upon the Potters' family background.

Abraham Potter, as mentioned in a Pottermore article, was one of the twelve original MACUSA Aurors. As far as Charlus and Dorea are concerned, I like to consider them as members of a branch family. My headcanon is that Potters were numerous in number but the two wars against Grindelwald and Voldemort snuffed out many members of the family until only the main and a single branch were left. Fits in nicely with James joining in the war effort right after school - Voldemort/his followers murdered his cousin, his wife and their son - which served as a wake up call in his final year.

 

An alternative would be to have Charlus and Dorea emigrate to the US, where we know a branch of the Potter family exists - namely, the descendents of the Auror Abraham Potter.

https://www.pottermore.com/writing-by-jk-rowling/macusa