Don't Write Blindfolded

In our society today, nearly everyone wants to write a book. 80%, in fact. But of those, very few will actually try to write one. And of those, even fewer will actually finish. Why is that?

If you want to write a book, but haven't yet, you need to get on that. Make your goal a paragraph, a hundred words, or even just a single sentence. Just get on it.

If you have started, this post is for you. From my experience as a writer and from the experiences of other writers I know, you've probably not just started one book. You're on your third, or your eighth, or you one hundred and sixty-fourth. Whatever number it is, you're probably not just working on your first. Why?

Because you got bored. Or because the story wasn't coming to you. Or because you lost inspiration. Or because you got a better idea. Or all of these. But these all have the same problem: you're writing blindfolded.

What I mean is that you don't have a plan. There is no goal to your story, and you don't intend for there to be one. You just have a bunch of cool characters, maybe some awesome gadgets or intriguing wizards. You've created mansions, huts, shacks, cars, streets, skyscrapers, entire worlds in your head. It's exciting at first, but when you lose inspiration, or when it gets old, you move on. But it can be fixed.

The easiest way to fix all this is to add a goal. What is your character doing in the skyscrapers, why is the group afraid of the bad guys, and why do we care that a side-character betrayed the main character?

We care because the main character is a vigilante, looking for his parents that the FBI took when he was fourteen. Or because Jim stole the plans for the new super-spaceship and gave them to the communists.

The more difficult way, especially because you've already started writing, is to plan it all out. Now, this doesn't work for everyone, including some famous authors, but it worked for me and many others. Probably most others.

So, plan it all out? That sounds tedious. It can be, if you plan each and every detail. All I mean is that you should have ideas of scenes. The MC goes to Paris, gets caught by the police for doing something wrong, goes to prison, escapes with another man, and they take over the French air force to attack the killer robots.

That's a little bit of a ridiculous example, but you get the point: each scene, not each time your character breathes. Be careful to remember that the story still needs a goal.

Not all stories need goals, but those are few and far between, and take a particularly good author. I'll cover the types of stories and plots later this week or early next week. For now, just try to find a goal, a reason for your character to do anything, in your story. You might be surprised.

Thank you for your time, as always.