Writing Toolbox: Magical Hatchet of StorySmithing +5

I’m taking the advice from one of the Writing Excuses podcasts and chopping out a significant portion of what I’ve already written for my story.  I’ve tried to edit before and rewrite the scenes to make them work. But this is different.  To do this correctly, I need to remove, cut-out, eliminate and simply hack off the portion of my story that went astray.  And to do that, I need the maggical hatchet of storysmiting +5 (because a non-magical storysmithing hatchet just doesn’t cut it).  

 

I hate to see it go but it must. You see, when I started my novel many years ago I had a bunch of ideas but no story. I didn’t plan out what kind of story I was going to tell. Instead I built momentum by starting to write about a guy with a wound in a boat on his way to a healer. And everything just started to fall into place from there.  These are the questions I asked myself as I began my story:

 

• What does a guy with a wound want most in the world? To be healed of course. 
• Where is he going to be healed?  By a sadistic fire healer in a dangerous land, of course.
• What is the worst thing that can happen to him once he gets healed? He gets wounded again, this time more gravely.
• Who wounds him? The woman he loves who is now an evil being…

And so my story was born.  I had grand ideas that involved climatic battles and impressive settings in a volcanic land. But to make those things happen, to be able to write those ideas into existence, I had to get something else out of the way. It was a minor thing really, just something real writers call the PLOT.

 

After writing about 3/4 of the story I came to realize that I hated what the story had become. Sure I loved the idea behind the story, but not the story I found myself telling. So what happened to the story?

 

Based on what I’ve learned, I started with a good idea but forgot to develop the idea into a workable plot. Even more, I did not understand how the hero was to achieve his goal. So my storyline had a beginning and a vague-endish-kind-of-thing, but no middle.  And I had no stinking idea how he was going to get there.

 

No, I’m not that stupid. Really, I’m not. I told you that I started this story by writing about a guy with a wound on a boat. And the character, setting and some plot elements developed from there.  My problem was that I thought that same discovery momentum world carry me through the entire story. But after years of muddling through, with countless false starts, and too much time re-editing work that I’ve already written only to re-edit it again – I’ve come up learn that is not the case. 

 

I let the same momentum carry me further on, but it brought me to a place I did not want to be.  My story turned into a journey story, and that’s not the story I wanted to tell. After much muddling, I skipped past the whole journey and jumped to the scenes I wanted to write and figured I’d just fill in the rest later.

 

The problem with that is, if I didn’t want to write it – why would you want to read it?

 

So after listening to the Writing Excuses team talk about major overhauls for broken stories, I decided to take drastic action.  I chopped.

 

Keep in mind, this is not editing. I still have to be careful that I do not edit during the first draft. Instead I chose the point in the story where I felt it was still heading in the right direction. Everything after that now sits in my graveyard. Everything before that is still a mess and will require copious editing.
But I’m writing again. I’m advancing my story. There is movement, not just motion.

 

If you’re a discovery writer with a story that has lost it’s way, consider where the story loses you. Maybe that’s the chopping point. I’ll admit I’m finding this act to be quite refreshing. It’s as if my story has new life. I now see what type of story I want to write and I’m writing that story instead.

And here’s the truthnugget moment: are you clinging to something in your life that just has to go? Have you invested time, energy or emotion into something that is not what it should be? Maybe it started out good, but now it’s just a drain on your life. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not talking about cutting out people who love you just because you’re not getting along at the moment. I’m taking about the optional things, the hobbies and activities that can either enhance or detract.

If you’ve got something like that, I’d challenge you to consider taking action. Work for movement in your life, rather than just the flurry of motion. But if you must chop something, I’d also recommend that you have a standard outside of yourself by which to judge yourself. I chose to chop off a major portion of my story rather than chopping out writing from my life because I believe that God has given me a gift to write and if I don’t tell this story then perhaps someone else will. My choice is to be the guy who actually writes the story he wants to write, not just the one he managed to get finished.