I have several small ideas that seem like they’d go together in a work of fiction, but there are also so many gaps that seeing it ruins any forward thinking I might have about it.
The best way really is to just start. You might chop and change, write and rewrite, many times but you will find a way to make it come together. Writing notes and a list of plot points helps, or even writing out the separate sections and then finding a way to make them meet. Don’t get bogged down in the minutiae of sentences and paragraphs. Getting the bare bones down is your starting point. I used a spreadsheet and would add in new points and landmarks as and when they came to me. I still ended up spending ages editing, and adding, and amending until it felt right. Taxing but cathartic to get it all out.
I would add that writing it out, or preferably actually talking it out with someone, will take your ideas from the nebulous internal language of the mind, where they can be these indistinct perfect concepts that capture whatever it is you’re about at the moment… anyway, it will take them from that beautiful but unreal state, into real memes that have to be described with language and imagery and all its limitations.
The first time you speak your whole synopsis out loud, even if it sounds a bit hollow, that’s when you’re idea is born into the real world.
I have several small ideas that seem like they’d go together in a work of fiction, but there are also so many gaps that seeing it ruins any forward thinking I might have about it.
The best way really is to just start. You might chop and change, write and rewrite, many times but you will find a way to make it come together. Writing notes and a list of plot points helps, or even writing out the separate sections and then finding a way to make them meet. Don’t get bogged down in the minutiae of sentences and paragraphs. Getting the bare bones down is your starting point. I used a spreadsheet and would add in new points and landmarks as and when they came to me. I still ended up spending ages editing, and adding, and amending until it felt right. Taxing but cathartic to get it all out.
I would add that writing it out, or preferably actually talking it out with someone, will take your ideas from the nebulous internal language of the mind, where they can be these indistinct perfect concepts that capture whatever it is you’re about at the moment… anyway, it will take them from that beautiful but unreal state, into real memes that have to be described with language and imagery and all its limitations.
The first time you speak your whole synopsis out loud, even if it sounds a bit hollow, that’s when you’re idea is born into the real world.