Apr 1, 2008

Tell a story


3 comments:

kodiak232 said...

When writing, do your story lines ever get away from you? Do they ever become so splintered, their sheer mass takes on a life of its own like some insidious monster that can't be tamed?

Tony Daniel said...

When that happens, a couple of things might be the problem. Usually your idea is either too big for the story you came up with or is too small and the story is wandering off. It's usually the latter, by the way. You can either keep writing with the idea as a hapless developing character wandering through the world and risk an endless mess (or get lucky and write a Normal Mailer novel), or you can reconceive and restructure the story. This is harder up front, but it's far, far quicker down the line and will usually save you a great deal of needless work.

Tony Daniel said...

And when I say "you," I mean "me," too!