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Jan. 30th, 2010 11:39 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
unijOh my god you guys I am so bad at coming up with an actual, solid, planned plot.
My teacher, noticing how generally panicked and depressed I was over my lack of productivity, agreed with me that it would be best if I was given solid deadlines, rather than the loosey-goosey, open-ended thing that a lot of my classmates are doing, she'd assign me specific dates to show her bits of my project.
Her first deadline was to have a solid outline of the story, specifically the ending, e-mailed to her by Monday at the latest. She's a firm believer that having an ending when you start is the most important thing. You can change the ending while you work, but you have to have an ending in mind. And this is, as far as I have known from looking at the processes of others, an entirely accurate assumption. But I have never been able to come up with a solid ending for anything I've done. Ever. I come up with characters, basic premises, a starting point and a few bits of things to happen along the way. I always hope I'll come up with more later. This may explain why I've never actually finished anything.
Anyway, point is, I'm sitting here staring at the paper, and realizing I have no freaking clue where to go with this. It is unbelievably frustrating to just be caught up on the outline.
Arrrgh
My teacher, noticing how generally panicked and depressed I was over my lack of productivity, agreed with me that it would be best if I was given solid deadlines, rather than the loosey-goosey, open-ended thing that a lot of my classmates are doing, she'd assign me specific dates to show her bits of my project.
Her first deadline was to have a solid outline of the story, specifically the ending, e-mailed to her by Monday at the latest. She's a firm believer that having an ending when you start is the most important thing. You can change the ending while you work, but you have to have an ending in mind. And this is, as far as I have known from looking at the processes of others, an entirely accurate assumption. But I have never been able to come up with a solid ending for anything I've done. Ever. I come up with characters, basic premises, a starting point and a few bits of things to happen along the way. I always hope I'll come up with more later. This may explain why I've never actually finished anything.
Anyway, point is, I'm sitting here staring at the paper, and realizing I have no freaking clue where to go with this. It is unbelievably frustrating to just be caught up on the outline.
Arrrgh
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Date: 2010-01-31 07:55 am (UTC)I really never worked well off of outlines, tbh... but if your prof wants one but doesn't expect you to stick to it, I would just try to make some stuff up. Because, well, it's not like you have to stick to it.
Take your characters, figure out your conflict, and extrapolate from there. When you figure out your ending, you don't also need to figure out your epilogue. (ie, you can say "well they defeat the dragon but the countryside is in ruins" without having to decide who hooks up and whether the king gets his throne back etc etc all your minor plotline endings)