What Do You Do When An Idea Dies?

I was just going through the my documents folder and I came across a story I had been working on a while back. Now here is my question:

Have any of you been working on a piece and it is going along well and then it just dies on you? The plot becomes monotonous, the characters fall flat, your belief in the ending evaporates. For whatever reason, your passion for the story just dies. If this has happened to anyone, what do you do? If you try to resurrect it, what techniques do you use?   —Ian

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From Brenna Lyons
Go to the point that it falls apart (or maybe a bit earlier) and scrap the rest. Now, start off from there and let the characters run the show for a while with just a bit of problem-creating from you. My POV is that it died for one of a few reasons. One... The passion died. Okay, it's been out of your sight for a while, and the passion might return for something you haven't seen in a while. Two... You were headed the wrong way. Scrapping everything that feels forced should help with that. Now, let the characters point you in another direction. Three... Your ending felt wrong. Don't plan ahead so much. Don't hold yourself to the outline. Just write and see where you end up. It might be a different place than you thought, but if it's good, who cares?

From Stevie Burns
This happens frequently. For the moment, put it aside. There are many reasons the work may feel flat or dead to you.

One: you've changed. Something has happened or you did or saw something that changed your perspective. This doesn't mean that the work itself is uninteresting, only that it has grown uninteresting to YOU.

Two: you're in a mood. Not necessarily a bad mood, but in a state of mind where just about anything you've written will seem a terrible waste of the language.

Three: it's really bad and awful shit. Sometimes I write something and think I'm really burning, and then I look back at it a few weeks later and wonder what the hell was wrong with my head. This is the least likely option of the three, but you know - shit happens and sometimes it's really your own fault and no one can save you from the pain but yourself. This is when you put on your favorite shirt and drink cocoa.

Let the piece rest for a while. If after a month or two (yes, really let it collect dust - in fact try to erase the whole memory of the project from your mind) it still feels dead, well then bury it for good. Have a memorial erected (ahem) and say something really sweaty and just let the story really be dead.

Chances are good though that after a month of being ignored, your story will suddenly come alive for you again and demand that you pay it some attention.

While you are not working on the piece, work on something else. This is the best way to flush-out any doubts you might have about whether your story is crap or not. Chances are, you simply have another story waiting to get down on paper and you're not paying attention because you're worrying about this other 'dead' thing and the new and improved and really exciting story is starting to get worried that maybe it will be lost and forgotten before it's ever had a chance to thrive and get read and be handled by someone other than you. (Books are so slutty!)

From Kayla
I do one of two things with this problem. I let it sit in my 'incomplete' folder and I wander in from time to time to see if any of them are ready to be finished. I have pieces that have simmered for 2 years before my inspiration returned.

I've also taken a piece that just doesn't seem to have life, pulled out bits and pieces from it and patch worked it into a different story. Sometimes, my plot just doesn't want to cooperate so I take scenes or ideas from unfinished stuff and incorporated them into something that I am excited about. At least that way I don't feel like I've wasted the whole idea, just parts of it.

The last story I completed sat in my incomplete folder for close to nine months (heh), 1000 words on the page. In November, when I [was] buried in work for The Dominant's View, another 4500 words leapt from my fingers in two days and the story is now finished. If only I could find some time to do the editing...sigh.

From Pip
I had a story like that of about 2500 words... it flowed and flowed and then midway it just stopped. It sat in a folder for months until, like you, one day I pulled it out and reread it. On rereading it I still liked it, but still couldn't seem to resolve the intrinsic problems within it. What I ended up doing was taking 4 parts out of it that I really liked, and they then became 4 separate stories. One of which even, somewhere along the line, turned into a radio play!

From Cady
I put them in a >/pending< subdirectory and forget about them (for now). Every once in a while, when nothing else is inspiring me, I go back into those files. (It's not writers block if I'm working on something, right?) Sometimes, a story will finally gel. Sometimes, I get so annoyed at the piece that I'm inspired to write something else. Other times, I head for the imperial stout.

On the other hand, if a story seems to fall apart at a specific place, I cut the part after the break(down) and put the cut part in an >.out< file. (That kind of extension works in WordPerfect, don't know if Word works that way as well.) That way, the beginning of the file name keeps it with the rest of the story's files, but the off part Goes Away from the main body on which I'm working.

Then again, there have been times when shredding a printout of the story can be immensely satisfying -- or so I've heard. <innocently looking up at the ceiling and whistling>

From Mike Kimera
I just checked and my Work In Progress folder has 32 items in it, excluding a novel that currently stands at only 20,000 words.

Some of those pieces are little more than a title. Some of the pieces have complete outlines and are just waiting for me to hang the flesh on them. Some are opening images or pieces of dialog that have come out of the mist and demand to be written down. Many are about a 1000 words long and tell me the voice of the piece and the set up but not necessarily the end. A few a much longer pieces where the first 4-6,000 words are done, but the I know that there is more in there. The oldest of those pieces is 4 years old but I haven't given up on it yet.

For me, writing is powered by belief, steered by making choices that keep the story honest and the characters real, and given shape by language and imagery the fascinate the ear and delight the minds eye. That's a lot of stuff to get right at the one time and normally I can't manage it.

So I take the energy for what I have today and I go to my WIP file and find something to use it on. Sometimes I just work over the language of a piece. Sometimes I add whole new sections of plot or new characters and viewpoints. Sometimes I whittle away the things that are making the story lose focus. Then there are the grungy tasks making the tenses work, moving backwards and forwards on the timelines without making it too hard for the reader to follow; the kind of thing I need time and concentration for.

When I get to the point where I can't make a particular piece work, I move on to the next one.

The only snag is that you can do this forever and never finish a story, so I try to set little deadlines for myself. But if they don't work... well there's always the next idea.

From Teresa L
What's odd is that I don't have this problem. I have the opposite problem, I think -- once a story comes to life in my mind (when the characters and settings gel and I think, ah-ha, that could be a story), I just can't stop until it's finished. I've even seriously considered calling in sick to work once or twice.

Sometimes writing a story reminds me of childbirth experiences. There are times when it takes you by surprise and it's shockingly quick, there are times when it's painful but also kind of satisfying, and other times when you think you can't do it one more second. But once the labor starts, there's no going back.

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