7 Tips to Working with a Serpentine Idea

Posted on by Chris The Story Reading Ape

More great tips from, Charles 👍😃

Charles Yallowitz's avatarLegends of Windemere

Look, many of us can’t say that our original plans go off without a hitch once the pen meets the paper.  Even outlines change as you move along, so there’s a very organic undercurrent to writing in general.  Maybe it isn’t that strong with you because you have it very controlled, but there’s something at some point.  It could be the editing stage when you junk 95% of what you wrote and then act like it was all part of the plan.  That’s another version of a twisting, serpentine idea, which can be difficult to wrangle.  It can easily derail a story if you aren’t careful or flexible.  So, what are some ways to handle this potentially inevitable hurdle?

  1. Ride the wave when it strikes because it can be your subconscious showing you a connection.  This doesn’t mean to do it blindly and without holding onto the reins a bit. …

View original post 392 more words

5 thoughts on “7 Tips to Working with a Serpentine Idea”

  2. Posted this on the original post.

    You write fantasy I write crime – worlds apart you might think (see what I did there?) but there are parallels (oops did it again) – a hero/ine righting a wrong being the main one.

    All good points in your article but I’m drawn to [ 1 ] as I find myself in the same situation. As in: everything going fine, only to find instead of sticking to the rough map the horse has bolted across country (the horse analogy is apt as it actually involves horses). First instinct was to pull hard on the rein and get back on course but my subconscious was niggling there was something in it and decided to let it run. I’ve now got about thirty pages that don’t belong in book two – but . . .

    Book two (WIP) of an intended series is about sibling jealousy against the backdrop of the art world.

    So while I knew there would be a book three (four and so on) I had no theme and no backdrop. I’ve still no theme as yet but by ‘writing on’ those thirty pages have given me the makings of the backdrop – horses..Those pages will need extracting to another file for book three but for now I’m leaving them in place because there is a chronological overlap and I need to make sure I don’t yank out something that needs to stay

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

DON'T BE SHY - LEAVE A REPLY

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.