You have no idea what this is.

That’s okay. I have no idea where my story is going.

Let me rephrase that. I know where the story is going. I know how it begins, though a lot remains in flux. But, there is a whole middle section that is a complete blank.

It wouldn’t be so bad if I had an idea of how I was going to transition from the beginning to the middle, but I’m not sure how the beginning ends.

And, that’s where I end up stuck every time I look to work on the story. I keep refining the details, getting portions of the backstory to work better, but that beginning is generally elusive.

I sometimes wonder if I picked the right character to make the focus of the story, but I keep coming back to the conclusion that I have. The tough part is developing the character with his personal struggle against the storyline.

Take Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, for example. The storyline was Indiana Jones battles Nazis, but his personal struggle is developing a relationship with his father and that personal struggle is really what the movie is about. The Holy Grail and the Nazis are really secondary.

So, that’s basically where I’m stuck. I know the storyline (i.e. the Holy Grail and the Nazis part of my story) but I keep getting stuck on the character’s personal struggle. I know what it is, but I remain stuck on how to illustrate it.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 19th, 2009 at 5:14 pm and is filed under Science Fiction. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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