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Originally Posted by LionTigerBear  I had come up with one idea, but then I realized that the ending I had thought of was almost identical to the ending in someone else's (well-known) book. Plus it wasn't really awesome to begin with. Sigh. How do you come up with a good story idea?  |
Don't worry about the ending. I had something in mind last year and as my characters developed and the story moved along, it went in directions I had never planned. That is one of the fun things about Nano. You never know where your characters are going to take your story. You will be pleasantly surprised at the places you will go with it.
I think if you can start with a main character and a basic idea of what that character's problem is going to be, then you have enough. You don't have to know how it is all going to be resolved at this point.
I actually found it helpful to not plan too far ahead last year. I did the bulk of my planning each night, after I finished writing. I would take 5 minutes to jot out a quick outline for the next day. I asked myself these questions - What characters were going to be in the new scene? What was the problem going to be? How would that one scene get resolved?
Check out The Marshall Plan for Novel Writing. The book recommends a lot of preplanning. But, I didn't do it that way. I found the book after Nano had already started, so my first few chapters are all over the place. They had characters that never appeared again in the novel - lol. That book helped me get on track and I plan to loosely use it as a guide again this year. It's all about learning as you go.
yes thanks for letting me know about this mama! so excited!
