At a loss for ideas?

[Kaloth]

I want to be clear here, that I am not looking for ideas, there are plenty that exist and there are plenty that I have just none that catch me enough to write a novel on (New Years resolution to at least finish writing and editing one this year).

However my current problem is, as I've mentioned, that none of my ideas are catching hold long enough to form into a full blown novel, most not even a short story. I've kept to my habit of writing two thousand words every day, but still nothing. Sure some things come and grasp my attention long enough to write on them for a few days but they do not a story make.

The crux of my problem is this. The ideas that come to me are scenes, people, and worlds.... however I never come up with the thing every story needs; Plot. I've tried every simple solution to this, for example asking how the character got to where he was, why he's doing what he is. However, this is backstory, which is still under character development(leading to the actors). I tried thinking of a world/setting that would allow for that character, but that only leads to building a world (or the stage if you will). I've tried reasoning a chain of events that lead up to the scenes, but for some reason no coherent plot ever emerges.

My question is this; How do I go from a group of actors milling around on a stage, with bits of incoherent words and actions that really have no meaning to a full blown play¹.


1) The play is a metaphor, it is actually a book.

[Ryffnah]

Well, so far, I've only written two and two half novels.  (The two half novels are still underway, and I do plan to finish them.)  So, I'm not an expert on this, by any means.  However, I found that what pulled me through the first novel I actually finished was having a long term quest for the main character -- something that stayed her central goal throughout each separate scene, even if in those scenes she was more immediately concerned with shorter term goals.  In that novel, the long term goal (from the character's perspective) was to find out what happened to her missing sister.  In any individual scene, however, she was usually much more concerned with something else -- like escaping the dog goons chasing her or disguising herself so that they wouldn't recognize her.

[Kaloth]

See the problem lies in finding that quest... None of them really stick to the character.

[Ryffnah]

Ah... yes.  Okay, so, I guess then I'd recommend looking into these two books:

First, there is a classic breakdown of the standard plot that most heroes face that was written by Joseph Campbell in 1949 called "The Hero With A Thousand Faces."  To be honest, I haven't actually read it, but I find it really useful to be familiar with the idea which is basically that each hero follows a similar path.  And, really, basically that path is Luke's story in Star Wars.  It involves a call to adventure, a road of trials, often a wise mentor, and usually facing a dark version of the self before finally winning some sort of reward and knowledge about himself.

Second, if your protagonist is female, there's actually a different classic journey for heroines that was finally written up by Valerie Estelle Frankel last year in "From Girl To Goddess:  The Heroine's Journey."  That one I have largely read, and I found it really interesting and helpful in thinking about the protagonist of my own novel.  Anyway, the heroine's journey shares a lot of points with the hero's journey, but it's more cyclical and stories can start on different points in it.  Also, while the hero is generally fighting to save or regain his kingdom in some way, the heroine is generally fighting to rescue or restore her family in some way.

So, I don't know if you're interested in reading dense books about mythology, but you can at least glean a bit about the ideas from random links on the web...  With that in mind, here's the wiki page about Campbell's book:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hero_with_a_Thousand_Faces  And, here's Frankel's webpage about the heroine's journey:  http://frankelassociates.com/calithwain/Heroine.htm

Hope that helps!

[Kaloth]

Actually it might, I'll look into it. I have read a few other books on the matter prior to this. Additionally I've run into this problem many many times, especially during the course of finishing the four novels that I currently have (About 50-100k each). Unfortunately They have not gotten much past that stage, as I have either scrapped them in editing (promising myself to rewrite it) or when I came back realizing that the entire concept needed work, and thus scrapping them. (One I almost sent out to be published, but I believe 14 was too young to publish without parental agreement.)