# Writing issues, changing directions again **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [September 24, 2017, 1:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/writing-issues-changing-directions-again/797178 "2017-09-24T13:31:03Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 9\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![HoneyBadgerDC](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/honeybadgerdc/32/1033_2.png) [@HoneyBadgerDC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HoneyBadgerDC)\ **Post date:** [September 27, 2017, 5:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/writing-issues-changing-directions-again/797178/21 "2017-09-27T05:33:43Z")
> [@Sunny\_Daze](#): > > A few thoughts: > > First you need to decide if you have a story to tell or if you want to talk about the collaborative communication concept that you are working on. Once you decide that, you can move on. A story is one type of book, but the second option is something different and may be closer to what you really want to do. When you’re forcing yourself to write against your instincts (or gut) it can be very difficult to build any momentum. So, decide: is this fiction or a non-fiction discussion of a new paradigm? There is no wrong answer. > > Once you have that answer, sit down and start. Different people have different processes. You’ll often find writers broadly broken down into those who outline and those who write by the seat of their pants (with no clear plan). Which are you? Do you find that having an outline is helpful? I like having one myself. If you fall into this group, you also have to realize that the outline is where you start, but it’s almost certainly not where you’ll end up. You’ll find that writing itself gives you new ideas as you go, or that you realize something that you thought would be great isn’t once you’ve written it out. > > Most of all, you need to just start. Remember, it’s a draft. It doesn’t matter if it’s not fantastic right away. Just keep writing and you can edit later. Write regularly, whether you want to or not. I always find that more words are better at the draft stage, because than I can be brutal later when I edit. That’s just me. Some people like to get each page perfect before they move to the next. You will hate this book at some point and be convinced it’s garbage of the worst order. Every author, ever, has thought this. Just keep going. > > tl; dr Start. Keep going. 😃 You summed it up pretty well. Personally I have little interest in a novel or story. I would be happy to simply write about the theory until I ran out of things to talk about. I have multiple outlines and countless essays dealing with aspects of this. I see the story or screenplay as the only real way to introduce the concept to the public for what I feel it is really worth. One of my personality quirks that has been with me since early childhood deals with watching how people change as circumstances change. I have a particular fascination with what motivates people and what happens to them once they become motivated. As an adult I had the benefits of running truck shops for the past 40 years, usually shops with from 20 to 40 mechanics. Small enough where I could be up close and personal yet large enough to get a good sampling to build my data on. I think these things have added to my experience that I am basing my novel on. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [September 27, 2017, 5:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/writing-issues-changing-directions-again/797178/22 "2017-09-27T05:48:37Z")
> [@HoneyBadgerDC](#): > > Great questions, I actually don’t mind giving up any of my so called secrets here because I doubt anything will ever come of it anyway. If I said tool in my original post I miss spoke. It is more of a social structure that could involve collaborating. I want the novel to showcase the good things and changes that take place in people when they find something they love. I also want to demonstrate how contributing and value can come in a lot of different ways not often thought about as valuable. The characters I refer to as advocates and talent scouts play a key role in the book. Aha. I think a social structure lends itself far better to being described in a novel than a tool does, since a part of novels is the interaction of the characters - and you can show that in a new way. I don’t know enough to have an opinion on your method. But good novels can be build around dumb ideas, and bad novels can be built around good ones. Given that your idea is a good one, I’m trying to help you build a good novel around it. Maybe you could set up a team of people trying to do something, and slowly finding their way to interacting based on your collaborative method. I think that would be more dramatic than if they started with it. Make your characters sympathetic, and the reader will root for them to build the collaboration. Of course put in setbacks, hurdles, and some opposing forces. That keeps readers reading. ---
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [September 27, 2017, 5:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/writing-issues-changing-directions-again/797178/23 "2017-09-27T05:48:43Z")
> [@HoneyBadgerDC](#): > > Personally I have little interest in a novel or story. If you have no interest in your story, neither will anyone else. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [September 27, 2017, 5:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/writing-issues-changing-directions-again/797178/24 "2017-09-27T05:54:35Z")
> [@Dr.Strangelove](#): > > No real advice to the OP other than “shut up and write.” You built bows for a long time. In all likelihood, almost all of those were failures–only a handful ever broke a record or led you down an entirely new path. But the remainder still taught you what not to do, and helped refine your craft. Same principle here. So just go out and do it, and expect to throw away almost everything you write. I didn’t mention Rand because I hope he does better than she did. Shut up and write is usually good advice - but in this case he can’t let the story take itself where it wants to go, since he has a goal for it. I also don’t have the sense that he has a good grasp of the basics of a novel. In this case, some prep work might pay off, I think. So maybe it should be shut up and outline. ---
**Author:** ![Knowed\_Out](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/knowed_out/32/7380_2.png) [@Knowed\_Out](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Knowed_Out)\ **Post date:** [September 27, 2017, 7:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/writing-issues-changing-directions-again/797178/25 "2017-09-27T19:57:27Z")
> [@Voyager](#): > > Maybe you could set up a team of people trying to do something, and slowly finding their way to interacting based on your collaborative method. I think that would be more dramatic than if they started with it. Make your characters sympathetic, and the reader will root for them to build the collaboration. > Of course put in setbacks, hurdles, and some opposing forces. That keeps readers reading. Ditto this. Make sure the characters have souls and aren’t just keyboard monkeys. One of them could be a single mother struggling to provide for her family. Another could be a veteran who returned from a war but couldn’t find work until now. Another could be from high school, a nerd who doesn’t fit in with anybody except this group. And so on. ---
**Author:** ![xnylder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/x/bbce88/32.png) [@xnylder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/xnylder)\ **Post date:** [September 27, 2017, 9:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/writing-issues-changing-directions-again/797178/26 "2017-09-27T21:01:16Z")
> [@Darren\_Garrison](#): > > If you have no interest in your story, neither will anyone else. I second this. Off the top of my head, a novel needs at least one of these: compelling characters, fascinating setting, interesting conflict. If you don’t have the patience to create these, I believe your and your readers’ time would be better spent on essays. There’s no shame in writing a non-fiction book. “How to get people involved in collaboration” sounds like a worthy topic for a business and/or self-help book, and both those genres have huge readerships. Don’t tie yourself to the novel format if it doesn’t suit the purpose of getting your message out. ---
**Author:** ![HoneyBadgerDC](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/honeybadgerdc/32/1033_2.png) [@HoneyBadgerDC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HoneyBadgerDC)\ **Post date:** [September 27, 2017, 9:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/writing-issues-changing-directions-again/797178/27 "2017-09-27T21:04:34Z")
> [@Knowed\_Out](#): > > Ditto this. Make sure the characters have souls and aren’t just keyboard monkeys. One of them could be a single mother struggling to provide for her family. Another could be a veteran who returned from a war but couldn’t find work until now. Another could be from high school, a nerd who doesn’t fit in with anybody except this group. And so on. I actually have these same characters, the only difference is the vet is an older alcoholic suffering from PTSD and can’t seem to hold down a job. The big challenge in real life is attracting collaborators. I am thinking that a small group as you mention here just stumbles across a formula by accident and they never actually knew what they did until it had already developed quite a bit of steam. It follows the philosophy of " Do what you love the money will follow" No specific goals, no trend setters, no in crowd, just collaborating because it has become an enjoyable past time. It eventually mushrooms into a powerful force and starts to attract all sorts of greedy types. This is where I am to build some conflict and temptation. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [September 27, 2017, 10:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/writing-issues-changing-directions-again/797178/28 "2017-09-27T22:47:05Z")
Here’s a serious question. Have you ever read a novel that did what you want your novel to do? If so, study that book and see how it managed the feat. Don’t try to reinvent the process. If not, you should investigate to see if anyone has ever had success doing this. Not just writing up ideas in novel form - many people have done that - but successfully building a movement upon that novel. Dr. Strangelove mentioned Ayn Rand. She may or may not be a model. She was a working writer and political activist for a decade before \*The Fountainhead \*appeared. And various flavors of what became called libertarianism were already well established; she merely provided her own, which became more a small cult than a mass movement. Novels like Robert Heinlein’s _Stranger in a Strange Land_ generated followers of a sort, but they never even amounted to a cult let alone a movement. Edward Bellamy is perhaps the prime example. _Looking Backward, 2000-1887_ did become a mass movement - and lasted only a year or two with no results. If you hate yourself you can try studying it, but that style of fiction is unreadable today. There just aren’t many other models out there. You really need to think whether this lack of examples is a sign you should examine a different approach. ---
**Author:** ![HoneyBadgerDC](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/honeybadgerdc/32/1033_2.png) [@HoneyBadgerDC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HoneyBadgerDC)\ **Post date:** [September 27, 2017, 11:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/writing-issues-changing-directions-again/797178/29 "2017-09-27T23:28:21Z")
> [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > Here’s a serious question. Have you ever read a novel that did what you want your novel to do? If so, study that book and see how it managed the feat. Don’t try to reinvent the process. > > If not, you should investigate to see if anyone has ever had success doing this. Not just writing up ideas in novel form - many people have done that - but successfully building a movement upon that novel. > > Dr. Strangelove mentioned Ayn Rand. She may or may not be a model. She was a working writer and political activist for a decade before \*The Fountainhead \*appeared. And various flavors of what became called libertarianism were already well established; she merely provided her own, which became more a small cult than a mass movement. Novels like Robert Heinlein’s _Stranger in a Strange Land_ generated followers of a sort, but they never even amounted to a cult let alone a movement. Edward Bellamy is perhaps the prime example. _Looking Backward, 2000-1887_ did become a mass movement - and lasted only a year or two with no results. If you hate yourself you can try studying it, but that style of fiction is unreadable today. There just aren’t many other models out there. > > You really need to think whether this lack of examples is a sign you should examine a different approach. I understand what you are saying. I know a lot of products never make it to market simply because they require too much customer education. As a retired senior I have nothing to loose and keep myself entertained albeit a bit frustrated at times. I admit I have been less than encouraged when reviewing my own work here., at the same time I always find a few jewels that seem to spur me on. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/writing-issues-changing-directions-again/797178.md?page=1)