No.416
I figure I could try to make this board un-die even though that is a long fucking shot. I write a lot. In fact I enjoy writing so much I even enjoy helping other people write. However, I keep running into the same problem over and over again with the people I try to help. The problem is simple. The story simply isn't compelling. It isn't good. Someone might try to write a generic monster. The characters aren't very human. The setting is badly hashed out. But most of all, there's no real story there. It's just a bunch of events, but nothing is creative. It's just words- it isn't saying anything.
When I point this out, I'm given questions on how to get into the mindset of creativity. And I struggle with this. How do I explain something so basic? I haven't even thought of it much. What is the mindset of writing? I can only really speak for myself, but I kind of wanted to gather other people's creative processes in terms of writing, in the hopes that somehow the collective /lit/ group can hash out what it means to develop a story.
Personally, my mind works in abstracts. I take everything I learn and pool it back into myself, hidden away until something relevant comes up. Mostly these are concepts. Feelings. Perspectives. These are the emotions of people I have met. Their secret worries. Concerns. Their lens to which the world is witnessed. Their grief. Their hopes. They are collected lovingly. Hoarded with utmost care and adoration and respect for the people behind them all.
I pair this with my abstract thought, to which reality is just an option. The world comes to me in what ifs. What if we could breathe our sorrow out in clouds of gas? What if our suffering showed on our skin, and we died not when our bodies gave out but when our agony became too much to bear? I try to write from a perspective that reality couldn't allow, but now must for the sake of tale. Through this, I try to give people a point of view that isn't usually considered, a sense of a situation that never was, to use what little I have heard of human lives and apply it to extract the appropriate reaction to an appropriate situation, even if the appropriate situation could never occur in reality, and take the reader on for the ride.
That's how I try to create. Put everything in abstract, hoard until the abstracts marry to a cohesive story. Sorry if that doesn't make sense. This was just me trying to get my thoughts on writing down.
What about you guys? Any other writers willing to share their creative process?
No.417
I believe that it isn't a lack of creativity but a lack of emotion that you speak of.
I also create in a way very similar to your method and I think that you explained it quite well.
