Been a while since my last post due to regular day to day work, and having to rethink and rework my book premise. As of today I have around 15.000 words on my current draft, with some parts of a previous draft worked in, so it wasn’t wasted.
So, why restart a project? Now there can be many reasons and most of them end up being excuses not to work on hard bits of your book, be that structure, a dead end you wrote yourself into or just that its more fun to start something than finishing something. My shelf of in-progress miniatures are a testament to how bad I am at that personally.
In my case it was due to the sprawling narrative of the story taking place. My central trio of characters are traveling from Edinburgh to Cairo to complete a task, but the story I wanted to write was a personal one. One of men dealing with trauma, substance abuse and purpose, set to a backdrop of 1920s Scotland. The story didn’t need an epic backdrop to work, so I pivoted and made it smaller in scope and more personal, so the backdrop does not distract from the topic.
It is a similar problem that stories about Spider-Man or Batman face. These heroes are personal in nature, dealing with problems or challenges inherent to their identity and history.
When your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man is removed from stopping purse snatchers and foiling bank heists, to to be faced with world ending threats, he is not as interesting anymore. Fun, for sure, but the reason we love the character is because of the smaller problems he has, like dealing with girlfriends, and balancing school + work with being a hero.
Same for me with Batman. His psychological issues and damn near suicidal need to fight every lowlife in Gotham is more interesting and asks more foundational questions, than if he is tasked with extraterrestrial threats.
It is always the smaller personal conflicts that spark interest. If everything has to be as big and grandiose as possible, we miss out on much better intricate stories and moments. I often consider if some of the projects I have, that are on permanent hiatus, would have benefited from reducing their scope, rather than sticking to one big fancy idealized version that, for now, have never been finished.
I suppose this is partially the ‘kill your darlings’ part of writing. Ax the parts that detract, work with what you have to make it good enough. My finished novella will always outshine my unfinished trilogy.
Anyway, the rebooted story moves better, reads better and can now set the stage later for that bigger journey.
What I now do, if I get some fantastic bit of inspiration, is to add it to my Google Keep and then leave it there for now. Keep writing and check back in a month or two to see if anything interesting could come from it, and if not bin it.
If you are a fellow writer is this something you struggle with? Does your initial scope detract from the story you wish to tell, or do you disagree and does increasing the scope enhance your story? Would love to hear you thoughts.
Never stop writing!
Thanks for reading. Inconsistent post to come eventually.
Torben Jensen 
Leave a comment