Dislike

What if you’re writing a story or part of a story and you dislike it? That’s a bad sign, right?

It’s happened to me multiple times when writing novels. I’ll be several chapters down a certain path and find I don’t like where the story has gone, or that I’m losing interest. To me, that’s a really bad sign. If I lose interest then a reader certainly will, too. I’ve scrapped tens of thousands of words in some instances.

I guess if I worked from a more detailed outline that would avoid those situations. Instead, I tend to have a general idea of the story and a clear picture of the ending. Everything else is fluid. I like writing that way and it works for me since I’ve come up with some good character development and storylines I wouldn’t have otherwise. But as mentioned above, sometimes it leads off the beaten path.

Why is this important now when I’m not even working on a novel? Because writing short stories allows me to try out some new situations and perspectives to see if they work. The one I’m currently writing is teetering close to the edge of dislike. It’s not a horrible waste of time, but it is making me wonder if a full-length book with this narrator would work out. In contrast, the story I wrote a couple of weeks ago worked like a charm. Trial and error, experimentation, new paths, whatever you want to call it, sometimes it’s worth writing something you end up disliking.